COOPERATIVE BANKS IN GERMANY. 423 



upon the business is only five per cent., and that amount in 

 cludes a sum sufficient to pay the interest upon the capital. 



In Germany, cooperative banks were established some twenty 

 years ago, which are said to have proved a great blessing to 

 the laboring classes. The capital of these banks consists of 

 funds known as active and reserve. The first is derived from 

 the monthly or annual contributions of members; the latter is 

 made up of admission fees, and from retaining a percentage of 

 the profits in the bank, to be distributed in case of dissolution. 

 Deposits and loans are made, and these, with the active fund, 

 constitute the working capital. No interest is paid on contri 

 butions, but members derive a dividend from the general prof 

 its, averaging some fifteen per cent, per annum, and are allowed 

 advances at a low rate of interest, to the amount of their stock, 

 and larger sums, by giving security to other members. The 

 aggregate business of these banks in 1867 was $13,000,000, and 

 the proportion of losses was but one quarter of one per cent., 

 which is creditable alike to the administrative ability of the 

 officers, and the honesty and integrity of its members. 



Wise men ask, when they see an acorn before them, does it 

 contain an oak? And, judging from the small beginning and 

 successful growth of these societies, one could not but infer 

 that they contain the germ of true prosperity and happiness. 

 The progress has been striking. It took twenty years for co 

 operative societies to accumulate the first five million, and only 

 five to accumulate the next. The entire capital of England, at 

 the present time, is about $40,000,000,000, and the profits 

 thirty to forty million, while the profits of cooperative societies 

 are nearly four million, or thirty per cent, on the capital em 

 ployed. The &quot;California Agriculturist&quot; says: &quot;With the glori 

 ous success of our mother country before us, it seems that the 

 working men of the west and the farmers might combine, and 

 by putting the shares at $5 to f 10 each, so that all could take 

 part, in a short time could have a substantial cooperative store 

 and manufactory in every town of a thousand inhabitants in the 

 west, and by such a course would dispense with the necessity 

 of shipping our produce to eastern consumers, and paying 

 transportation companies three to four times as much for ship 

 ping as the producer gets for raising. When such a movement 

 is organized, there will be no more legislation needed on rail- 



