1908.] Agricultural Credit Societies. 407 



AGRICULTURAL CREDIT SOCIETIES* 



Agricultural credit societies or banks are combinations of 

 small farmers or labourers formed for the purpose of raising- 

 capital to be advanced at a reasonable rate of interest to 

 members requiring temporary loans for the purpose of repro- 

 ductive undertakings. The small holder, the labourer with 

 an allotment, the market gardener, or the small village trades- 

 man may occasionally require a loan to enable him to make 

 purchases on favourable terms of such requirements as live 

 stock, seeds, manures or implements, and it is to meet this 

 want that the establishment of agricultural credit banks 

 has been urged in England. Among the peasant proprietors 

 of the Continent, these co-operative loan societies have proved 

 very successful, and in districts where small cultivators are 

 sufficiently numerous there seems no reason why the methods 

 which have proved successful elsewhere should not be adapted 

 to meet local conditions in England. 



Limited and unlimited Liability. — There is, however, no one 

 method which has been universally adopted abroad, and even 

 as regards broad general principles, there exists the widest 

 diversity. The continental societies may, however, be broadly 

 divided into two classes, those with limited and those with 

 unlimited liability of members. The latter type is perhaps 

 the more largely developed, and it was on this basis that the 

 two main systems of credit, called after their inventors the 

 il Raiffeisen " and the " Schulze-Delitzsch," were first founded. 

 The main features of banks of the "Raiffeisen" type are 

 (1) that no shares are issued, the capital being raised by 

 entrance fees, subscriptions and deposits, and loans bearing 

 a fixed rate of interest ; (2) that the liability of the members 

 is unlimited, every member being jointly and severally re- 

 sponsible for any losses that may be incurred by the society ; 

 (3) that the loans advanced by the societies are for repro- 



* Articles on Agricultural Credit abroad have appeared in previous numbers of 

 this Journal as follows: — "Agricultural Credit Banks," May, 1905, p. 96; " Agri- 

 cultural Credit in France," June, 1905, p. 149; " Agricultural Credit in Hungary," 

 July, 1905, p. 210; "Agricultural Credit in Belgium," August, 1905, p. 279,; 

 "Agricultural Loans in Queensland," September, 1905, p. 375 ; "Agricultural 

 Credit in Germany," March, 1906, p. 725; "Agricultural Credit in Denmark,' 

 May, 1906, p. 118; and "Agricultural Credit Banks in Cape Colony, Natal> 

 Transvaal and Western Australia," February, 1908, p. 689. \ , 



