rther than that. The committee of management are
elected by the general meetings; they decide on all loans, and receive a
salary, plus a commission on the business done. The council of
supervision are also paid, or at least entitled to pay. The great
objects which a bank keeps in view are security and a good return on
capital. It is not confined to a small area, but works for as large and
as varied a constituency as possible. With such a constitution the
Schulze-Delitzsch banks grow big and accumulate a large capital of their
own. On an average each bank has nearly 600 members and lends about
L150,000 per annum, including loans renewed. Losses are sometimes made,
but they are not heavy on the whole. All the profits are divided upon
capital, or put to reserve, except some, usually small, sums given to
charitable or educational purposes. Dividends average about 5%, but have
been known to reach and even exceed 30%.

It may therefore justly be said that for co-operative institutions these
banks smack too much of joint-stockism: they are in fact co-operative
not much more than in the same sense that the Oldham cotton mills, and
other "working-class limiteds," have sometimes been loosely called
co-operative. They seem constituted to make the lender's interest
supreme, but they have, nevertheless, conferred enormous benefits on the
handicraftsmen, small traders, small cultivators and others who borrow
from them. They have put capital within their reach at reasonable rates.

These banks also have their central point. In 1864 the German
Co-operative Societies' Bank was founded to centralize the work of the
local Schulze-Delitzsch banks and to bring the money market within their
reach. It was not itself co-operative, and never confined its business
to the co-operative banks. Beginning in a very small way, by 1903 it had
attained a capital of a million and a half sterling and a yearly
business of L154,000,000, of which L28,000,000 was specifically with
co-operative credit societies. It was then amalgamated with another
banking business, the _Dresdner Bank_, esteemed one of the most
important and successful in Germany.

Thus these two types of credit co-operation agree in being founded on
unlimited liability, but speaking broadly they are contrasted in that
the Schulze-Delitzsch banks work primarily, though by no means solely,
among townsmen, are based on share capital, work for profit, which they
divide on shares, are conducted