PROVISION OP BORROWING FACILITIES. 377 



A high proportion of the value of his landed property by the creation 

 of bonds that flow into the general system of securities, so that 

 instead of only being able, like the English landowner, to provide an 

 individual mortgage security of very limited currency, he possesses 

 facilities for converting a mortgage charge into a security realisable 

 at any time in the general market. 



The Land Mortgage Credit Associations, twenty-three in number, 

 of which six were founded in the period 1770-1790, and the remainder 

 between 1825 and 1896, are associations of borrowers for the purpose 

 of procuring loans by the issue of bonds secured by the collective 

 mortgage charges registered against their landed properties. These 

 bonds are not secured by specific mortgage charges, but by the body 

 of mortgage charges of each particular association, supplemented 

 by its reserves and the accumulated sinking fund payments of 

 mortgagors. They are non-profit-seeking organisations, and, except 

 in two cases, they possess no share capital. The Prussian Associations 

 limit their operations to a single Province, extending them occasionally 

 over portions of an adjoining Province or State ; thte areas of the 

 non-Prussian Associations coincide with those of their respective 

 States. 



These associations rank as public corporations (in Prussia their 

 officials have a status similar to those employed by provincial 

 authorities) ; they are subject to State supervision through a Royal 

 Commissioner, and their articles of association and regulations require 

 the sanction of the Crown or the Minister of Agriculture. They 

 possess certain special privileges, such as the authority to distrain 

 without having recourse to the ordinary civil procedure. They are 

 administered by a Central Board, which includes at least one 

 permanent salaried official who has passed the State examination 

 qualifying for the office of .judge. This Board is subject to the control 

 of a Committee or Council of Administration, and of a General 

 Assembly, both elective bodies. Directors are also elected for the 

 chief divisions of the areas of the Associations and a further 

 decentralisation is secured by the District Committees. 



A landowner becomes a member of an Association when such an 

 Association acquires a mortgage on his land ; membership ceases with 

 the cancellation of the mortgage. Landowners living within the area 

 'covered by an Association and fulfilling the conditions imposed by its 

 articles of association, may not be refused loans, and they may claim 

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