PROVISION OF BOIUlOWm; FACILITIES. 311 



ideas considerable capital, or country gentry, the countryman is left 

 without banking facilities. 



Again, even if such banks grant credit to the peasantry, they are 

 lacking to a great extent in the educational and even guardian power 

 which the country banks should possess. It is the English country 

 bank, not the great joint-stock associations with numerous branches, 

 vvhich have so long developed and assisted the English tenant 

 farmer. 



Hence in the history of rural credit it is noticeable that no banks 

 have reached the peasants proper Switzerland and perhaps Scotland 

 exccpted unless they were small local institutions, usually 

 co-operative or mutual ; even the Savings banks, when they deal in 

 credit, have only partly fulfilled this role unless they were also 

 associations of the above character, or developed them by their side 

 as branches or offshoots. Indeed, except in Scotland, there was up 

 to 1850 practically no banking credit at all for peasants, and it is 

 solely owing to the genius of German philanthropists who were also 

 business men, that such credit is now available in Europe, and combines 

 with credit, an education in many of the finer social and economic 

 faculties. 



It is then under the form of co-operative credit and not of joint 

 stock companies, of associations of borrowers, not of societies of 

 capitalists, that rural credit is generally found in Europe. 



These banks are now numbered by the thousand ; with their 

 aid journeymen become masters, labourers become owners ; hopeless 

 debt is banished and the usurer driven out ; agriculture and industry 

 developed, and the villages in the poorest tracts become prosperous ; 

 the illiterate man turns towards education and the drunkard is 

 reclaimed ; the middleman is eliminated ; the peasant gets full value 

 for bis produce, and pays his rent with ease ; village life is stimulated 

 by associated action and by the business education of the bank ; 

 punctuality, thrift and mutual confidence are taught ; litigation 

 decreases and morality improves ; self-help and not that of Government 

 or of philanthropists is the main-spring of action ; activity t:;kes the 

 place of stagnation and routine ; associated action replaces distrust. 

 This is true, not of a few isolated villages, but in thousands of cases. 

 There are several thousand Co-operative banks in Germany alone, a 

 vast number in Austria-Hungary, and about 900 in Italy ; the 

 business done is enormous and in sums extending downward to bills 



