TIONS. These are founded for mutual financial aid, and have been wonderfully prosperous in Germany. where they do a business of hundreds of millions of dollars. in 1S49 Herr Schulze (Schulze-Delitzsch) founded a cooperative so ciety to purchase raw material, among thirteen cabinet-makers in Delitzsch, his native town. In the next year he founded the first of his loan asso ciations (Vorschussvcreine), which differed from the earlier banks in that the persons to whom loans could be granted must themselves be mem bers of the association, paying regular monthly contributions. They thus themselves indirectly furnished the security for the credit afforded them. While these loan associations put the lender's in terest foremost, Raiffeisen. another German, born in the Westerwald, organized a ecaiperative bank in 1849 which placed the borrower's interest as the keystone of his system. Both systems have spread over the country. especially Schulze-De litzsch's banks, numbering over a thousand in 1892, with over half a million members and a paid-up capital of nearly $30,000,000. In Italy, at the instigation of Signor Luzzatti, an organi zation of a very similar sort was founded in 1866, at Milan, and has been widely imitated.
As a matter of fact, all these 'people's banks' bear a close resemblance to our American build ing and loan associations (q.v.), whose special and marked development in this country makes the United States one of the pioneer countries and chief homes of this form of cooperation.
BrwounArnr. Holyoake, History of Codpera tion in England (2 vols., London, 1885) ; "111, tory of CoOperation in the United States," a series of essays published in Johns Hopkins Uni versity Studies (Baltimore, 1888) ; Potter, The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain (Lon don, 1891) : Reports of the (English) CoOpera tive Congresses (17 vols., Manchester, 1869 1900) ; Wright, Massachusetts Labor Report (Boston, 1895) ; id., Manual of Distributire Oo operation (Boston, 1881) ; Report of English Royal Commission on Labor reviews cooperation in all European eountries (London. 1886) ; Gil man, Profit Sharing Between Employer and Em ployed (New York, ISSS) ; articles in United States Labor Bulletin See PROFIT-SHARING; BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIA TIONS; COLLECTIVISM.