Enslow, Unconstitutional Features of the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916

Charles A. Enslow, “Unconstitutional Features of the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916,” reprint from The Lawyer and Banker and Southern Bench and Bar Review (New Orleans, Oct 1917).


Charles Enslow of the Janesville, Wis. Bar claims the current system that has resulted from the Federal Farm Loan Act is not fair as it provides assistance to the farmer but not to the coalminer or the carpenter. According to Enslow, “no particular person or class of persons is more entitled to the help of the government in securing homes than is any other person or class of persons” (3). If it is legal or constitutional to give this support to farmers, it must be constitutional to give the same support to others.

Enslow highlights the tax exemption of the Farm Loan bonds and any capital generated by the land banks and loan associations as the most hotly debated for its constitutionality. He then claims that Congress only has the affirmative power to tax, not the authorization to exempt from taxation any State property. According to Enslow, the Federal Farm Loan Bank is neither “nothing more nor less than a corporation chartered by the National Government, and whose sole object is to secure from a certain class of people of the United States money to be loaned to another class of people at a reduced interest rate” (8).

Related Documents

File	Date	Creator	Donated by
Enslow.pdf	October 1917	Hon. Charles A. Enslow