Files
Abstract
In the interwar period, loans against pledged bills of exchange were most
widely used, most certain and cheapest way to obtain personal bank loan.
However, until the foundation of Privileged Agrarian Bank in 1929, agricultural
producers in Serbia were deprived legally from obtaining such loans. This extreme
measure of limiting peasants’ credit ability had been introduced by The Law on
Trade, issued in 1860, at times when there were no institutionalized loans or banks
in Serbia. Measure of forbidding farmers to issue, accept or transfer bills of
exchange would still remain in legal system of Serbia in the end of 19th and the
beginning of 20th centuries, when the network of banks and banking system had
been already established; it would remain in Serbian legal system even after the
state unification of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, although that was an
anachronism in relation to the legal system in the provinces of former Austro-
Hungary that entered The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS); it was
abolished only in 1929, with article 79 of The Low on Privileged National Bank,
under the pressure of mighty banking circles in Serbia.
From 1860 to 1929, Serbian peasant searched for the ways to sign anyway
bills of exchange because he needed desperately the loans. He signed bills of
exchange presenting him falsely as trader, speculator or head of estate. In such
way, peasant’s bill of exchange emerged that was always at risk to be accepted by
creditor under unbearable terms because it was illegal. Impossibility for peasants to
use in legal way bills of exchange that were trading and credit instruments of
highest quality at those times made large damage to agriculture and banking of The
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.