PEOPLE'S BANKS in 



in regard both to industry and to agriculture. 

 This latter principle was especially enforced at 

 a national congress of savings banks held at 

 Florence in 1886, following on which fresh 

 legislation was adopted in 1888, reorganizing 

 the system on which the savings banks had been 

 established, and granting them wider powers in 

 the way both of assisting agricultural associations, 

 by giving them credit, and of making grants for 

 beneficent purposes or works of public utility. 



Meanwhile a scheme for the formation in 

 Italy of People's Banks on the Schulze-Delitzsch 

 model had been actively propagated by Signor 

 Luigi Luzzatti, and a start was made in 1864 

 with a bank of this description at Montelupo 

 Florentino, others following at Zodi, Cremona, 

 Milan, and elsewhere. But the People's Banks 

 thus set up in Italy differed from those in 

 Germany in so far as related to the principle 

 of the unlimited liability of the members, it 

 being feared that this principle, which answered 

 well in Germany, would not be acceptable in 

 Italy. In 1876 an Association of People's Banks 

 was formed, and in the following year there was 

 a first congress at Milan; but the greatest degree 

 of progress in the general scheme for bringing 

 credit within the reach of the agricultural dis- 

 tricts was not made until 1888, when there was 



