PLUNDERING THE FARMERS 209 



of interest was one franc per month for every 

 ten francs — say 120 per cent. So profitable was 

 the business that people became shopkeepers in 

 the towns for the express purpose of lending 

 money to customers, not caring whether the shop 

 itself paid or not. The poor farmer might be 

 ruined, but that was, for them, a mere matter 

 of detail. 



The innkeeper in the villages was not a 

 money-lender. He preferred to leave that 

 branch of the business of plunder to the trader 

 in the towns, and to take up one which he 

 could work to his own particular advantage. 

 Most of the innkeepers in Servia are Greeks, 

 and the Servian Jew who lends money has the 

 reputation of being a man of modest pretensions 

 compared with the Servian Greek who doesn't. 

 In any case the village innkeepers had a way of 

 inducing the farmers to sell their produce to 

 them, instead of going to market with it, and the 

 sale was often effected in this way at a price 

 which represented a very small profit indeed for 

 the man who had produced the crop, and a large 

 profit for the innkeeper who assumed the role 

 of middleman. 



What the Servian farmer stood especially in 

 need of, therefore (though there were other things 

 besides), was to be rescued from the clutches 



p 



