PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 303 



on property below 83 in value ; generally the loans may not fall 

 below 42 or a considerably higher sum, their minimum being pres- 

 cribed by the statutes. Even where the minimum loan is fixed at a 

 small sum, in practice the loans actually granted are considerable ; 

 small business is risky, troublesome, and unprofitable to the bank, and 

 is not undertaken. The Hungarian Boden credit society, for 

 instance, had in view the large and medium landholders; it was 

 founded by rich and patriotic men of the aristocracy, and, by statute, 

 will not lend sums below 83, i.e., practically, on estate of less than 

 50 acres, though one-third of the whole area of the country is held in 

 estates below 44 acres. As a matter of fact the loans average far 

 above the minimum in this as in almost all other land banks ; even the 

 cheap and popular savings bank of Milan cannot in practice lend in 

 Venetia on estates below 75 acres in area, whatever it may be able to 

 do in its own neighbourhood, while the general average of the Italian 

 land banks is very far above that. Hence the small proprietors are 

 not the clients of the land banks : practically none below the pro- 

 prietors, who in Germany are known as team-owning farmers, i.e., who 

 hold above 15 or 18 acres, can hope to borrow. 



The joint stock banks, such as the Credit Foncier, will lend to 

 any one who can offer good real security, but, as a rule have a 

 statutory minimum for loans, and in practice lend considerably above 

 that minimum. The real peasant class holding below 20 acres, are 

 not reached by the land banks generally ; practically they are financed, 

 as regards mortgage loans, by money-lenders only, and occasionally by 

 Savings banks, except in Switzerland and in some of the very small 

 German States. * 



State Intervention. The most noticeable feature in the organiza- 

 tion of these land banks is the pervading presence of the State, in all 

 degrees, from the complete direction and control found in the State 

 banks, to the general supervision exercised over private joint-stock 

 companies; the State in no case leaves this form of bank to its own 

 devices, but watches its proceed in^s with jealous care, and, usually by 

 special law, provides most stringent i-.'.l-.'s and heavy penalties for 

 malfeasance, or even neglect of regulations. It is true that Conti- 

 nental Europe is accustomed to a general regime very different from 

 that of England and India, where the principle of non-intervention is 

 .generally held to be the true gospel in political economy, but in lli.- 

 matter of these land banks the intervention of the State is so 



