F

FERDINAND  LASSALLE.

65

subsidy,  or  guarantee  a  minimum  interest  to  the  company  ?  It
would  require  a  smaller  advance  for  co-operative  societies  than
for  railways.  Lassalle  estimated  that  one  hundred  millions  of
thalers  would  suffice  for  Prussia,  and  added  that  it  would  cost
the  tax-payers  nothing.  According  to  him,  there  should  be  one
pand  central  bank  established,  having  a  monopoly  of  the
issue  of  notes,  so  that  it  could  easily  circulate  three  hundred
million  thalers  upon  a  reserve  of  one-third.  Thus  it  would
hav^  for  the  purpose  of  loans  to  co-operative  societies,  two
hundred  millón  thalers,  which  would  have  cost  it  nothing.
I  hese  societies  should  first  be  established  in  the  districts  best
adapted  to  them  by  reason  of  the  nature  of  the  trade  carried
on  in  them,  the  density  of  the  population,  and  the  disposition
of  the  labourers.  Gradually  other  societies  would  be  founded
m  all  branches  of  labour,  and  even  in  the  rural  districts.
Agriculture,  when  conducted  on  a  large  scale,  yields  a
larger  net  produce  ;  but  it  has  this  drawback,  it  is  incompatible
with  small  properties.  Agricultural  co-operation  would  reunite
he  advantages  of  the  petite  and  of  Úiq  grande  culture,  and  thus
transform  the  entire  agrarian  system  to  the  advantage  of  the
whole  community.  With  one  hundred  millions  of  thalers,  the
necessary  industrial  capital  could  be  supplied  to  four  hundred
thousand  working  men,  and  with  the  annual  interest,  at  five  per
cent.,  namely,  five  millions,  the  benefits  of  the  association
might  be  annually  extended  to  twenty  thousand  new  working ­
  men  and  their  families.  These  societies  would  establish
among  themselves  relations  of  joint  responsibility  and  credit,
Which  would  insure  to  them  great  solidity.  Thus,  after  the
apse  of  a  short  time,  instead  of  offering  a  spectacle  of  capimiists
  and  labourers  hostile  to  each  other,  the  nation  would  be
tirely  composed  of  working-men  capitalists,  grouped  together
to  n?  ‘"u  would  by  no  means  have
play  the  part  of  director  or  contractor  of  industry:  far  less,
eed,  than  it  does  at  present  in  the  case  of  the  railways
ch  It  works.  All  It  would  have  to  do  would  be  to  examine
conf  statutes  of  the  societies,  and  to  exercise  a
week  °  Kthe  funds  advanced.  Each
e  workmen  would  receive  the  wages  usual  in  the