PROVIDING THE FUNDS 171 



by a tax of so much, say, on every gallon of milk employed in a dairy, 

 or a similar unit in other productive undertakings — and also for the 

 purchase of land, which has, under their administration, been bought 

 and cut up into small holdings and allotments decades before our 

 statesmen thought of such a thing. 



And we must not look upon these societies as banks only. They 

 are co-operative societies for all purposes. They buy and sell, they 

 organise common work, they knit together the population of a 

 village as into a family. I have elsewhere quoted the Hungarian 

 Professor von Dobransky's rapturous praise of this " world of 

 brotherhood," in which "the isolated man finds himself transplanted 

 into the bosom of a community, whose resources multiply a hundred- 

 fold the productive power of its labour, and crown it with success." 

 There is co-operation in everything. Good will takes the place of 

 neighbourly animosity. And morals improve, because everybody 

 in the village wants to be in the bank, in order to enjoy its benefits, 

 and as long as he is a bad liver he is mercilessly rejected. He mends 

 his ways and the door is opened to him. Drinking, gambling, 

 thieving, all come to be suppressed. And that is the same experience 

 wherever RaifTeisen societies have come to be formed — in Serbia, 

 in Rhineland, in Saxony, in Italy, in France, in Belgium and in the 

 Netherlands. 



Thus far I have spoken of single banks only. But, obviously, if 

 there is force and benefit in the union of individuals, such force and 

 such benefits naturally come to be greatly enhanced by union in 

 masses. 



Financially, union secures the command of a larger supply of 

 money. The overplus of one bank will balance the want of another, 

 just as in the single bank the overplus of the depositors will meet the 

 requirements of the borrowers. A union occupies a very much 

 stronger position than a cluster of isolated banks would do. That 

 principle of union has, in Germany, been carried to such a point 

 that there is in each of the two connections, whose different con- 

 stitutions have here been explained, a powerful apex bank, in which 

 all business becomes focussed. That apex bank is for both unions 

 alike at present the " Dresdner Bank " which, as its officers have 

 assured me, finds its account in the connection and which, so I may 

 add, by way of caution, is admitted to be rendering to the said 

 co-operative banks gathering under its sheltering wings benefits 

 distinctly exceeding those which the likewise powerful and pre- 

 tentious bank set up by the Prussian Government with £3,750,000 of 

 Government money, for the very purpose of financing co-operative 



