CRUSADE

By Roy F. Bergengren '03. NewYork: Exposition Press. 379 pp. $3.75.

This is the latest in a series of books by Mr. Bergengren dealing with the credit union. The "crusade" to which he devoted most of his active life was the organized effort to encourage the growth of cooperative credit in all parts of the country. The book is a very personal and revealing account of the ideals, methods of organization, and history of the credit union movement, together with an intimate description of the many personalities who worked for the cause. Hovering over the book as over the credit union movement in this country is the dominant and inspiring figure of Edward A. Filene, without whose inspiration and financial assistance the credit union movement in this country might have been quite different.

A credit union is a cooperative society organized among a group of people who have some continuing and reasonably close bond of association. Its objectives are to encourage savings, to supply credit to its members at reasonable rates of interest, and to educate its members in the management and control of their own money. The movement, which began as an attempt to curb the loan shark and usurer, has grown until it includes seven million members and fourteen thousand credit unions in every state and province of North America with total assets of over one billion dollars.

The following tribute from one of his coworkers is indicative of the esteem in which this pioneer in social invention is held in the movement which in a unique way stands as his own shadow:

"Seldom is it given to man while still in the full bloom of his mental and physical energy to look back over a score of years to the day when he dreamed a vague dream of a society founded on service-a society which would influence the lives of millions of people scattered throughout the domain of an entire continent -and to trace step by step by painful step the progress made toward the realization of that dream, until that day when, due to his own ingenuity, creative vision, and physical exertions, due to his own patient persistence, due to his own unselfish, unstinting industry, his dream has fully materialized. This, tonight, is the privilege of Roy F. Bergengren."