While the weight of years had lessened his former activity, he remained to the time of his death the controlling adviser of many industries, in his town. They were managed for the benefit of large and small shareholders alike. He wanted no unfair advantage for himself to the prejudice of others. No owner of any share ever feared or fancied unfairness to himself. All were content when the integrity of Mr. Pruden was the guiding star of a business venture. He was vigilant and successful in protecting his own interest, but wanted no gain over. which floated the shadow of dishonor.

Laden with the honors of a successful professional and business career, he was buried in St. Paul's Episcopal Cemetery, in Edenton, of which church he had been for many years a communicant, and of which denomination in this Diocese for a long while he had been general counsel and legal adviser.

He was a distinguished ex-president of this Bar Association, and at all times was deeply interested in its work.

Cessation of all business in his home town during the time of his funeral attested the grief and gloom which his death had brought to its citizens.

Mr. Pruden was a great lawyer, accurately learned, adroit and skillful in management of cases, successful in matters of large moment, built up a competent fortune, and his departure was a distinct blow to his community and its various interests.

Deception and dishonesty were strangers to his thoughts. If all lawyers had his conception of duty and propriety we would need no committee on ethics.

Towering above his lofty attainment and eclipsing his financial successes, standing as his most lasting monument is the deep seated regard and esteem which all entertained for him.

Review of an upright career should be an inspiration. In its final analysis, each path of glory leads but to the grave. In it, "victor's wreaths and monarch's gems all blend in common dust." Character builded by proper living, proper deal

ing and proper sense of duty, is all of man which attends at his funeral and yet refuses to be buried with him. It floats away and lives on as an asset of priceless value for his descendants. His property through mischance may become scattered in life; his dollars may be repudiated or lost, but the silvery gleam of a well-lived life reflects its sheen in every direction. It cannot wither, it cannot fade, it cannot die. Fortunate must he be, who standing in the twilight shadows of approaching dissolution, casts his vision backward, over the past, and sees that he has stood four square to every wind, and has done justice to his fellow-man. To the value of such reflection, "jewels are indeed but gaudy toys, and gold but sordid dust.”

Your writer closes this sketch of the great lawyer with a keen appreciation of the loss which his death has brought to him. Memories of pleasant recollections will stand fadeless and undimmed by the flight of years, and we feel assured that our departed brother has laid his character, unsullied by stain, at the feet of his Master who gave it.

"A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod,

An honest man's the noblest work of God."

The President: It is generally conceded that one of the most important pieces of constructive legislation ever enacted by Congress is the act creating the Federal Farm Land Banks. One of the twelve great banks established by that system is located in the capital of our sister State, South Carolina. We have with us this afternoon Hon. R. H. Welch, the general counsel of the Federal Land Bank of Columbia, a distinguished lawyer, who will now address the Association. (Applause.)

Mr. Welch addressed the Association as follows:

Mr. President and Members of the North Carolina Bar Association:

I am truly very glad of the opportunity afforded me by your very courteous invitation to meet with you and discuss in a brief way the Federal Farm Loan System. I am glad of this

opportunity, because it offers me the privilege, not only of meeting you, but also of letting you know of those who have charge of the Federal Land Bank of Columbia, as well as those who have charge of the entire system of rural credits in this country. And I am also glad of this opportunity, because it gives me the chance to explain to you not only what this system is and hopes to be, but also, and particularly, what it is not, and never should be.

About two months ago one of the attorneys from your State came down to Columbia to see us. After he had been in my office for a short while, he enquired where I was from. I told him from Newberry County, South Carolina. He looked quite surprised as well as perplexed. A little later I carried him into the office of the assistant counsel for North Carolina, and introduced him to Mr. Connor M. Allen, of Kinston, N. C., a son of Judge O. H. Allen of your State and also to Mr. Banks H. Mebane, of Greensboro, N. C. I noticed that he was more surprised and perplexed than ever; but just what was the cause I did not know. He only muttered some incoherent remark, and sat down. He soon grew very cordial, however, and entered with a lively zest into the discussion of the matters he had in hand which had brought him to Columbia just as if he felt completely at home; and he was at home, for he was among friends, two of them being lawyers from his own State and the other from a sister and adjoining State. When he had gotten the explanations and information he desired he came over to my office to say goodbye, and I then learned what had been the occasion of his surprise and perplexity. He said that he was somewhat surprised to find that the general counsel of the bank was from South Carolina, or even from the South; but that he was completely surprised to find two North Carolina lawyers in the bank as assistant counsel, who under the direction of the general counsel are in charge of the determination of titles; he said he had fully expected to find the general counsel and his assistants from New York or Chicago, or from some other large city, where title determination by professional exam

iners has grown into a regular business; he admitted that he was perplexed, because he had not been able to understand how lawyers from the East, North or West would comprehend our conditions sufficiently well to enable them to sympathize enough with our title troubles as to make abstracting possible from the standpoint of the busy, practicing attorney. This feeling on the part of this attorney towards the legal department of the Federal Land Bank, while not typical as to the details, was for a good while fairly representative of the attitude of the bar generally. It was a federal land bank; therefore, a federal institution. It was consequently looked upon, as too often we are prone to look upon things federal, as a foreign institution, officered by strangers and managed by foreigners.

As all of these wrong ideas were entirely dissipated from the mind of our lawyer friend by his visit and contact with us, so I hope our meeting and discussions on this occasion will lead to a fuller and more complete understanding between the bar of your State and the bank. I hope you will see that we are in thorough sympathy with you in the work which you are called upon to perform for the farmers in order to enable them to avail themselves of the great benefits of this institution. We know, and have known far better than you have understood that we knew, what your troubles have been and are now; and we have from time to time realized the serious handicaps under which you have labored; and we have applauded the zeal and efforts of a great many of you to assist us in bringing to the people of your State the benefits of the Federal Farm Loan Act.

I am going to ask you for a short while to examine this act with me so that you may see what are its real purposes and benefits. The title of the act among other things is "To provide capital for agricultural development . and to equalize rates of interest. . . ." In order, therefore, to approach a sympathetic study of the act we should constantly keep in mind its primary purpose as thus expressed-Agricultural Development and Equalizing Interest Rates. These two

things are more and urgently needed in the South than in any other section of the country. Some sections may badly need one or the other, and others may in a measure need both; but no section so pointedly and unquestionably needs both as does our Southland. Agriculture throughout the nation needs the assistance of this act, but it is more needed right here among us than anywhere else; the field is larger here, and the results, therefore, from this help will be proportionately greater than elsewhere.

We have the soil, the climate, and the seasons in our favor. We can grow a greater variety of crops at a profit than any other part of the country. If it is wheat, then we can grow our needs; if cattle, then we can supply as good, either meat or dairy, as any part of the country, and at less cost; if hogs, we need not buy a pound of bacon or lard; sheep, we can clothe ourselves with the wool, and have a surplus to sell; if it is poultry, then this is the home of the hen; and if it is truck and vegetables, why our coast region is known as a garden spot. Then turn to our main money crops, cotton and tobacco, the former peculiarly our own, and contemplate what possibilities this section has before it! With all this, what is needed, therefore, to enable the South to come into its own? Why, just exactly what the Federal Farm Loan Act so generously offers the means for agricultural development.

Agriculture is absolutely and inseparately linked with the interest rate on the money needed for its development. There simply cannot be that development in agriculture which is necessary to make the South what it ought to be and is entitled to be should the cost of borrowed capital remain in the future what it has been in the past. Let me speak frankly: if we are to come up even abreast with the East, the North, and the West, to say nothing of coming into our own, in the matter of the development of our agriculture, then it is absolutely essential that we have an equalization of interest rates; that is to say, that we be enabled to borrow for agricultural purposes as cheaply as those sections have been borrowing now for a long time.