GERMANY - CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 



agreement has been come to between the Government and the Central 

 Bank and approved by the Diet. The principal article in this agreement 

 is that the Central Bank must be subject to State supervision until the 

 loan has been completely repaid. 



The powers of the State Commissioner appointed by Government to ex- 

 ercise this supervision are defined in the articles of the agreement. The Cen- 

 tral Bank will have complete freedom of action and will be entirely responsible 

 for the management. The State may intervene directly in the management 

 of the Bank only when the investment of the loan is concerned. In 

 all other instances, the State Commissioner ma3^ attend the meetings of 

 the executive bodies of the Central Bank, and speak without voting and 

 perform acts of general supervision, in accordance with the law on mortgage 

 banks, as far as they are affected. 



The State assistance is not only and above all intended for the assistance 

 of the Central Bank, but indirectly for that of all the co-operative societies 

 afl&Hated to it. Thus the State Commissioner has the right personally to 

 inform himself with regard to the working of the societies benefiting by 

 the advantages derived from the State loan. For this purpose, he will 

 rely principally on the reports of the inspections carried out by the Feder- 

 ation of Agricultural Co-operative Societies of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. 

 He will also be authorized, in case of need, to obtain the information he 

 requires by means of enquiries held on the spot. He will have authority to 

 require that the faults he discovers be corrected and, if they are not, he 

 may submit a complaint to the competent authorities; in certain cases, he 

 may even demand the cancellation of the loan granted. 



2. Reform of the rules of the central federation of German 

 AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES. — The nineteenth Congress of 

 Agricultural Co-operation, held at Wiesbaden on July 17th. and i8th,, 

 1913, decided on the introduction of important changes in the organiz- 

 ation of the National Federation of German Agricultural Co-operative Soci- 

 eties. These changes, which came into force on September 20th., when the 

 new rules were entered in the register of the co-operative societies, at Darm- 

 stadt, were necessary on personal grounds and because the circumstances 

 required them. 



The Federation, which just last year completed the thirtieth year of 

 its existence, had made extraordinary progress during the period. Although 

 the 12 Raiffeisen federations, with, in round numbers, 5,350 societies, with- 

 drew from it, in consequence of the cancellation of the agreement entered 

 into in 1905 between the National Federation of German Agricultural Co- 

 operative Societies and the General Federation of German Rural Co-oper- 

 ative Societies (Raiffeisen), on June 30th., 1913 the National Federation 



