W stulecie nadbudowy związkowej wielkopolskiej spółdzielczości kredytowej

Abstract

On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Union of Incomes & Administration Cooperatives in Poznań this work recalls the organization of the expansion of the Union, the original basic ideal and specific trends of the programme in successive developmental periods of the Wielkopolska system of the credit cooperatives' movement. Attention, in the main, is drawn to the specific organizational and administrative aims of the Union, its significance in persistent and more independent development of the movement and its dissimilarity to German patterns. The Polish Credit Cooperatives emerged gradually from a general movement in the first half of the 19th century. It was evoked by the economic programme opposing the invaders submitted, after the November Uprising in 1831, by the Wielkopolska „organicists" lead by K, Marcinkowski. The Cooperative Union founded in 30 IV 1871 united the inefficient Polish credit cooperative, isolated it from the Association into an independent cooperative movement and transformed it into a unilitanal and financially strong system, with creditory activités based exclusively on accumulated monetary savings. Consequently the Wielkopolska Credit Cooperative successfully filled the shortage of Polish private banks, constituted a base for founding special cooperatives and for financing the development of Polish industry, handicrafts trade and agriculture. They contributed to a reborn Poland considerable private funds, numerous cooperative staff and bankers, original forms and principles of cooperatives which till the liquidation of the Union in 1934, spread to other Polish cooperatives. The service of the Union and its leading members was the efficient utilization of cooperative methods in organizing small credits, land rotation, supply and demand, thus making available facilities for weakly developed economic units, which are also exploited by large enterprises, — all of which consititued a valuable contribution to cooperative practice and theory.