WORKING CREDIT FOR FARMERS. 253 



" maximum of responsibility " which Sir Robert Morier 

 likewise commends as ruling principles of these banks. 

 And, pace Lord Denman, Sir R. Morier, who had seen 

 co-operative banks at work in Germany, is likely to have 

 known what he was writing about. 



The aim, then, which these little banks set themselves, 

 and which they have very successfully attained in tens of 

 thousands of cases, with the best of results, is : to serve as 

 a lending institution within easy reach of even the smallest 

 cultivator, and open to the poorest, levying no tax whatever 

 upon his pocket on joining, which joining is conditional 

 upon his being known to his neighbours and fellow- members 

 as being honest and trustworthy — in order, with the 

 help of money to be obtained, as far as possible, from local 

 deposits, and also by loans made to it direct, or to be 

 secured by the intervention of a Central Bank (being a union 

 of local banks), to deal out credit to its members, and to 

 them only, through their own neighbours, men of the 

 borrower's own class, who speak his own language and 

 understand his position, for any approved purpose promis- 

 ing to more than repay the outlay by production or economy, 

 in fully sufficient amount for such purpose, and for as long 

 as the work undertaken may require to reproduce the loan 

 — the credit to be given at cost price, only so as to yield a 

 small surplus, out of which gradually a common fund is 

 to be raised up, indivisible among members, belonging only 

 to the bank as a whole, designed to unite members perman- 

 ently by a bond of common interest and eventually to 

 replace borrowed capital. 



It would be a fatal mistake among these objects to lose 

 sight of the promotion of thirft and to restrict the services 

 of the society only to lending. For, in the first place, lend- 

 ing is impossible without the collection of funds, for which 

 local deposits supply the best source, as not only fixing 

 surplus income for fructifying employment in the district 

 in which it was raised, and at the same time constituting 

 the cheapest and best " lying " money, but also because 

 the inculcation and propagation of principles of thrift is 

 one of the chief objects of the institution, which is to 



