402 PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES. 



naturally not be taken as representing the ordinary security of the 

 society for the purpose of credit : it suffices that a small percentage 

 be taken. The Prussian State co-operative Bank lends up to a 

 maximum of 10 per cent, of the assests of members as returned and 

 checked by the local surveyors of taxes in the case of societies of 

 unlimited liability, while it grants societies with limited liability an 

 ordinary maximum credit of 75 per cent, of the collective liability 

 of their members. The Haiffeisen Central Loan Bank grants to its 

 societies (all with unlimited liability) in Prussia a normal credit of 

 10 per cent, of their assests, and to those outside Prussia, where the 

 returns are not usually checked by the surveyors of taxes, a normal 

 credit of 5 per cent. The Saxon and Pomeranian Central Co-operative 

 Banks fix the maximum credit at 75 per cent, of the collective 

 liability of each of the affiliated societies; the latter have adopted a 

 liability limited to 10 or 12 10s. per share held, and their members, 

 speaking generally, are obliged to take up one additional share for 

 every 100 of assessed value over the first 300, so that the maximum 

 credit rests on the security of, roughly, the tenth part of the tax- 

 able property of members. It does not appear that any appreciable 

 risk would be involved in giving to a society a maximum credit of 

 five per cent, of the collective worth of its members as returned on 

 the combined authority of the committee and board of supervision. 

 Societies will naturally require a period of notice before resignation 

 of membership may take effect the German Act fixes the minimum 

 period at three months and the maximum at two years; members, 

 though tenants, will not all be simultaneously desirous of resigning; 

 their leases do not all expire at the same time; and they will not 

 be all in debt with their society or all generally insolvent. 



Or another basis might be adopted. When Prussian societies do 

 not furnish a detailed statemant of the assests of members, the 

 Prussian State Bank allots to each such society a maximum credit 

 of from 5 to 15, at its discretion, per head for each member ; 

 and a South German Bank, in estimating the credits allotable to the 

 rural credit societies in business relations with it, assesses the value 

 of each society, in case it should be necessary to recover any vdaims, 

 at the rate of 10 per member. The Prussian Bank does not 

 confine its rule to rural societies : urban societies come within its scope. 

 It will hardly be questioned that English rural societies, even those 

 composed entirely of tenants, offer a sounder security on such a basis 



