PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 343 



latter societies all members are acquainted, the bank's clientele are 

 its neighbours ; it can lend upon character, upon the status, both 

 personal and material, of the borrowers and their sureties. Usury 

 can only be fought hand to hand, and it seems likely that only purely 

 local societies can succeed at least as regards the peasantry. 



Other radical differences are as follow : in the Schulze Delitzsch 

 societies, which are largely urban, only short-term loans are granted, 

 three months being the rule with one or two prolongations ; in the 

 Raiffeisen societies, which are wholly rural, long loans are the 

 rule, two or three years being the average, and ten years the ordinary 



^9 



maximum. The former societies do not trouble themselves to watch 

 over the use made of the loan, though they satisfy themselves before- 

 hand that it is to be used profitably, the latter consider it essential 

 to see that the loan is used productively, and every three months the 

 utilization of the loans is examined by the committee of supervision ; 

 the former societies require repayment of their loans in lump, the 

 return being usually speedy, and the result of a particular operation 

 in trade, business or industrial contract, &c. ; the latter take their 

 loans, if of more than a very short term, by instalments, per month 

 or per annum ; the former, lending only in short loans, have no rule 

 regarding repayment on four weeks' notice ; the latter insert, though 

 they hardly use, such a rule to provide against the deterioration of 

 property or the misuse of the loan ; the former do an enormous short 

 term business with artisans, tradesmen and a proportion of agricul- 

 turists, the latter a far smallar but now rapidly increasing business in 

 long loans almost solely with agriculturists. 



So much for the differences between the systems of the two great 

 founders of German co-operative effort. On the other hand, it must 

 be pointed out that their common object was the strengthening and 

 raising of the poor by the means of self and mutual help (s'anler 

 et s'enter 'aider). They rejected mere benevolence in their methods, 

 for though charity is a high virtue when applied by individuals to 

 individuals, it cannot, or rather does not, in our imperfect conditions, 

 succeed when applied to the relief of classes. Yet it was the main- 

 spring of their own action ; SCHULZE DELITZSCH devoted himself with 

 such unselfishness to his philanthropic work that, though voted a 

 statue and a subvention, he left his widow in narrow circumstances, 

 while RAIFFEISEN, who might have pleaded sickness to inaction, used 

 his life so sympathetically and usefully as to win the name of "FATHER" 



