308 PROVISION or BORROWING FACILITIES. 



centralizing ideas and methods which find favour in that country ; 

 such institutions have neither succeeded nor survived. On the other 

 hand, the Germans put all legal questions aside and set to work to 

 develop local societies for mutual assistance and credit, which draw 

 their funds from outside by virtue of unlimited liability (solidarity), 

 safeguard all internal transactions by the local knowledge available 

 to them as a local association or brotherhood, and have eventually 

 supplied by development, the links between themselves united in 

 groups, and between themselves and central societies which grew up 

 to supply a felt want. Not only did they not trouble ' the Legislature 

 to alter the substantive law of the country, but they themselves were, 

 for many years, to some extent outside the law, as being socieites not 

 recognized as moral and commercial entities ; they had no locus standi 

 in the Courts and survived at first solely by virtue of their own 

 meritorious management. The general result is that svhile in France 

 there is speaking generally not a popular bank nor a society for 

 agricultural credit, there are in Germany popular banks 'and credit 

 institutions by the thousand, dealing in rural credit by tens of millions 

 sterling and developing each year not merely in numbers, but in 

 importance and in beneficent influence, while their example has been 

 copied in all other continental countries, and a beginning has, since 

 1889, been made in France also. 



POPULAR BANKS. 



Under this head will be described those classes of credit institutions 

 which are devoted solely neither to Real Credit, nor to the Credit 

 Agricole ; but which deal simply with credit such as they are able to 

 supply. It is not intended to discuss ordinary banks, but only those 

 particular classes of banking or credit institutions, which have sprung 

 up to meet the wants of the poorer classes, whether urban or rural, 

 and which seem to offer a solution of the credit question in its 

 economic, social, aud moral aspects. Such are principally the 

 co-operative credit institutions known generally as ( Popular banks ' in 

 Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Russia, the mutual credit 

 institutions of RAIFFEISEN and WOLLEMBORG in Germany and Italy 

 respectively, certain other Co-operative banks, a few Commercial 

 banks, and the Central banks for linking Popular banks, &c., and 

 supplying them with funds. The first two classes are by far tke ' 

 most important and suggestive for Indian needs. 



