This condition of affairs, in addition to many other common interests, led to the federation of the Schulze-Delitzsch societies into larger groups, and these in turn into state and national associations, through which surplus funds in one could be made to serve the needs of others inadequately supplied, and through which all the societies could be brought into efficient connection with the general money market of the country. For a number of years these federated societies conducted a large central institution, first in Frankfurt and afterwards in Berlin, known as the Deutsche Genossenschaftsbank. In 1904, however, this institution was absorbed by the Dresdener Bank, one of the eight great private banking corporations of Germany, which now serves as the central agency for all these societies. The membership of these associations is not restricted to any class of persons, and they actually include a very large number of small farmers. An inquiry made in 1885 showed that in 545 of them, with a total membership of 270,808, there were 72,994 farmers, and that one-fifth of the total loans of these associations were made to this class of their members. They must, therefore, be numbered among the land banks of the Empire, or at least among the institutions which are helping to solve the credit problem for the agricultural classes. The Raiffeisen societies resemble the Schulze-Delitzsch in many particulars and differ from them in others. Like them they are strictly cooperative in character, and, when organized for credit purposes, designed to supply members with loans on the most favorable possible terms. Their development was also due to the hard economic conditions of the period immediately succeeding the revolution in 1848. They differ from the Schulze-Delitzsch societies chiefly in the following particulars: They charge no initiation fees and do not rely to the same extent on the proceeds of the sale of shares, the amount of which they place at a very low figure, often the lowest permitted by law; they make long-period as well as short-period loans, indeed the former chiefly; they do not pay dividends on their share capital, but instead put all profits into reserve funds or prevent their accumulation by keeping the loan rates low; they exercise more care than do the Schulze-Delitzsch associations to keep their societies small, laying great emphasis upon the importance of personal acquaintance between members and thus upon mutual watchfulness; and, in their origin, they were peasant organizations pure and simple, and hence more strictly land banks.