A. They are societies for the production, preservation, sale, or transformation of agricultural products. There are co-operative agricultural societies in the wine-growing regions which have their own wine cellar; there are co-operative dairy societies for making butter and cheese; there are also co-operative societies which use waterfalls and electricity; co-operative mills to grind corn; co-operative railways to bring beet roots to the sugar refinery; co-operative distilleries and co-operative warehouses for corn. To these co-operative societies we make loans for twenty-five years. The Government loans without charge to the regional office and the regional office lends to these co-operative societies for twenty-five years at 2 per cent.
Q. What is the security?
A. The guarantee is the consolidated liability of all of the members of these co-operative societies and also a mortgage upon their real estate; their responsibility is absolutely without limit.
Q. Do you compete at all with the branches of the other banks or with the Bank of France?
A. No; we have an entirely different class of customers.
Q. Is there any other institution of this character in France, or do you practically cover the field?
A. The members of these local offices are people who up to the time these local offices were organised had never had any banking connection at all. The only persons with whom the local offices compete are individuals who used to loan to farmers at very high rates of interest.
FOOTNOTES:
[165] M. Robert Masson, Sous-Directeur du Crédit Lyonnais, The Bank of France, an address delivered at the annual banquet of the bankers of the city of New York, January 19, 1914.
[166] Adapted from Maurice Patron, The Bank of France in Its Relation to National and International Credit. Publications of the National Monetary Commission, Senate Document No. 494, 61st Congress, 2d Session.