430 PROVISION or BORROWING FACILITIES. 



cannot be a fair division of work between officials and 

 unofficials, then clearly it is too advanced and should be 

 postponed until unofficial co-operators are fit to perform 

 their proper share of the task. 



I will now endeavour to point out by actual illustration how we 

 have endeavoured to apply these principles in the Central Provinces. 

 In the first place, we have had the greatest difficulties to encounter 

 in the matter of the simple accounts which credit societies must either 

 keep or have kept for them. When we first started rural organization 

 work in 1901 early Registrars were under the impression that we 

 should have no great trouble in finding at least one member of each 

 society who could and would keep the accounts satisfactorily. The 

 secretary of a society was to be not only the trusted accountant 

 upon whom the Registrar would depend for his annual returns, but 

 he was also to be the " guide, philosopher, and friend " of the 

 members. The Government Auditor would, it was assumed, go 

 round and audit a very nicely prepared set of accounts. As accounts 

 were (and are still) very simple it was expected that one auditor 

 would be able to deal with a very large number of societies. These 

 were the lines we started work on in 1904. In that year I started a 

 few societies in the Hoshangabad District (they were the first in the 

 Provinces), and I remember that when SIR J. O. MILLER saw them he 

 said they were not co-operative societies at all. But, such as they were, 

 they were the only ones I could get the people to start ; and although 

 they were clumsy little birds they prospered and have now grown 

 healthy co-operative wings. It must be remembered, in this connec- 

 tion, that Act 10 of 1904 provided for free Government audit and that 

 many people thought that every Deputy Commissioner ought to be 

 the Registrar of his district. I am not going to dwell upon initial 

 mistakes, especially as I made a good number of them myself; still 

 less am I going to point out how clever we, who have benefited by 

 those mistakes, have been in making natural progress. But for the 

 efforts of a succession of able men, who had to carry on the work of 

 the Registrar, in addition to other heavy duties, the movement in 

 the Central Provinces and Berar would not be so far advanced' as it 

 is to-day when it is still on the threshold of its existence. The idea 

 that capable Secretaries would be easily and frequently found was 



