CHAPTER IX 

 HUNGARY 



ONE of the principal causes for that un- 

 doubted improvement which has been 

 brought about of late years in the position of 

 the individual agriculturists of Hungary is to be 

 found in the organization there of an effective 

 system of agricultural credit. 



The largest landowners were the first to resort 

 (as they did in the sixties) to the formation of 

 a co-operative credit bank, by means of which 

 they hoped to prevent the breaking up of the 

 great estates ; and in the seventies the middle- 

 class landowners followed their example, estab- 

 lishing another bank, in their own particular 

 interests. But neither of those institutions met 

 the case of the peasant farmer, whose position 

 was, perhaps, worse than that of either of the 

 classes above him. 



To understand the exact nature of the situa- 

 tion in which the peasant farmer of Hungary 

 found himself, one must go back to the year 



mi 



