Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/123

 law has always found in landed property. That is the class for whose benefit building associations were originally devised, from among whose numbers their membership was, and for the most part still is, drawn, and all the incidents of membership were designed to accommodate their necessities and intended to serve their purposes." The legislature of Dakota territory (§ 3, c. 41, Laws 1889) used the following language: "As building and loan corporations are aggregations of laborers, mechanics, workmen and working women, which start without any paid-up capital, and as these members only pay each month an assessment in proportion to shares, for the purpose of furnishing a home to each of its members in turn, which assessment stops the moment that every member has been thus furnished with such a home, these associations are hereby declared to be benevolent institutions, within the meaning of § 2, c. 28, of the Political Code of 1877." Rev. Laws. It is at once apparent that the transactions of these associations are separated by essential differences from the ordinary loaning business. The reasons and causes on which usury laws are based are largely absent. It was early said in England: "The defendant was interested in the fund when it was advanced and when it was paid. The rules of the society are, in effect, a mere agreement by partners that their joint contributions shall be advanced for the use of the one or the other, as occasion requires, and the transaction was not a borrowing by the maker of the note from the payee" (Silver v. Barnes, 6 Bing. N. C. 180); and this ruling has been uniformly followed in that country. In the case of Association v. Lake, 69 Ala. 456, in speaking of the workings of these associations, it is said: " The lettings of the moneys are frequently called 'loans,' but they are not strictly loans. The principal is never to be repaid. It is an advance payment by the corporation of the agreed value the shares owned by the bidder are to represent and have at the final completion of the enterprise and the dissolution of the corporation." The courts in a number of the states have adopted what is usually termed the "English rule," while in perhaps an equal number of states the courts have with more or less strictness treated these associations as ordinary money-loaning institutions. The de-