MR. FARMER: Possibly that is so, but I do not think so, and in any event, I never would combine these two classes of loans. If we are to have national Land Credit Banks doing a country and city or urban business, let them be kept entirely separate. The general business permitted and carried on by the Crédit Foncier is a just ground for severe criticism. It is permitted to take deposits. An American Land Credit Bank should have no such power. It should be confined, in my judgment, with extreme strictness to loaning money upon improved agricultural land. Mind you, I do not say that there should be no other Land Credit Bank to do some other kind of business. That is a matter for future and separate consideration. MR. LABORINGMAN: Mr. Farmer, in all that you have said you have not once even mentioned Credit Unions or Mutual Credit societies. I had been betting on you to help me out in my fight for a recognition of the principle of coöperation, but it looks as if you had deserted me. MR. FARMER: No, Mr. Laboringman, on the contrary, I will do anything in my power to help you or anyone work out the great saving principle of coöperation; but since I have been attending these talks two or three things have stuck in my crop and I could not get them out even if I tried, and one thing in particular applies especially to the agricultural societies, called credit unions. _Mutual credit societies or credit unions are organized to furnish capital for production; that is, it is commercial capital, or credit for commercial purposes, not for investment purposes at all. Not a single dollar of a credit union should ever be loaned upon real estate. Not a single dollar! Not a single cent!!_ Such a practice would literally destroy the principle upon which they are founded; mutual aid to assist in production, not investment. Don't you remember how Mr. Banker pounded that into us; and convinced us all, too? But more convincing than anything else as to this great economic truth, that not one single dollar of credit union money should ever be loaned upon land, is the history of them. We must not forget that they were organized to secure personal credit and to depart from that practice is a perversion of their purpose and just to that extent must result in failure. The coöperative idea for personal credit was originated in Germany by Francis Frederick Schulze, a little before the middle of the nineteenth century. It passed over into Austria and Hungary in 1851, into Italy in 1860, into Belgium in 1864, into France in 1883, into Scotland in 1889, and into Ireland in 1894. These dates are given to show the order of advance and the recentness of the movement in some parts of Europe. The first German association was formed in 1849 by Frederick William Raiffeisen. Herr Schulze did not get his started until the following year.