Miscellaneous. 



280 



[March, 1909. 



ed entirely of deposits, but the fact 

 that they had the great idea of co- 

 operative credit behind them made the 

 investment of money in them safe. In 

 fact, the ordinary peasant invested his 

 money, his savings in the Agricultural 

 Societies with just as much confidence 

 as he would invest them in Government 

 securities, and there was just as much 

 reason for that confidence, for ex- 

 perience showed that he never lost his 

 money. The money which was obtain- 

 ed in this way was lent out in various 

 directions, and the average amount of 

 the interest which was charged for it 

 was from four to five per cent. In the 

 bulk of cases the security on whicli 

 the money was lent consisted simply of 

 a personal pledge, but one or two of a 

 man's friends stood security for him, 

 undertaking to meet his obligations if 

 he did not do so himself. Tli6 result was 

 of course that the man always had close 

 to his side one or two men who were 

 keenly interested in seeing that he spent 

 the money productively, and they really 

 acted as the watchdogs of the society. 



The Moral Aspect. 

 But there was one feature of the 

 German system which had not deliber- 

 ately been introduced into the country 

 at present. Raffeisen laid it down that 

 whatever security a man offered, even if 

 he were millionaire, he should not be 

 admitted to a Society unless he was a 

 decent man. So that to be a member of 

 a Raffeisen Society was a testimony of 

 thoroughly good character, Raffeisen 

 always worked through the religious 

 sense, and the first article in the creed of 

 his societies was that their object was 

 the improvement of the situation of the 

 members— both material and moral. In 

 the Urban Societies Schulze Delitzche 

 laid down the principle that every 

 member must purchase a share in the 

 society, but the share could be paid for 

 gradually, and the minimum was not 

 a high figure. As one would expect the 

 bulk of the deposits in the urban societies 

 consisted of small savings, and it was 

 ■surprising as an indication of their 

 security to find how small was the in- 

 terest they paid on those savings— from 

 3 to 3i per cent. He found that the 

 average rate of interest on which the 

 German societies lent money out was a 

 little over five per cent. In coming to 

 the consideration of co-operative credit 

 societies in this land itself it was wise to 

 realise the difference between the con- 

 ditions here and in Germany and to re- 

 member that the structure of societies 

 here could not be exactly identical with 

 their structure in European countries. 

 But what would impress one in com- 

 paring the conditions was that India, 



from the very nature of its circum- 

 stances, ought to be a far more fertile 

 field for these societies than European 

 countries. The great bulk of the in- 

 habitants of India consisted of just that 

 class of men amongst whom the societies 

 had been successful in Europe. In 

 Europe, after all, although there were a 

 large number of peasant proprietors 

 they did not constitute the most im- 

 portant section of the population, but 

 India was a land of peasant proprietors, 

 When one dealt with them one dealt 

 with two-thirds of the population. The 

 s.vstem of co-operative credit societies in 

 India was still on a tiny scale, but 

 although it was in its infancy, looking at 

 the results even of the last twelve 

 months, it had a future full of possi- 

 bilities and full of hope. 



The Supreme Facts. 



In his sixth lecture, Professor Lees- 

 Smith said he proposed to discuss the 

 effects of tariff upon the trade of the 

 nation and praticularly upon the trade 

 of India. He wished first of all to warn 

 them that it would be a very inadequate 

 and narrow discussion of the subject 

 which treated it by itself. The tariff 

 system of a nation had to be treated 

 as a part of its whole economic policy, 

 and, therefore, before coming to the 

 actual subject of preferential Tariffs and 

 Swadeshism, he would try to indicate 

 the part which the Tariff must play in 

 the task which as a nation they had in 

 front of them. He must, therefore, 

 begin by a wide survey of the economic 

 conditions of the land, and give some 

 general account of the economic problems 

 and the economic difficulties with which 

 they had to contend. He warned them 

 that on this account he would not 

 reach the question of tariffs in that 

 lecture at all. The supreme fact ajbout 

 the economic condition of the land, as 

 he had previously stated, was that two- 

 thirds to three-fourths of the popula- 

 tion were engaged in one single industry 

 — that of agriculture. It was difficult 

 for the ordinary observer in England to 

 recognise, even when he was told the 

 fact, that the bulk of their inhabitants 

 lived in over half a million villages, each 

 of them containing less than five 

 thousand inhabitants scattered over 

 an area of the earth's surface as large 

 as Europe, excepting Russia. One heard 

 of the chaugelessness of the E 1st, but 

 the phrase did not refer to the city 

 populations of India, but to the 'inhabi- 

 tants of the distant villages. It was 

 worth while to point out that although 

 it might be true that one wave of ad- 

 ministration after another had broken 

 over those distant villages, and that 



