Agricultural Co-operation in Bavaria. 



37 



doubtless grow year by year, provided that no hitch occurs 

 in any of the arrangements that have been made, and, most 

 important of all, that the quality of the butter is kept up. 



The Foreign Office have also received a report from Mr. H- 

 Cooke, Bricish Commercial Agent in Russia, to the effect that 

 a trial shipment made by a group of agriculturists in the 

 Governments of Grodno and Vilna with a view to establish- 

 ing a direct delivery of Lithuanian butter to England has 

 not met with success, owing to the poor quality of the pro- 

 duct. Mr. Cooke states, however, that considerable attention 

 is paid at the present time to the matter of the improvement 

 of the Russian butter industry, and that this object is being 

 furthered especially by the Imperial Moscow Agricultural 

 Society. He himself has had more inquiries with reference 

 to Russian exporters and shippers of butter, game, and eggs 

 than on any other subject. 



Agricultural Co-operation in Bavaria. 



Co-operation appears, from a report lately issued by the 

 Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, to have been carried to a 

 fuller development amongst agriculturists in Bavaria than in 

 perhaps any other part of Germany, owing to the large 

 number of small proprietors ; and at the present time the 

 principle of co-operation is stated to have been applied to all 

 branches of Bavarian agriculture. The earliest development 

 was in the direction of obtaining loans for the small farmer 

 at a low rate of interest, by the establishment in 1877 

 of the first loan bank on the well-known Raiffeisen 

 principle. The number of these banks gradually in- 

 creased, and in the seventeen years up to 1894 they 

 amounted to nearly 1,000, but in the succeeding five years 

 — 1894 to 1899 — their formation proceeded at a much more 

 rapid rate, and in 1899 there were no less than 2,329 

 banks with 161,276 members. In 1898 their total trans- 

 actions amounted to ^10,859,900, the loans granted to 

 members during the year to ^1,897,100, and loans outstand- 



