344 PROVISION OP BORROWING FACILITIES. 



RAIFFEISEN throughout the country side. It is personal devotion alone 

 which effects great reforms among the poor and helpless. 



POPULAR BANKS (LUZZATTI). 



Objects and Character. The following extract from No. T ff T of 

 the Foreign office Report explains the objects and character of these 

 banks : 



" Like the Credit Unions founded in Germany by SCHULZE, the 

 Italian Co-operative People's banks are simply associations, by means 

 of which artisans, peasants, small tradesmen, and, in fact, all classes 

 of persons who, though honest and intelligent, could not otherwise 

 obtain credit without submitting to every form of usury, combine to 

 establish a local self-governing institution of credit to meet their 

 requirements. 



" They are based upon the principle of self-help, and aim at 

 developing habits of prudence and thrift in their members, by 

 providing them with a profitable means of investment for their 

 savings, while they seek to put down usury by the facilities which 

 they afford for obtaining loans and advances of money at a reasonable 

 rate of interest. 



" The members, being at once the proprietors of the bank and 

 its clients, have a direct interest in its making a profit, and a sufficient 

 inducement to keep the rate of interest charged on loans and advances 

 within proper limits. 



"The pecuniary interest of each member in the association, 

 through the shares subscribed by him and his contribution to the 

 reserve fund, offers a material guarantee for the punctual repayment 

 of his debts to the bank, and a moral guarantee is created by the 

 restrictions imposed upon the admission of new members, and the 

 sale or transfer of shares, which must be submitted to the board of 

 directors for approval. << 



" In connection with this subject, SIGNOR LUZZATTI observes that 

 ' in an ordinary joint-stock company the member's money is the main 

 object considered ; but in a co-operative credit association the person 

 of the shareholder is of much greater importance than the share 

 itself, since in the latter society the moral worth of the persons who 

 compose it, united as they are for the purpose of obtaining, by means 

 of co-operation, the credit which they would not find jn other 



