o A A ^ o By the Same Author. The Country of the Vosges LONGMANS & Co. (Price 12s.) !&^3 ' A volume in every way admirable.' Saturday Review. 'An interesting book, full of curious and valuable information.' Academy 1 Most entertaining and vivacious.' Times. ' A most complete picture of the present state, as well as the past history of the Vosges.' Spectator. ' One of the few books of travel that can hardly fail to interest everyone.' Church Times. ' It would be difficult to find a dull or tedious page.' The Galignani Mes- senger. ' The book will interest all.' Guardian. ' One of the most entertaining volumes which we have read for many a day. ' National Review. 'It would be almost impossible to speak too highly of Mr Henry W. Wolff's Country of the Vosges.' Westminster Review. ' The writer's taste, association, observation and sympathy impart a peculiar grace to his pictorial tale.' The World. 'Brimful of information ; there is plenty of anecdote to enliven the text, which runs on in an easy, graceful fashion.' Graphic. 'A pleasant volume.' Athena-um. ' Rarement un etranger a aussi bien penetre dans 1'histoire d'un peuple et a mieux compris et e'tudie ses moeurs que vous 1'avez fait en ecrivant votre livre sur le pays lorrain, alsacien et messin.' F. des Robert. ' Certainly one of the most delightful works of its kind that we have seen.' Sunday Times. ' He has much to tell in fact and story, and a great deal of interest to relate . : A nnual Register. ' The book is written with a clearness of style and a lightness of touch that make it very agreeable as well as profitable reading.' Independent. 'Will be thoroughly appreciated by all who read it.' Record. ' Mr Wolff is a persuasive writer and succeeds thoroughly in making the reader share his sympathy for the country and its people.' Literary World. ' Un travail d'erudition.' Polybihlion (Paris.) 'As fascinating as a novel.' Transcript (Boston, Mass). 'This pleasant and readable volume.' Daily News. 'This excellent volume.' Observer. 'The reader is simply amazed at the amount of curious and entertain- ing matter.' /. News (A' assume, as many among ourselves appear to do, that gomstic. Capital and Labour, whose recurring strife is responsible for one of our main perplexities, are necessarily antagon- istic forces, with different interests, different aims, dif- ferent aspirations belligerent parties, between whom peace can be established only from time to time, as a matter of terms. In one instance, at least, they have managed to bridge over the dividing gulf and blend the long-opposing interests into one, by making, in the apt The Working- words of Schulze-Delitzsch, the working-man 'his own Capitalist. ' Wn capitalist.' And they have shown that other means are available for adjusting differences arising between various factors of national production than encroachments upon production itself ; that it is not an inexorable law of Nature that whatever is given to Labour must be taken from someone else be it capitalist employer, or be it ratepaying community. Not everywhere is it contended that Labour should be benefited one might almost use the term ' protected ' by a restriction upon output. Emigration, though necessarily tolerated, is looked upon INTRODUCTION 3 by some of our neighbours rather as an evil to be put Want of Em- up with than as a desirable remedy. When employment E/^facrease of runs short, the first question asked is, whether it is not Pro(luctlon - possible to provide more, by creating new sources of pro- duction. Foreign methods may not be our methods in some instances they distinctly cannot be. It does not seem likely that the resource which various German Governments have found so useful, of stimulating cottage industries to furnish employment for the hands overflowing from the larger workshops, will recommend itself to ourselves, at any rate at present, amid totally different circumstances. There is more to be said for the modern German practice of multiplying small hold- ings, by letting as ivell as by sale, which has proved most signally successful, and the results of which might well have been taken into account in our own recent attempt to deal with the same matter. By far the happiest solu- tion yet discovered is that for which our neighbours are beholden to Schulze-Delitzsch, Raiffeisen, the Hon. L. Luzzatti, M. d'Andrimont, and Dr Leone Wollemboro- o who have taught them to establish 'People's Banks,' and thereby to create large capitals providing abundant em- ployment without cost to anyone. One can scarcely help remarking upon the curious Two coincidence which opened to Europe at exactly the same period, about 1849, two essentially different roads to vast riches. It was while our first emigrants were rushino- to O c5 the newly-discovered gold fields of California big with promise, tempting to the eye with the alluring glitter of precious metal that in a small village in the bleak Westerwald, and in a petty provincial town of that por- tion of Saxony which Prussia annexed in 1815, the first spade was thrust into a ' gold field ' of a very different type, looking at the time bare and barren, but concealing under its unpromising crust a store of wealth, 4 PEOPLE'S BANKS larger and more beneficent in its effects by far than the gold deposits of the State which the American Confedera- tion had then just finally made their own. Which of the two gold fields has thus far yielded to Society the larger volume of tangible riches, it may be open to question. Which has more enduringly benefited our race the metal which began by provoking robbery and disorder, and which, along with much good service, forms a standing incentive to greed, envy, and dishonesty ; or the ' capital- ised honesty ' which plants virtues where there have been vices, makes people thrifty, industrious, sober, honest, and enables them to build for whole classes habitations which no financial crisis can wash away as to the proper answer to that question there can be no doubt whatever. The success of What untold riches these People's Banks have within is the forty years of their existence made available for small folk's needs, what millions they have added to the wealth of the countries in which, as M. Rostand has it, they ' swarm ' (pullulent) and in which, as M. Leon Say testifies, they ' nourish throughout ' ; what vast amount of misery, ruin, loss, privations, they have either averted or removed, penetrating, where they have once gained a footing, into the smallest hovel, and bringing to its beggared occupant employment and the weapons where- with to start afresh in the battle of life, it would be a Their Exten- difficult task to tell. Propagating themselves by their own merits, they have overspread Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium. France is trying to graft them upon her own economic system. Russia has in her own rather primitive way followed the excellent example. Even Egypt has, under the rule of its late Khedive Ismail not otherwise a paragon of forethought and thrift made the useful institution tentatively its own. And now we hear of its spreading from Italy into far INTRODUCTION 5 Japan China has got it already while we in Great Britain scarcely yet know of its existence. The solution has all the more to recommend it among Based upon ourselves, because it is essentially based upon a prin- Self ' Hel P- ciple of which this country has long been regarded as the specific home : the principle of self-help. Self-help, it is quite true, has of late gone a little out of fashion. We are taught sometimes to look to other deities to bring us up out of the Egypt of want and distress Frederick the Great's old friend ' der Hacker von Staat,' upon whose broad shoulders the Prussian king begged his contemporaries not to lay too heavy a burden, and those beneficent socialist methods which forty-four years ago, M. Thiers denounced as ' cette grande folie.' Whatever it be reserved for state-help to accomplish, however, in England self-help is not likely long to want adherents. Unfortunately we have thus far given to this great power only half its practicable application. 'It is self-help,' phonographed, early in 1890, Mr Gladstone to Mr Gladstone a delighted body of correspondents across the Atlantic, on Thnft - who thought that they had never heard their co-opera- tive principle so neatly and tersely vindicated 'It is self-help which makes the man ; and man-making is the aim which the Almighty has everywhere impressed upon Creation. It is thrift by which self-help for the masses, dependent upon labour, is principally made effective. In them thrift is the symbol and the instru- ment of independence and liberty, indispensable con- ditions of permanent good.' Yes, that is admirably said, and with the truth of Mr Gladstone's words no one will be disposed to quarrel. That is the interpretation which we have thus far put upon ' self-help ' ' save, lay by, economise, make the most of your pence, alike in provident accumulation and in economic outlay ' that is the familiar counsel which for many a year we have 6 PEOPLE'S BANKS addressed to our poorer brethren. Going further than counsel, we have given them facilities beyond what are known in other countries, and, to do them justice, they have readily profited by them. Our Savings-Banks, our Provident Societies, our Co-operative Stores, remain un- surpassed in the known world, and secure to us without question the first place among nations in respect of the practice of thrift. But does not all this, after all, re- present only one side of self-help ? Could not the same Self-Help pro- power which enables us to garner the ripe fruit be im- P resse d a ^ s( > into service to help us in tilling the soil and producing it ? It seems strange that we should never seriously have turned our thoughts to this problem, which for us, one would think, ought to possess no less practi- cal importance than for any of our neighbours. There are so many bits of waste lying unproductive in our economic system which self-help, if it is within its power, might with advantage be called in to cultivate. There is so much labour which cannot be brought to the point at which our orthodox form of self-help begins the point of being able to save and lay by. And even where there is employment, there is still so much avail- able labour and ability running unprofitably to waste ! There is so much skill and opportunity which for want of means can not be turned to full account ! We are rich, no doubt. But the daily conflicts between Capital and Labour show that with all its abundance Capital is among us not equal to the demands made upon it ; that, rapidly as it has grown, Labour has grown very much faster ; and that, for want either of will or of power, it is still relatively far too small for our national needs too small, at any rate, at the fructifying points. Then is there no means of supplying the want, of creating the capital which is wanting and, where there is admittedly opportunity and working power, of placing also the INTRODUCTION ^ material to work upon at the command of the willing workman, to the diminution of poverty and destitution, and the happy increase of the productive power of the nation ? The answer, given in the affirmative, is to be found TheProblemto be solved. in ' People's Banks.' To state one instance of what they may do we well understand the all but hopeless difficulty of dealing with the huge mass of helpless misery which daily, articulately or inarticulately, calls upon us to be relieved. Though our charities flow very unevenly from different purses, in the aggregate no nation in the world gives more largely, nor more readily. For all that, if Gregory the Great is right, it is to be feared that even the most charitable among us are sorry sinners even in their very charities. For, although they ' offer rightly ' enough, they most evi- dently do not ' distribute ' at all as they should (si recte ojferas, non recte dividas, peccdsti). Now let us suppose that through this vast, unwieldy mass of distress a line might be carried, separating, not the deserving from the undeserving, but those in whose hands money might be counted upon to fructify, to give them employ- ment and repay itself out of their toil, from those in a different case ; and let us suppose that to each and everyone of the former category could as much money be advanced readily, easily and at a cheap rate as they think they have employment for. By what a substantial proportion would the tax upon our resources, both of purse and of application, be reduced ! Not only would the mass of destitution to be dealt with dwindle very materially, but former victims would at once become effective helpers tax-payers, it may be em- ployers, givers of charitable support instead of claimants to it. Let us further suppose that, even beyond the limits of actual want and non-employment, all those 8 PEOPLE'S BANKS willing workers among us who, like our well-known heroes of self-help, see their opportunity for a great enterprise, who have the ability, hut want the means, could go to the same source of supply and there obtain, without the indignity of begging, without having to make a special favour of the loan, what they require let us assume that the farmer or the allotment-holder could obtain the wherewithal to drain, to manure, to improve his field according to modern principles, the householder the wherewithal to set up and furnish his home cheaply, the small tradesman the means wherewith to stock his shop, the small artisan the funds for carry- ing out profitable work whatever the want, whatever the calling might be, suppose that it could be supplied what a vista of wealth and prosperity beyond the wildest dream of hope, profitable to the individual, profitable to the community, appears to open itself to one's view ! It seems almost like a vision of fairy land, too good even to be thought of ! Well, and can People's Banks accomplish all this ? instances of The answer is to be found in that vast network of flourishing banks spread out over Germany and Italy, numbering by the thousand, turning homeless labourers into cultivating owners, unemployed journeymen into thriving traders, starving peasants into substantial yeomen, stimulating everywhere, in M. Leon Say's words, commerce, industry, and la petite culture, which under their beneficent shelter develop ' with increasing energy ' in those neat, prosperous villages, encircled by smiling gardens, orchards, and heavily bearing fields, which spring up, as if by magic, not in the fertile valley of the Rhine only, but in the barren Westerwald, on the erst neglected plains of Lombardy, and in the wild Rhon mountains. It is to be found in the bustling business going on daily in that palace of the Banco, Popolare INTRODUCTION 9 which you may see in the Via San Paolo in Milan, where a full hundred of clerks are continually at work, besides about 140 unpaid officials, passing tens of thousands of pounds through their hands every day, 80,000,000 in the year, a stream of gold steadily and rapidly increasing in volume. All that work is done with a clockwork regularity and an exactitude in every detail which could not, says M. Say, be surpassed in London or New York. And all is genuine ' People's ' business. Most of the transactions are small drafts of ten lire (eight shillings) are not at all uncommon. Lira by lira has that magnificent fabric been reared up out of small folk's business ' drop by drop,' says its founder Signer Luzzatti, ' like a stalactite grotto ' till it has grown to be one of the largest banking establishments in all Italy. Yet it adheres faithfully to its specific small work. There are about nine hundred banks of this order, small and great, in Italy, doing between them a full third of the country's banking. In Germany there are thousands. Or, to ascertain the results in a different aspect, you should go out into the country and ask the braccianti and the muratori, whom you see there building and making roads without a master to control them, where they got the money from which enables them to do the job on their own account, putting the middleman's profits into their own pockets. Or else you should walk into one of those thriving villages in Lombardy, in which Dr Wollemborg has set up his casse rurali. A few years ago, thanks to hindrances not un- known among ourselves the accumulation of landed property in few hands, habitual absenteeism, and, more- over, a rigorous exaction of rents such as, happily, we have no conception of that district was the usurer's favourite hunting ground, and the poor drudges who cultivated it had not a centesimo to call their own from io PEOPLE'S BANKS week's end to week's end. Now the usurer is gone, and the cultivators are doing well, and laying by. Or, again, you should go into the valley of the Rhine, where the Raiffeisen Banks have been longest at work, and observe to what extent homes have been made habitable and comfortable ; how culture has been improved ; how machinery has been purchased, and the best manures and feeding stuffs ; how the vintner has been enabled to sell his produce for cash at double the old rate of return ; how the small peasant can now buy his implements and manures, of the best quality, at the cheapest wholesale prices, and yet thanks to a large reserve accumulated in his bank, raised up seemingly out of nothing, as if by fairy hands at six months' credit ; you should see how small industry and trade have been developed, how the usurer, once all-powerful, has been driven out of the field, and those once poor men have become small cap- italists. One is afraid of falling into a strain of rhap- sody in describing all these results. ' I have seen a 'ANew World.' new world,' broke out, in explicable admiration, the well-known Hungarian deputy, Professor von Dobran- sky, on seeing this country of newly-created plenty, ' a world of brotherhood ; it is a world of brotherly love and mutual help, where everyone is the protector and the assister of his neighbour. An isolated man here finds himself transplanted into the bosom of a com- munity whose resources multiply a hundred-fold the productive power of its labour, and crown it with success.' This seems highflown language. But other visitors, dry, sober political economists, like M. Rostand, M. Fournier de Flaix, and M. Leon Say, speak in exactly the same strain. The late Emile de Laveleye expresses himself with less of rapture but not less of emphasis. The wealth which this new instrument has brought forth, as by a touch of Midas, wants to be seen in order to INTRODUCTION 1 1 be understood. Looking at it, and reckoning over its benefits, one feels indeed as if on economical ground ' a new world had been called into existence to redress the balance of the old.' And 'all these wonders which I have seen,' writes M. Leon Say, 'are the wonders of private initiative and decentralisation. It is private