SI 4 PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 



in 1819 was a Friendly Society for relief in sickness ; his second in 

 the same year was an association of shoe-makers for buying raw 

 material ; in 1850 the first Loan society was formed with ten 

 members, all artisans. The organization of credit was, however, 

 a main object ; he saw that by the aid of a little capital, properly 

 employed, the man of prudence and capacity could often raise 

 himself a stage higher in the social scale, whereas under the reign 

 of usury, borrowing was simply the beginning of ruin, or at best a 

 means whereby the surplus profits of work went to the non-worker. 

 The want of credit may be imagined from the fact that 60 per cent, 

 was common, while a workman borrowing 50thalers (7-10) for buying 

 material might be charged 1 thaler a day for the loan, or 730 per cent, 

 per annum. Hence his attempts to form societies both for lending 

 money and for buying raw material. That this usury was not a 

 necessary rate, but the result of mere greed and monopoly is shown 

 by the fact that his petty associations, even at inception when rates 

 were necessarily high, could lend with much profit at 10 to 14 

 per cent., and speedily reduced their loans to 8 per cent. 



In 1849-50 SCHULZE DELITZSCH began his famous work with the 

 above three institutions, all within Delitzsch, a small town of 8,300 

 people. He added to the above labours that of his pen in the shape 

 of small treatises or tracts, and, in 1854, he started at Leipzig a 

 periodical for a co-operative propaganda, which, in 1861, developed 

 into the now flourishing weekly Journal of Co-operation. 



By this incessant individual energy of SCHULZE DELITZSCH whose 

 activity with pen, speech and action was unbounded, thirty mutual 

 credit societies had been started by 1858, and by 1868 his efforts 

 had been crowned with unexpected success, a success won by sheer 

 energy and courage. Not only did his social and political adversaries 

 attempt to crush his efforts, but the money-lenders and brokers from 

 whom he was endeavouring to deliver the working classes united 

 against him ; they prevented his access to newspapers, and thus 

 drove him to establishing his own periodical and to the 'issue of 

 pamphlets and leaflets. In the early days the police attempted to 

 interfere on the ground that the societies were not legal or reioo-nized 

 by law ; this nearly fatal interference was successfully opposed. 

 His societies in fact under the common law of Germany had no com- 

 mercial status ; they could only sue and be sued as a society if the deed 

 of constitution was signed by every member, and the result was that 



