'•FORCED- CO-OPEHAllON. 353

In Germany Agricultural Co-operation is up in arms
against the State-endowed Bank, which was specially
created, with a very large capital— £3,750,000 of tax-
payers' money— to " finance " it, lending its aid in the
■shape of advances under market rate. That lastnamed
promise has been kept, as the chief of the great Raiffeisen
Union recently pointed out in Parliament, only " in a
Pickwickian sense." " We have had to pay 7^ per cent. ! "
so he exclaimed. The purely joint stock " Dresdner
Bank " now actually gives the said Union precisely the
same aid on more hberal terms, as a mere matter of busi-
ness. In France, where the very liberally granted Credit
Agricole is administered in a most enhghtened manner
by a peculiarly well fitted chief, advancing pubhc money
plentifully, absolutely free of interest, a representative
speaker, M. de Marcillac, the other day declared at the
annual meeting of the SociHe des Agriculteurs de France,
amid approving cries from his hearers, that the position into
into which dependence upon the State had put societies
had become intolerable, and that other means must
accordingly be found to obtain the money required, on
businesslike, but not in their nature restricting terms.
The same judgment has since been heartily endorsed
by resolutions of great provincial Unions, as for instance
by that of the Perigord and the Limousin.
