IO6 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT BANKS 



conditions there is hope for the development of co- 

 operative credit. 



Regarding persons of African descent, I do not speak 

 with any first-hand knowledge. In their own continent 

 I fancy Africans are usually accustomed to a communal 

 frame of society and also prefer to work in gangs, each 

 having its own leader: they, therefore, possess some of 

 the requirements of co-operation. But at their present 

 stage of development most of them must be hardly fitted 

 for the working of self-governing societies such as we 

 are accustomed to in Europe, and with modifications in 

 India. Some of you may be interested in knowing how 

 the Roman Catholic Church met the difficulty among the 

 aborigines of the Chota Nagpur division in India. The 

 information is to be found on p. 14 of the Report of the 

 Fifth Annual Conference of Indian Registrars. Even in 

 the West Indies people of African descent are obviously 

 not as good material for co-operative credit as East 

 Indians. They require a strong spur to make them 

 regular workers : but they can respond to it, as in 

 Barbados, where it is provided by pressure on the soil. 

 Elsewhere it may be hoped that the example of the East 

 Indians, and the chances now offered by the policy of 

 land settlement, will give the needed stimulus. 



Of late years two closely connected questions of land 

 settlement and co-operative agricultural credit have been 

 much discussed in the West Indies. Fortunately, dis- 

 cussion has now ripened into action. As regards both 

 matters, St. Vincent has taken the lead among the 

 islands. In 1911 it started its first agricultural credit 

 society. Last year it passed an Ordinance for " regis- 

 tration, encouragement, and assistance of agricultural 

 credit societies under the ' Raiffeisen System.' ' The 

 Raiffeisen model has been closely followed even in the 

 prominence given to religion. Government, I think 

 wisely, has reserved strong powers of inspection and 

 control. Where the treasurer is not a minister of religion 

 or a justice of the peace, he must be " some respectable 

 and responsible person approved by the Governor." The 

 latter can instruct a public auditor to investigate and 

 report to him regarding the organization and adminis- 



