APPENDIX. 



Productive Societies. 



609 



tScottish Wholesale, 1896. 



Number 



of 

 Societies 



England and Wales, 1896. 

 1897. 



Scotland, 1896 



1897 



Ireland, 1896 



1897 



♦English Wholesale, 1896. . 



261 

 274 



Number 

 of Em- 

 ploy <5s. 



5,932 

 6,012 

 1,378 

 1,529 

 165 

 181 

 5,634 

 6,809 

 3,403 

 3,927 



Capital 



Em- 

 ployed. 



39,187 

 639,137 

 695,147 

 351,303 

 366,173 



Trade 

 during 

 Year. 



£ 



1,961,896 



2,211,904 



411,125 



475,987 



252,927 



276,496 



1,149,390 



1,385,085 



720,743 



1,108,934 



16,512 2,181,944 4,496,081 228,193 4,855 

 18,458 2,324,445 5,458,406 256,044 11,052 



£ 

 103,715 

 106,036 

 48,272 

 55,362 

 4,602 

 4,540 

 35,666 

 34,421 



55^685 



97 



952 



3,716 



5,192 



653 



♦Twelve productive departments. 



fEleven productive departments. 



In Continental Europe the greatest development of cooperation has been in 

 the direction of credit and loan associations — "People's Banks," These had 

 their origin in Germany, but have spread all over continential Europe. There 

 are two forms of these banks, known from the names of their originators, as the 

 Schulze-Delitzsch and the Raiffeisen banks. The latter are the more altrustic 

 in spirit and the most widely extended. The main principle of nearly all these 

 banks is the unlimited liability of every member of an association for all debts 

 of the association. With this security the banks are enabled to borrow money 

 very cheaply, to be loaned to their members, with only sufficient profit to pay 

 expenses upon the most economical scale. There are also, of course, the pro- 

 ceeds of the stock taken up by the members, and the deposits. I do not find, 

 where I write, any late statistics of the business done by these banks, but in 

 the aggregate they amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and 

 form altogether the most imposing display of the power of cooperation in busi- 

 ness affairs. 



Other forms of cooperation are the trade unions and other friendly societies 

 in the matter of life and health insurance, fire insurance societies, building and 

 loan societies, and profit sharing. Taken together, the amount of cooperative 

 business done in the world is astounding to those who first come to the study of 

 it. It has been demonstrated many times over that the aggregate savings of the 

 poor are far in excess of the aggregate capital of the rich, and that there is 

 quite as much capacity for the wise employment of capital, and its profitable 

 direction, among the poor as among the rich. The poor, therefore, having in 

 the aggregate more capital and more business ability than the rich, as well as 

 enormously greater physical strength, have no need to fear the encroachments 

 of concentrated capital. They need only to cooperate to fully protect them- 

 selves. 



39 



