SECURITY FOR OUTLAY 249 



official staff, anachronistic privileges, and Byzantine trappings. 

 The prestige secured to the landschaft by official status — some form 

 of prestige being undoubtedly necessary for the successful issuing 

 of bonds — was to be secured by ringing cash in the shape of a paid- 

 up share capital — good practice coming in later to confirm it. On 

 these lines were " Mortgage Banks " formed by joint stock companies. 

 Such companies possess no right to foreclose without judgment ; 

 they have no gorgeously apparelled generallandschaftsdirector, like 

 Herr Kapp, at their head, nor junker landesalteste or ritterschafts- 

 rathe to do the valuing and inspection. Nor do they profess to 

 disdain profit. Quite the reverse. They were formed to earn their 

 shareholders a profit. However, the profit which they manage to 

 earn is, if steady, also only moderate, somewhere about 6 or 7 per 

 cent., and it is well earned by economies easily accomplishable by 

 more businesslike management. If the landesalteste valuing for 

 the landschaft are remunerated with a miserable day allowance, 

 whereas the mortgage bank valuers naturally have to be allowed 

 a fair salary, the mortgage valuers, on the other hand, being con- 

 tinually employed, can manage to throw very much more work into 

 the time of their employment. And though the landesalteste is 

 likely to be well acquainted with local features of soil and husbandry, 

 the valuers are trained men with a much wider knowledge of farm 

 crops and farming generally. Wherever there is a good landschaft 

 established, a landowner in Germany will probably prefer to go to 

 it for his money. However, as a general result, though landschaft 

 business has kept steadily increasing, mortgage bank business has 

 grown still faster— of course, with urban business taking the first 

 rank. And where there is no landschaft, and where bureaucratic 

 ways are not in vogue, a joint stock mortgage bank certainly appears 

 to be the more commendable institution. 



The same services may all likewise be rendered, still on the same 

 lines, but modernised in form, and generally by purely co-operative 

 means, landowners clubbing together in sufficient number to com- 

 mand amply adequate credit without any State patronage. This 

 has been done with distinct success by the Latuhrirlhsrhafllir/n r 

 Kreditverein far das Konigreich Sachsen and by the Danish co-opera 

 tive mortgage societies, in both cases for small, even very small, 

 peasant proprietors, as well as for owners of large estates. 



To sum up, by all these various means the difficulty of credil to 

 be obtained for landowners on cheap terms and in an easy wav has 

 been effectually overcome, and the problem of aiding the 

 prising agriculturist in acquiring his own freehold holding DBS been 



