RAIFFEISEN 119 



suckers. The poor peasantry have long lain helpless 

 in their grasp, suffering in mute despair the process 

 of gradual extinction. My inquiries into the system 

 of small holdings in those regions have brought me 

 into personal contact with many of the most repre- 

 sentative inhabitants — heads of agricultural depart- 

 ments, judges, parsons, peasants — and from one and 

 all, here, there and everywhere, have I heard the self- 

 same, ever-repeated, bitter complaint that the villages 

 are being sucked absolutely dry by the "Jews." Usury 

 laws, police regulations, warnings and monitions have 

 all been tried as a remedy, and tried in vain.' * 



' It was this miserable district, where every little 

 wretched cottage and tumble-down house was mort- 

 gaged, and most of the peasants' cattle belonged to 

 the Jews, that was sorely visited by the famine of 

 1846-47, and it was the misery of the people that 

 moved Raiflfeisen to action. Such were the conditions 

 of the country and of the people, and no more un- 

 promising field could have been selected. And the 

 conditions of the problem were no less difficult — viz., 

 to supply within, confidence, courage, the spirit of 

 thrift, of self-help and of mutual help through asso- 

 ciation to a peasantry so enfeebled, suspicious and 

 dispirited, and to inspire without such confidence and 

 credit that, upon the guarantee of such a peasantry, 

 external capital should be attracted in sufficient 

 quantities to free the peasants from debt, and to 

 supply them with funds for maintenance and pro- 

 duction. This is the problem. Such are the conditions 

 which Raiflfeisen had before him ; and in his solution 

 of it in its most unpromising form he has solved the 

 problem so successfully that the system is now 

 developing with immense rapidity, so that the end 

 of the next decade may easily see at least 5,000 rural 

 banks of this class in full operation. For India the 

 solution of the problem presents an absorbing interest, 



* 'People's Banks; by H. W. Wolff. 



