PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 



"which decimated the people" ; on that occasion, "the usury was 

 frightful and bread and potatoes the ordinary food of the peasantry, 

 were not to be had." By personal effort he united some of the better 

 class in a 'Co-operative society,' which imported grain direct, ground, 

 baked and distributed it and brought down local prices by 50 per 

 cent. ; he also obtained potatoes both for food, and as seed when 

 sprin^ 1 arrived. This was in 1848. In 1849, he started an association 

 of the better classes, who contributed funds with which cattle were 

 bought by the association, and resold to the ordinary peasants who 

 repaid the amount with interest in five years by easy instalments ; 

 this was to obviate the ' Usure sur le betailj one of the worst forms 

 of usury found in Europe, the cattle dealer often exercising the right 

 of takin^ back his cattle which remain his till the value is fully 



paid up if a single instalment of the heavy price is in arrears, and 



no return is made of prior instalments : subsequently this took the 

 form of an ordinary loan society, the money and not the cattle, being 

 made over to the peasant, who therewith bought cattle outright for 

 cash. In 1854 RAIFFEISEN founded a society not only for granting 

 credit, but for educating orphans, for supplying labour to men out 

 of work, for buying cattle and for erecting a library. This was 

 unmanageable and was wound up in 1864, and in that year, the 

 first regular loan society, under the rules, which, in the main, govern 

 these Credit Unions, was founded at Heddesdorf, a village of the 

 Neuweid Union, of which RAIFFEISEN was the burgomaster. It is 

 only from 1864, therefore that these societies took their origin. Till 

 1868 it stood alone, 5 were then newly started and 22 in 1869. 

 Until, 1879 progress was slow, but from that time the increase has 

 been very rapid. * 



Before proceeding to further details, it should be mentioned that 

 RAIFFEISEN, to whom this organization of rural credit was solely due, 

 was forced by ill-health to retire from public service about 1860. 

 Though sick and nearly blind, he then devoted the remainder of his 

 life to this work, dying in 1888 after his societies formed an establish- 

 ed and successful system. Curiously enough, his work, though in 

 Germany, has been attacked by business men and others, ofc account 

 of the Christian and philanthropic tone which pervaded his writings 

 and his works, as though a system, admittedly successful from a 

 business and economic point of view, were the worse, nay even 

 objectionable, for having as motives of action, principles based 



