The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1. AGRICULTURAL CREDIT BANKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 148, 1 October 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1. AGRICULTURAL CREDIT BANKS.

Co-operation is the watchword of the age. Combinations are secured in almost all commercial enterprises. Combination lias given workers a greater status, and combination of groups of individuals all aiming for the same goal have hajl wonderfully useful effects. In no phase of life is the utility of combination more beneficial than among men tilling the ground, especially where such unionism I has ibeen by way of benefiting small men, protecting them and increasing' their •knowledge and skill. In New Zealand it has long been recognised that for settlement to succeed -the potential settler must have help. This lias been giiven him iby State advances, and many a man 1 owes an excellent position to cheaply loaned money coming from a State Department. Our fine system is unlike any system of help to farmers used' in older, lands, and the methods employed in those countries is more by way of self-help than anything! else. Britain tardily saw the a vantage of inducing small farmers to go on the land, and in 11)07 the Small Holdings Act gave the necessary machinery for. opening up about 80,000 acres of land. The necessity of giving, these small holders the money to work the land became apparent, and the British Government has therefore announced its intention to help in every possible way the I institution of agricultural credit banks. Our London namesake instances the tre--1 mendous advantages that have been de- | rived from the institution of the Raiffessen banuxs, a system that originated in Germany and lias been copied into all continental countries. Hitherto cooperative banks, like other forms of agricultural co-operation, have ' lagged behind in England because ' the ordinary English village lias J not contained enough small holders to I combine. Larger farmers have less to gain Iby combination, andi have more prejudice against it, particularly when the ' size of their farms and their social poIsition varies a good deal, and they are ! touchy and stand-offish about the latter. But even the larger farmers would find co-operative banking to their advantage, j and in Germany tihey are commonly the I leading member® of the Raiffeisen banks. The Raiffeisen Bank, which is the model of most of the co-operative credit societies which we are considering, is an association of neighbors united to borrow a sum of money in order to-,lend it out as cheaply as possible to such, -of themselves as need loans. It also receives savings deposits, from which, indeed, it often derives much, if not all, of the capital which it lends out. It is essential to the Raiffeisen idea that the association should be small, am work only a small district in which everybody knows everybody else . The borrower may only" borrow for specific purposes, e.g., to buy a horse or some poultry, or a machine or a shed-, and this the association enquires carefully into. The members see that each loan is applied to its purpose, and it can be called in at short notice if it is not. This may sound petty business. But in Germany alone there are over ten thousand of these institutions, and the amount lent by thpm on the Continent last year reached 18 millions sterling. The' borrowers—who borrow, it must be remeinibered, without mortgaging anything or giving, any security, except sometimes the guarantee of a fel-low-member—obtain their money on the average as cheaply as 5 per cent.; and not one of all the thousands of little baraks has ever failed yet. This system has been developed in various alternative ways, wit/h. modifications to meet local circumstances; but substantially the aibove is the type of them all. Cooperative credit is one of those things which must be known to. be appreciated, audi do not in the first instance get, known very easily. Raiffeisen founded •his first bank in 1649, but it was not till 1880 that the Germans began widely to take up the idea. In the case of many, if not all, of the European countries which have copied the German model, as also in the' cases of India and Ireland, it has been a Government department which has fostered it. There is ample evidence that Britain intends to take farming seriously. The 'British farmer we are asked to. regard as the type of the Home agriculturalist is usually depicted as a stupid, slow, out-of-date person employed largely in pulling his forelock to tilie lords of creation. It is n little remarkable that British farmers who have Ibeen pushed out of the Old Country by force of circumstances do not exhibit the stupid traits so common to humorous picture journals, and that they are the founders of all colonial settlement. If tihe British faimer were regarded as of the same importance as the man who ma/kes up raw products, he would stay at Home and be the country's greatest strength. And there seems to be a definite movement at the present time to give him a better chance than he has had for hundreds of years. Lacking an Advances to Settlers Act, the credit ibank will help the small man vastly.