Borrowing Money

May 29, 1933  We hoed in the garden.  Then Mama and I went to Meade to see about the crop loan.  We bought a John Deere tractor for $400.00.  Gave the old tractor in trade and paid $50.00.  I borrowed $150 to be paid July 15, 1934, and $150 to be paid in July 1935.

The harvest of 1932 had been nearly a complete failure – the wheat crop was so poor that they did not even finish harvesting it because the gasoline for the tractor was costing more than the wheat was worth.  As a result, they did not have much cash from the harvest, so now a month or so before harvest they must have been running short.  So Cornelius and Margaret went to the bank to try to borrow money against the 1933 harvest that would come in a month or two.  Cornelius does not record that they got the loan, and there do not appear to be any more trips to the bank.  No mortgages were recorded in the courthouse on their land.  It was probably fortunate that they did not get the loan because Cornelius did not record any effort to harvest wheat in 1933, so they might have lost the land if they could not have repaid the loan.  Very likely the crop was so poor that it would have been a waste of money.

But the John Deere dealer was willing to sell Cornelius a tractor on credit.  It appears that he was able to make the installment payments for the tractor in the following years, although nothing is mentioned about them in the diary.

Cornelius bought a John Deere Model D tractor similar to this one with steel wheels with lugs.