FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 8

A group meeting held in 1930. Pictured are long-time member Jay Shipley’s parents. His mother is in back row,
second from left and father is back row, third from left. The blur seen next to Mrs. Shipley is Jay’s sister who was
born shortly before this meeting.

When the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, plunged the nation into
the Great Depression, things got even worse. With gardens and livestock at hand,
farmers sometimes fared better than their urban counterparts. Some, however,
were forced out from their farms. Just three weeks after his inauguration, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, convinced the farm mortgage situation was critical, issued
an executive order establishing the Farm Credit Administration on March 27, 1933.
Two vital pieces of legislation soon followed. The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
of May 12, 1933, offered direct emergency relief to farmers. The Farm Credit Act of
1933 called for the creation of Federal Land Bank Associations, Production Credit
Associations, and the Bank for Cooperatives. These three lending institutions could
loan money directly to farmers and cooperatives to meet all their needs including
real estate, machinery, equipment, livestock, and operating.
Production Credit Associations were to be organized locally, chartered and
supervised by federal authority, and capitalized with government funds. As
members of the cooperatives, farmers would help capitalize their local associations
by purchasing stock. Each member-borrower was limited to a single vote,
regardless of the amount of stock he or she owned. Field representatives went out
from Washington, D.C., to the associations, holding meetings to assist and direct
them. Training schools were established for managers, directors, inspectors, loan
committees, bookkeepers, and other employees of the Production Credit System.
Of the more than six hundred managers selected for offices across the country
during 1933–34, 43 percent were employed at less than $100 per month.
The Brookfield, Missouri, Production Credit Association, composed of four
counties—Linn, Sullivan, Chariton, and Livingston—was the second in the nation
to organize. Through the efforts of fourteen farmers, they received their charter on
October 6, 1933, and held their first meeting exactly one week later. In Missouri,
Brookfield was followed by the Warrensburg Production Credit Association which
held its first meeting on October 13, 1933. In its first year of operation, they made
loans totaling $44,000 and had 102 stockholders.
Both farmers and the Production Credit Associations struggled to make
it through the remaining years of the Great Depression. For the directors,
officers, and employees within the Farm Credit System, those stories of struggle,
foreclosures, and lost farms fueled their mission to help wherever they could and to
create opportunities for future generations.

6