When it was realised that these banks were of great service to the rural population, to which they advanced money at 12 per cent interest--instead of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally did--the Turkish Government extended the reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district centres. According to their statutes one-third of the net profits of these banks was destined for works of public utility, such as bridges, roads, fountains, schools, etc., while the remaining two-thirds went to increase the capital of the banks.
During the Russo-Turkish war several of these banks lost their funds, the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried away all the cash, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the banks' clients. After the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part of the property of the banks was restored, by means of the issue of new bonds. For that unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed than the Turk. This _Credit Foncier_ system is pretty clear proof that the Turkish power was not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible a reform was set on foot in one of the Christian provinces under the Sublime Porte.
Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria has a small mining population and an increasing factory population. The Protective tariff is used freely to encourage young industries, and there is an effort just now to set up cotton-spinning as a national enterprise.
Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural population up to the outbreak of the war of 1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest she has, however, acquired much new territory, and is now probably predominantly an agricultural country. She has, too, great mineral resources at present, but they are little developed, and fine forests which only need an improvement of the means of communication to be commercially a big asset. The Serbian is not so steadily devoted to his work as the Bulgarian: his is the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural character. Nevertheless he has a reasonable faculty of industry. As is the case in Bulgaria the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors. These are organised into communes very much on the Russian system. It is an interesting fact that though in Serbia there is almost the same degree as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the women of the nation, a Serbian woman may be the head of the village commune, and, as such, exercise a very real authority.