RAPACITY OF THE USURER IN GERMANY 99 



not for himself, but for his creditor, so that the French 

 peasant's motto might be Virgil's, ' Sic vos non vobis 

 fertis aratra boves.' " 



' In Germany the picture is even more detailed and 

 pitiful. For want of credit institutions over the greater 

 part of the country, usury is almost universal, and 

 " from its pitiless exploitation of the smaller agricul- 

 turists, it is considered as a menacing social danger." 

 The peasant is "unable to take count of his pecuniary 

 situation "; he keeps no books, and cannot judge of the 

 pecuniary result of a transaction, whether of a venture 

 in cultivation or of a loan from a money-lender. The 

 result is that the rural classes " fall into the clutches of 

 men who, under colour of helping them, desire nothing 

 save their ruin for the profit of the lender himself." 

 These are represented as lying in wait for misfortune, 

 and are as eager as vultures when there is a chance of 

 prey. The story of their action, whether in loans of 

 money, cattle, or goods, is everywhere the same, and 

 similar to that of France : temptations, false accounts, 

 the law-courts, miserable cattle and bad goods at 

 maximum prices — all these are general. It was the 

 terrible misery of the peasants as regards usury, and 

 the " frightful and shameless " action of the usurers, 

 that led Schulze Delitzsch and Raiffeisen to the idea 

 of popular banks or credit unions, the latter, in fact, 

 regarding the usury question as the most important 

 of the then social problems. The latter, in his first 

 burgomastership, found his charge (Flammersfeld) a 

 scene of poverty and usury. The " cultivators " seldom 

 had cattle of their own, but borrowed them from 

 dealers whose terms they were forced to accept on 

 penalty of losing their cattle, and the dealer was thus 

 able to extort " the whole value of the worth of the 

 cattle, while the misery of the peasant increased yet 

 more and more." Elsewhere the money-lender was so 

 powerful that the produce was often handed over bodily 

 to him on his own terms ; he then — again on his own 



7—2 



