{"value"=>"<p>Correspondence, memoranda, reports, financial statements, and minutes.</p> <p> Loan Bank, Ltd., began as a loan fund (the \"Kupath Milveh\"), administered as a philanthropy by the Reconstruction Committee of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) as one of its relief activities. The fund's operations gradually became more business-like, acquiring the authority to charge interest and to demand repayment of monies borrowed. Formal reorganization of the fund into a business institution was realized in 1924, when its administration was turned over to the Governing Board of the Kupath Milveh, created by an agreement entered into between the Reconstruction Committee and the Palestine Cooperative Company. Emmanuel N. Mohl (who served Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank in a similar capacity) was appointed Managing Director; and stockholders and directors of the newly organized loan institution, now known as Loan Bank, Ltd., included Judge Julian W. Mack, Bernard Flexner, Herbert H. Lehman, and Julius Simon. The bank's stated purpose was to \"graduate\" its borrowers to eligibility for funds from other appropriate credit institutions. In 1932, it was taken over as a wholly owned subsidiary of PEC.</p> <p> Loan Bank granted very small loans (averaging $75. 00) to such borrowers as artisans, teachers, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and clerks, who were not able to obtain funds from the commercial banks. Many of these clients were first-time borrowers from a lending institution, experiencing the requirement of timely repayment for the first time. Eventually, the bank's clients became members of the growing number of credit cooperatives in the country.</p> <p> Thus, with credit needs satisfied elsewhere, Loan Bank's resources were freed for other activity. Among its pioneering endeavors was the granting of three-to-five-year credits for household farming to rural workers (see Series 11, Housing). The funds were typically put to planting a kitchen garden and purchasing and feeding a few chickens and a cow, thereby enabling these workers to support themselves and their families during periods of unemployment.</p> <p> In addition, Loan Bank was the first to grant three-to-five-year credits to small manufacturers (\"Small Industrial Credits\"), for a variety of needs: the purchasing of machinery and tools, physical expansion, and the general facilitation of greater production and increased employment. While the loans were executed and installments collected through Loan Bank, the overall administration and follow-up activity relating to this type of credit work was shared by the Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank.</p> <p> Commercial banks were unwilling to assume the risks attending activities such as these, at the time Loan Bank was beginning its operations. Yet the success it enjoyed inspired other institutions to apply similar administrative procedures to similar ventures; and these regular commercial sources and cooperative-credit institutions began then to absorb the small borrowers who had been initiated into credit activity by Loan Bank. This movement eventually led to PEC's liquidation of the bank, as its work was increasingly carried forward by commercial institutions.</p>"}