382 PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 



articles of the Bank expressly permit it., and the borrower gives his 

 assent. In the latter event specific authorisation must be entered 

 in the contract for the borrower to repay in cash or in bonds of the 

 Bank, at his discretion. Bonds of various denominations are issued, 

 the minimum nominal value appears to be 5, and the maximum 

 250. In 1909, 58*48 per cent, of the value of the bonds bore 4 

 per cent, and 39*65 per cent. 3i per cent.; since that date bonds have 

 been issued mainly at 4 per cent. Except in the case of six Bavarian 

 Mortgage Banks, these bonds are not recognized as trustee invest- 

 ments, but almost without exception they are accepted as first class 

 security by the Imperial Bank. Mortgage bonds may not be issued 

 to an unlimited extent ; pure Mortgage Banks may issue only up to 

 15 times the amount of their paid-up capital and reserves, unless 

 previous to 1900 a Bank held the right to issue in excess of that 

 multiple, when a maximum multiple of twenty is fixed. Mixed 

 Mortgage Banks are limited to a lower multiple. Adequate publicity 

 is secured by statutory provision, every Mortgage Bank being obliged 

 to publish, not later than in February and August of every calendar 

 year, in the Official Gazette and in the news-papers selected for its 

 regular advertisements, detailed statements showing its position. 



German Savings Banks are mortgage credit institutions of very 

 great importance for farmers ; in 1910 their total investments in 

 rural mortgages may be estimated at 170,000,000. At that date 

 Prussian Savings Banks alone, out of the total of their invested 

 funds, which amounted to 579,000,000, had 115,000,000 outstand- 

 ing on the security of rural property. They are pre-eminently, 

 especially in Western Germany, the sources of mortgage credit for 

 small and medium farmers, whom they accommodated also at a time 

 when no other mortgage institutions were open to them ; and they 

 now provide, in effect, nearly every district with a public mortgage 

 credit institution. 



There are no Post-Office savings banks in Germany. The great 

 majority of public savings banks are institutions established, managed 

 or supervised, and guaranteed by the communal, district, or urban 

 authorities, apart from whom they do not exist as legal entities. 

 At the end of 1910, there were 2,844 public savings banks in Germany 

 (excluding Brunswick) with 7,404 branches or agencies, and 228 other 

 savings banks with 294 branches. The total deposits of all these 

 banks reached the substantial sum of 840,000,000; in 1890 and 



