PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 401 



are wont to be established, not in remote streets but hard by the 

 market places. Further, a countryside is a small world where every 

 farmer knows his fellow-farmer's position or can deduce it from 

 external evidence. In the ordinary German village bank the grant- 

 ing of a small loan does not imply meeting the whole committee ; 

 application is usually made to the secretary, and the transaction 

 usually carried through without any further formalities. Absolute 

 secrecy is imposed* upon the secretary and other office-holders, and, 

 given the small area, such secrecy is more easily enforced. In Germany 

 it is rather the difficulty of the sureties which holds chief place ; 

 many societies with limited liability now assign to members an open 

 credit up to three-fourths of their liability without further security. 

 And, as regards the whole matter of borrowing, it is one of the aims 

 of a rural credit society to bring home to members that farmers, 

 like other producers, require to have credit at their command, and that 

 it is no blot on their business reputation to be borrowers. 



As regards the co-operative credit movement in England, the 

 view appears to be not uncommonly held that the predominance of 

 tenancy, instead of ownership, is a chief obstacle to its development ; 

 that the collective liability of a society composed of persons who 

 are mostly tenant farmers cannot offer adequate security to depositors 

 or other suppliers of working capital, and that the security offered by 

 the individual borrowing tenant to his society is necessarily weaker. 



The decisive importance of ownership in this connexion may 

 fairly be contested. To take the matter of the society. All members 

 are liable to their society either up to a certain fixed amount under 

 limited liability or up to the full extent of their assests under un- 

 limited liability. In the ordinary course the committee and board 

 of supervision of a society will draw up and periodically revise an 

 estimate of the means of each member, based on the valuation of 

 each member's holding, on the rent paid, possibly on the income tax 

 assessment voluntarily furnished to them, on the stock held, or on 

 other supplementary tests of well-being; and in this way the 

 maximum security offered by their members is ascertained. In 

 Prussft,, it may be noticed, this valuation, which is undertaken at 

 regular periods (and duly rectified, if necessary, in the intervals), is 

 submitted to the local surveyor of taxes, who is authorised to, correct, 

 if necessary, the sum total but not the individual valuations placed 

 opposite the name of each member. But this sum total would 

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