It is obvious that neither large scale capitalist industry nor consumers, cooperation is favourable for the development of urban cooperative banks. The people whom Schulze-Delitzsch desired to help were townsmen, especially the small craftsmen working on their own account, the joiners, shoemakers and so forth; and his ideal was to do this by stimulating their thrift. The idea was -to gather together into a society a number of persons, each individually weak economically, but whose combined capital, savings, and deposits would be sufficient to provide the credit upon which the bank might borrow money and lend it to its members. The membership of such an urban bank is always found to consist mainly of small craftsmen, shopkeepers, and small professional men. It follows that this kind of cooperative credit will only establish itself where the small independent hand worker still exists or where the small shopkeeper has an instinct for cooperation. But these conditions are not ful- filled in many European countries. Hence the success of urban cooperative credit has not been nearly so widespread as that of some other forms of cooperation. In Germany itself the movement was a great success during the first 50 years of its. existence, but during 1910-21 it had not made much progress. Thus between 1859 and 1905 the number of Schulze-Delitzsch banks rose from 80 with a jnembership of just under 19,000 to about 1,000 with a membership of about 590,000: in 1921 the number of Schulze-Delitzsch credit societies organized in the general union remained about 1,000 with a membership of 600,000. Outside Germany the urban bank has established itself mainly in Italy, though it also exists on a small scale in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Its greatest success has been in Italy, where Signor Luzzatti was able to adapt the Schulze-Delitzsch model to the requirements of his own countrymen. As in Germany, so in Italy, the statistics of recent years pointed in 1921 to a very considerable slowing down in the growth of the move- ment. It should also be remarked that there is a tendency for the urban popular banks if they are financially successful, to lose their original object and function, i.e. they tend to neglect the small man for the big man, though there is probably some truth in the con- tention that this often results from the fact that the bank itself has helped its members to change from small men to big men.
The movement for rural cooperative credit associations has not been subject to the same limitations as the urban movement. In many Continental countries the peasant or small farmer exists in large numbers, and more often than not they are burdened by debt contracted with money lenders on usurious terms. In all these countries the scope for cooperative associations for providing credit to the small agriculturist is very great, and there has in fact been a considerable extension and development of this kind of co- operation. It has usually accompanied a development of other forms of agricultural cooperation, but one of the most curious characteristics of rural cooperative credit is that its development has been most erratic. Thus in Germany the whole of agricultural cooperation has developed from the Raiffeisen rural banks, and the credit associations remain the pivot of the whole movement. But at the other end of the scale are Denmark and Ireland. In no country in the world has agricultural cooperation been more successful than in Denmark, yet in 1921 rural credit societies or banks scarcely existed there. The growth of the Danish agricultural movement was singularly spontaneous, while Irish agricultural cooperation has been the result of intensive and prolonged propaganda. Yet the same fact with regard to cooperative credit is observable in Ireland : in some districts the rural credit societies have performed useful functions, but, taking the country as a whole, they have declined while agricultural cooperation has made great progress; this is shown by the fact that the number of agricultural credit societies declined from 267 in 1908 to 136 in 1920, while the number of agricultural societies and creameries rose from 458 in 1908 to 705 in 1918.
Between Germany at one end of the scale and Denmark and Sweden at the other, the different countries of Europe show great differences in the degree and manner in which they have accepted the rural credit movement. In Italy, Hungary, Finland and France, for instance, rural cooperative credit societies or banks have all proved successful, but as soon as the organization of the movement is investigated in the four countries, marked differences of development become apparent. One of the most important of these differences is the degree in which the movement does or does not rely upon State aid. Thus the Finnish banks are essentially voluntary associations which rely for their working capital mainly upon the Rural Banks' Central Credit Institute, while this central institute obtains its working capital very largely from Government loans. The Hungarian local credit societies in 1912 numbered 2,500 with a membership of between 600,000 and 700,000, and their capital voluntarily subscribed amounted to about 3,000,000, and deposits to about 8,000,000. For many years they relied in no way upon Government aid, but after the beginning of the century they received loans from a central credit organization financed almost entirely by the State. But it is in France that the reliance of agricultural credit upon the State is most marked. The French rural credit societies are grouped under a district bank to which a society wanting a loan applies; the district bank forwards the application through the Prefet to the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry, if it approves, makes the loan to the district bank. The system is
therefore little more than a system of State aid to agriculture and has scarcely any of the characteristics of voluntary cooperation.
Agricultural Cooperation. Voluntary association among farmers, peasants, or agriculturists can and does take place for many different objects. In addition to the rural cooperative bank or credit society, already dealt with, the chief forms of agricultural cooperative organization may be classified as follows: (i) societies or associations for cooperative supply of the instruments and means of production; (2) societies or associations for cooperative production, e.g. creameries, dairies; (3) societies or associations for cooperative marketing; (4) societies or associations having a variety of miscellaneous cooperative objects, e.g. co- operative insurance. It should be noted, however, that there is no rigid separation of function in the societies actually existing: a single society may and often does perform two distinct functions; it may for instance, as in the case of a dairy, perform both the function of production and that of marketing.
There was a great and widespread development of agricultural cooperation in Europe, and indeed throughout the world, during 1905-20. Unlike consumers' cooperation, however, there was very little uniformity in the development of agricultural co- operation in the various nations. As was pointed out above, in one country the whole of agricultural cooperation will centre in the organization of agricultural cooperative credit, while in another country, like Denmark, a no less highly developed system of agricultural cooperation will exist with little or no organization of cooperative credit. But this lack of uniformity is not confined to agricultural banking; it will be found that in one country agricultural cooperation has developed principally along the lines of cooperative supply, in another of cooperative production, and in another of cooperative marketing. It is not possible, therefore, to give a general account of the progress of agricultural cooperation which would be applicable to every country in which it has proved successful; all that is possible is to show the range of its development and to give one or two typical examples.
In 1907 a fully developed agricultural cooperative system existed already in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Italy, and Belgium, and a real beginning had been made in Ireland. Up to the outbreak of the Worla War the old established systems continued to maintain themselves, but such statistics as are available seem to indicate that agricultural cooperation was more adversely affected by the war than the consumers' movements. But the most notable feature of the decade 1910-20 was the spread of agricultural coopera- tion and its progress in countries where before it was non-existent or only feebly established. The best examples of this development are to be found in the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Siberia.
Agricultural cooperation in the United Kingdom nowhere developed spontaneously. Its greatest successes have been obtained in Ireland, where the whole movement was created by the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, founded in 1894. Thanks to the educational work of this organization a considerable number of societies for supply, production, and marketing were formed on the model of Danish societies. The most successful societies were supply societies, dairies or creameries, and egg and poultry societies. By 1908 there were 292 creameries and 1 66 supply societies. In the next decade there was continuous progress, and by 1920 there were 334 creameries and 371 supply societies. The membership of the creameries rose from 42,404 in 1908 to 50,052 in 1917, and the turn-over from 1,700,000 in 1908 to 5,200,000 in 1917, while the membership and turnover of the supply societies rose from 12,999 and 87,000 in 1908 to 31,200 and 691,000 in 1917. These figures indicate the trend of development in Irish agricultural cooperation. It contains two main features. The creameries are productive societies mainly occupied in the cooperative manufacture of dairy products, principally butter and cheese. In the early years of the movement cooperative production was for the most part confined to butter, but the war adversely affected the butter trade, and from 1914 to 1918 there was a big fall in the quantity of butter and a big rise in the quantity of cheese manufactured. The creameries and the Irish Cooperative Agency Society, which is a federation of creameries, also perform the function of cooperative marketing for their members. In recent years the development of the productive side of the movement in the creameries has slackened, and after 1919 conditions in Ireland led to great destruction of property and heavy losses for the creameries. The second feature of Irish co-operation is the rapid development in recent years of the " Agricultural Societies," which are supply societies providing the farmer with every kind of requirement at wholesale prices. They have had
