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upset the scheme, because he wanted to train people to 
business habits, to calculate what the money was worth and 
would bring them, and getting money for nothing, or for lower 
than the market rate, spoiled that effect. The “third thing is 
that you must use State aid simply as a means of teaching 
people self-help and self-reliance. That is what the Indian 
registrars have done to a wonderful extent. They are State 
servants, but they are outside the political service, and they 
try to keep the political business of the Government out of the 
matter as much as possible. They impress upon the people 
who are forming the banks: ‘‘ You must learn to manage 
things yourselves, to practise self-reliance and self-help.”’ If 
those three points are kept in view, I think co-operative 
credit, which I hope will develop into co-operation in agri- 
culture generally, may render considerable service in tropical 
countries. I do not know the tropical countries myself, but 
I have had correspondence with authorities in various parts of 
the globe, and from what they have written to me I have very 
great confidence that co-operative credit, which has proved 
such a source of education, of health and well-being in Europe 
and in India, will also have the same effects elsewhere. under 
the tropical sun. 
Mr. J. Petrts (Low-Country Products Association, Ceylon): 
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen—In the absence of Mr. Lyne, 
the Director of Agriculture in Ceylon, who has shown much 
interest in this movement for co-operative societies in the 
island, and who would have been able to speak with authority 
on the subject, I have been asked to say a few words regarding 
our experience in connection with co-operative credit societies, 
and drawing attention to some of the difficulties we have met 
with. 
You must remember that in Ceylon, and in India generally, 
agriculture was co-operative. That is to say, agriculture was 
carried on in the village by the villagers under a system of 
co-operation. But there was no money passing in those days, 
or not much at any rate. The people who co-operated in 
agriculture got their share in the produce. Well, that system 
worked very well indeed, but with the introduction of Western 
ideas it was broken up, and in place of it the system of dealing 
in money arose, and this has led to a number of difficulties. 
Mainly the difficulty has been that gradually the people, having 
to rely on their own resources for cultivation, and sometimes 
meeting with bad years, have fallen into debt, ‘and got into the 
hands of usurers. So the problem they had to face was that 
they had to pay a very high interest on their loans, and gradu- 
ally their lands passed into the hands of usurers. Well, id think 
