FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 26

equipment in order to repay the debt. Perhaps most important of all,
budgets for repayment were worked out in advance with the member
and payments were scheduled according to agricultural cycles that
included sale of the farmer’s production.
The first Production Credit Association was organized at
Champaign, Illinois, on September 11, 1933. Its first loan was made
to a farmer named Milton Warren at Mansfield, Illinois, for $830.50
which he used to purchase thirty head of
cattle. The Brookfield, Missouri, Production
A Progress Report
Credit Association was next, organized
through the efforts of fourteen farmers
By December 31, 1951, all of the government
who first met on September 20, 1933. They
capital invested in Brookfield Production Credit
received their charter, signed by Secretary
Association had been retired in full making the
of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., on
association completely farmer-owned. A new
central office building was completed in Brookfield
October 6, 1933, and held their first meeting
in November 1953.
exactly one week later. In its 1963 history, the
Brookfield Production Credit Association
The Warrensburg Production Credit Association
laid claim to being the second to form in the
reported in Your Production Credit News that their
United States. Originally it was composed
members increased from 776 in 1945 to 1,115 in
1951 and its 1945 reserves of $33,942 had grown to
of four Missouri counties—Linn, Sullivan,
$121,566.
Chariton, and Livingston. A few years
later, Sullivan County became part of the
Unionville Production Credit Association while Macon, Carroll, and
Randolph Counties also affiliated with the Brookfield PCA in 1935.
Following closely on the heels of Brookfield was the Warrensburg
Production Credit Association. Its incorporators—Lenard Greer,
Harry E. Kilmer, P. R. Phipps, C. W. Sheppard, Ed Rittman, R. L.
Whitsett, Osbern W. Greer, V. E. Spicer, Garnet DeMasters, E. C.
Spider, and J. R. Eberts—held their first meeting on October 13, 1933.
The board of directors first met at the courthouse in Warrensburg
on November 2, 1933, during which time they voted to compensate
Secretary-Treasurer Osbern Greer $20 per month to be paid only
from the association’s earnings. Its original territory was Johnson
and Henry Counties but from the time of its founding to early 1935,
Warrensburg PCA grew to six counties. In its first year of operation,
they made loans totaling $44,000 and had 102 stockholders.

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Selected References