LAND BANKS.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 141, 20 June 1910, Page 2

LAND BANKS.

HOW THEY HAVE SUCCEEDED ABROAD AND IN IRELAND.

In his -pamphlet on. "The Land for the People," Sir Gilbert Parker shows how much benefit has been derived from the credit banks conducted upon l the Raffeison model. There aire 10,000 -such banks in Germany alone, and their annual turnover' amounts to £2,000,000. In Roumania, within, eighteen months after the scheme' w-as started, 612 banks were established, and .. in fourteen months the membership inr creased from 20,604 to 59,844. Through the banks in Denmark a laboring man, properly commended and guaranteed by his fellow-labor-ers,, may borrow nine-tenths of the purchase money of a holding up to £250 at the rate of 3 per cent., and there are 150,000 Danish laborers who have a house and some land of their own, although the total population of Denmark is only about oneeighteenth of that of the United Kingdom. France, Holland, Italy, and other countries might be quoted. Last year 319 persons were assisted by the Agricultural Bank in Queensland, and no less than £70,107 was advanced, of which £29,701 was to enable the settlers to carry out improvements, and £40,000 was for paying off liabilities on land, stock, etc. Under the guidance of Sir Horace Plunkatt corresponding advantages have been mado available for their is h peasant, and it is a remarkable fact that cases of default in payment of the instalments upon loan® are almost unknown. But notwithstanding the everwhelming evidence in favor of this method of supplying cultivators with the necessary capital to buy and equip their holdings, and the professed -desire of the Government to facilitate access to tihe land, the Prime Minister has declined 1 to appoint! a Select Committee to study the working of land banks in. foreign countries and the colonies.—Pall Mall Gazette.