INFORMATION RELATING TO CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 23 



total sum of these contributions, estimated for each propert'>^ should be 

 taken into account at the time of the expert valuation of the dues burdening 

 rent, and should be part of the sum annually deducted from these dues, to 

 the credit of the employer. 



All the above provisions will be comprised in the lists of stipulations 

 as to properties let in the current year ; and since their effects can be realized 

 rapidly and can reach a large number of peasants, the council decided to 

 invite employers enjoying current leases to apply the conditions which fa- 

 vour peasants from the beginning of the coming agricultural year. 



Finally to complete these provisions the council decided : 



i) to vote 600 liras (i) to the employment offices for peasants, tak- 

 ing such sum from the reserve on the balance-sheet of 1916, and to include 

 a Uke contribution in the budgets for future years ; 



2) to found an itinerant chair of domestic economy, with the object 

 of giving rules for rational housekeeping to families labouring on the lands 

 of the administration ; 



3) to promote and subsidize enterprises tending to the spread of cul- 

 ture, such as evening and Sunday courses of elementary instruction in the 

 farms, circulating libraries, courses of technical instruction, etc. 



4) to occasion an agreement with other charitable enterprises own- 

 ing rural lands, for the purpose of instituting an agricultural inspectorate 

 which will see that the rules stipulated in leases in the interests of peasants 

 are effectively applied, that the laws of hygiene and sanitation are 

 observed, that there is compulsory education, etc. 



* 

 * * 



2. THE POSITION OF CERTAIN POPULAR BANKS IN 1913. — Credito e Cooperazione, 

 oigan of the Assodaztone fra le Banchc Pnpnlan, Rome, No. iq, 1 October 1916. 



The Agricultural Bank of Mantua (2). — The report accompanying 

 the balance-sheet for 1915 (45th year) of this bank opens bj^ drawing at- 

 tention to the rapid decline in deposits in the first months of the year — from 

 eighteen and a half millions at the end of 1914 to fourteen millions in the 

 following May — ; and to their no less rapid increase after the beginning 

 of the war, so that in October 1915 they again reached eighteen millions 

 and in December twenty-one and a half millions. Thus in the first half- 

 year there were difficulties due to the diminution of resources, and other 

 difficulties in the second half-year due to the plenty of money, much of 

 which was deposited only on a precarious title. These difiiculties, and the 

 necessity of being prepared to face the eventual withdrawal of part of the 

 deposited sum, showed the bank's administrators the path they must fol- 

 low. In the first place securities were prudently reduced and then the 



(i) I s = 1. 261 1 liras at par. • 



(2) La Banca Agricola Mantovana. 



