For every pound of bacon, meal, and flour, for every gallon of molasses, for every yard of cloth, for every plug of tobacco or tin of snuff which the customer consumes during the spring and summer, an advanced price is charged to him on the merchant's books.

With thousands of these merchants selling to hundreds of thousands of farmers over a wide area, it is of course impossible to state the average difference between credit and cash prices.
Investigations made in different sections show a wide variation depending upon custom, competition, the reliability and industry of the customer, the amount of advances, and the length of credit.

Since a large part of the advances are made during the six, or even four months before the crops are gathered, the difference between cash and credit prices amounts often to an interest charge of forty to one hundred per cent or even more a year.

These advanced credit prices, and consequently the high interest rates, may be paid not only upon food, clothing, and other personal goods, but also, occasionally, upon tools, farming implements, fertilizers, and work animals.
The merchant is supposed to be protected against loss by the institution of the crop lien and the chattel mortgage.

By one or the other of these the farmer is enabled to mortgage his growing, or even his unplanted crops, his farming implements, his cattle, and horses, if he owns them.
If he is a landowner, the land may be included in a mortgage as additional security.