by paid directors, and confer their
benefits not on the very poorest but rather, as their own friends say,
on the middle classes: the Raiffeisen banks are designed for the
peasantry, are not based upon share capital, neither divide, nor work
for, profit, are conducted by unpaid directors, and confer their
benefits especially on the very poor. The Schulze-Delitzsch type is
strong in self-help, but tends to commercialism as it grows; the other
needs the help of the well-to-do to back up the self-help of the poor,
but it tends to altruism and the union of classes.

The world has 30,000 co-operative credit societies, not counting
building societies; and though they are organized in many groups,
especially in their native Germany, for local reasons, or because of
some modification, or some compromise between the two systems, the two
types really include them all. There is, however, a strong tendency to
introduce limited liability into various offshoots of the one type and
the other; even into the orthodox Schulze-Delitzsch banks themselves,
when they grow big. From Germany co-operative banks have spread into
almost all European countries--even at last to Ireland and England--and
to America and Asia. In Germany there are some fifteen thousand local,
and no less than sixty central, co-operative credit associations, which
lend out L180,000,000 a year including renewals. In Italy, Austria and
Hungary they are also strong. In 1896 it was estimated that L150,000,000
a year must be very well within the total amount lent by money
co-operation on the continent of Europe; eight years later it could not
well fall short of L250,000,000, and the amount keeps constantly
increasing. Of this total only a small percentage represents loans by
banks of the Raiffeisen type, which, though very numerous, often lend
only a few hundred pounds each in the year.

Great controversy has prevailed as to the state subsidies given to
co-operative credit. While governments are sometimes rather inclined to
hinder co-operative distribution, they have shown a marked tendency to
foster, whether for political or economic reasons, co-operative credit.
The Prussian government in response to popular demand, vigorously
supported by the agricultural interest, has founded and endowed with
L2,500,000 of public money, the Central Co-operative Bank, whose object
is to bring capital within the reach of the various groups of
co-operative banks. The Schulze-Delitzsch Unio