48 GERMANY 



far decreased the available funds of the farmers 

 that it was difficult enough for many of them 

 to carry on their ordinary operations in their 

 ordinary way, year by year, without embarking 

 on those wider undertakings or those more 

 costly methods which agricultural science was 

 opening out to them. In these conditions it 

 often enough became a matter of urgent im- 

 portance to the farmer that he should raise a 

 loan which would enable him to carry on until 

 he obtained a return from his crops. Such a 

 loan might make all the difference between 

 comparative success and absolute failure. But 

 while the ordinary banks were ready enough to 

 advance money to a landowner who could give 

 them a mortgage on his estates, they were 

 reluctant to make advances to individual farmers 

 on nothing but their personal security, and their 

 reluctance increased in exact proportion to the 

 growing needs of those who wished to borrow. 



The way out of the difficulty was found by a 

 resort to the co-operative credit bank system, 

 under which the joint credit of the whole of 

 the members of an association is used for the 

 purpose of borrowing money. The savings and 

 credit banks of this type founded by Schulze- 

 Delitzsch, at the end of the forties, aimed at 

 promoting the interests of the labouring, artisan, 



