PROVISION OP BORROWING FACILITIES. 337 



It is clear that these faults undue leniency on the one hand and 

 un punctuality on the other may easily wreck the best system. M. LE 

 BARBIER expressly alludes to that idea of peasants (and others) that a 

 society (or a Government) is abundantly rich and can afford to wait 

 for its money, so that unpunctuality with them conveys no sense of 

 fault. MR. WOLFF, while admitting, it would seem, that the peasants 

 are unpunctual, considers that the societies are training them to habits 

 of punctuality by insisting inexorably on payments at date. Here in 

 India, poverty is too frequently urged as a reason for granting a loan 

 of public money, while the ryot and not merely the ryot habitually 

 thinks that the Government is boundlessly rich and can afford to wait, 

 or even to lose an individual trifle. 



Other Objects. The societies do not merely make loans ; they do 

 considerable business in assisting land purchase. In Germany, as in 

 Italy, land is largely sold by public auction, the purchaser agreeing to 

 pay by instalments a practice which enables him to give a higher 

 price from the ease of payment. For these instalments he gives bonds 

 to the auction-seller, who in turn sells them at a discount for ready 

 money to some money-lender or other capitalist. Should the pur- 

 chaser fail in any one of his instalments, he finds himself liable to be 

 sold up without mercy, unless he pays a ruinous interest on his 

 arrears. The society intervenes by taking the place of the money- 

 lender at a moderate discount, but requires from the seller a guarantee, 

 usually with personal sureties. 



Other objects are the stimulation of, and assistance to, associations 

 for co-operative production, sale and supply; either by the grant of 

 advances or by establishing them as branches, with, however, liability 

 and accounts wholly distinct from that of the parent society. These 

 are becoming very successful, and supply associations are mentioned 

 as doing business up to 2,000 per annum, the capital for which is 



originally borrowed from the parent society. 







The same Article, which deals with these subjects, lays down that 

 the directors shall endeavour to compose differences between the 

 mcmbels of the society, and to assist them if they are unjustly injured 

 by third parties. 



General Union and Groups. As the societies increased in number 

 and importance, it was felt that they should be linked in groups 

 for mutual support and for supervision, for the chief difficulty in 

 43 



