CHAPTER XXII.

THE DEBT HABIT.

The debt habit of mind is the disposition or tendency to look to things we have not as necessary to our success: To yearn for other opportunities and other means than those we have in our hands: To feel helpless without them and willing to incur debt to secure them. The independent, self-reliant disposition takes account of its own powers and opportunities and means, and plans with these to accomplish the very most. This old self-reliant, independent spirit, that scorned debt, has largely passed away. To incur debt is now the common habit and has become respectable.

All evil-doers encourage and stimulate the particular fashion or habit or appetite or passion on which they thrive. Usury thrives on debt. If no one was in debt then usurers would be harmless. It is this debt habit that gives them the large field for their operations and secures to them their harvest.

The agreement to pay interest preserves for a time the feeling of independence that would be wounded by receiving a loan as a favor. There is usually a feeling of joy and elation in the borrower that confidence in him is so great, and his credit is so high, that he can be entrusted with a loan.

By incurring a debt there seems to promise the opening up of opportunities that have been denied, and a possible field for the successful exertion of his pent up energies.

The present intended use of the loan, too, seems so attractive and profitable, and the buoyant, hopeful spirit does not doubt that the loan can be easily and promptly repaid.

The temptations to debt do not come to the vicious and idle and worthless, but to the most worthy, industrious, talented, reliable and enterprising, those who will be the most productive in their fields of effort. Its very approach is flattering and therefore so hard to resist.

A bright, intelligent, noble young man with high aims and worthy purposes yearns for an education, but the opportunities seem to be denied him; but there is a fund at low interest at his service.

A lively, energetic young man, with industrious and economical habits, is anxious to engage in business; his youth, character and energy bring the loan to his feet.

The young man with pure yearning for domestic life and a home, with a reputation that is above reproach and of commendable energy and thrift, has a home pressed upon him, to be paid for in long-time payments. He can fill it with furniture "on the installment plan." With intellectual taste, he can fill his library with just the books he desires "on the installment plan." Is he musical in his taste, he can fill his parlor with musical instruments "on the installment plan." His needs and tastes can all be gratified at once by incurring debt. To avoid debt there must be a determined and unremitted effort to resist. Few have been able to escape. The aggregate of private indebtedness can not be told.

Few manufacturing plants are free from debt. They are usually carrying all the load their credit enables them to secure. Railroads and other corporations are under bonded debts that tax their trade to the utmost to sustain.

Counties and municipalities have caught the contagious habit. Bonds are issued to build school houses, town halls, viaducts, water-works, and pave streets.

There lies on this table a list of all the cities in this great land, the United States, with their number of inhabitants and their bonded debts. There are but six small cities in the long list without debt. In some the amount is enormous, the city debt in cases running up to one hundred and one hundred and fifty, and two hundred dollars per inhabitant. That is, there is a city debt on each man, woman and child of two hundred dollars. On this amount interest must be paid, twelve dollars per year, one dollar per month for every man, woman and child.

There lies also on the table a report of the financial condition of the nearest great city. It is rendered in a cheerful mood and declares the city's credit "tip top." The indebtedness is eight millions, but the assessed valuation of the city is so high that two million more bonds can be issued before the limit of indebtedness is reached as established by the general law. This is regarded as a most favorable showing and the assurance is given that all the contemplated public improvements can be pushed without interruption. There is no thought of stopping until the extreme limit is reached.

This habit extends to the churches and benevolent enterprises. There is scarcely a church that is not paying interest on some debt. Local societies are often greatly hindered in their work. A benevolent agency of one of the largest and richest denominations issued a piteous appeal to their constituents for help, declaring that the interest on their debts amounted to one thousand dollars per week.

The debt habit has seized the nations and the most enlightened. This is so true that debts are, in pleasantry, spoken of as a sign of a nation's progress. These aggregate billions are rapidly increasing.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer says the debt of England was reduced five hundred millions in twenty years. To the astonishment of all the world, the United States began to pay her debt, eighteen hundred million, in thirty years. But these stand alone among the nations. The national debts do not grow less, but are rapidly increasing. Both the United States and England are now increasing their indebtedness each year.

The world has gone debt mad. It has become a great harvest field, ripe for the usurers.

Debts may at times be unavoidable. They may at times be positively beneficial. There may be times when the system is in such a condition that it is necessary to take arsenic in small doses, but arsenic has no place in the menu of a healthy man. So debts may be necessary to those who have fallen into decay or have been unfortunate, but they should find no place in the normally healthy financial conditions of an individual or incorporation or nation.

Debts make no man the richer. A man is no richer when he has secured a loan, than he was before. Paying debts makes no man poorer. He but relieves himself of the property of another.

Paying a national debt destroys no wealth. If owed at home, it is but a transfer from one hand or pocket to another.

Adjusting the world's debts, private, corporate, municipal, or national, the world would remain as rich and productive. Not a material thing would perish. No man would suffer the loss of any right or of any property, but it would be the destruction of the device by which the usurers appropriate to themselves the productions of others.

Freed from this debt habit of mind, and the independent, self-reliant disposition replaced, this anomalous condition would disappear; the producer would receive again his full earnings and the great army of parasites, that has grown up, and that feed so richly on the labors of others, would be compelled to turn producers or perish.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BORROWER IS SERVANT TO THE LENDER.

Solomon's declaration that, "The borrower is servant to the lender," was spoken without reference to usury. Loaning upon increase was not lawful in his day, and was condemned by him in his proverb, "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will have pity on the poor."

A loan binds the borrower to the lender though he pay no increase. There comes a sense of subserviency and subordination that can not be thrown off.

He becomes steward of another's goods, and frees the owner of their care, but they remain subject to the owner's order. The preservation of goods hinder any great accumulation by any single producer, but if he can be freed from its care, then all his energies can be used to continue production. Many find it as hard to keep property as it is to earn it.

The hunter or fisherman takes with him his lackey to carry his game. If game is plentiful and the hunter successful, he would, otherwise, soon be compelled to discontinue his hunt from the burden of fish and game. But, freed from that care and burden, he can continue his hunt indefinitely. So, the borrower, even when he pays no interest, as a lackey, without wages, cares for the earnings of the lender, leaving him free to continue his earning unhindered.

A valet cares for the clothes of his master until he calls for them. The borrower, without interest, as a valet, without pay, cares for the goods of the lender until he needs them.

The independent spirit of the borrower is not immediately lost. The servile spirit and conscious sense of bondage may not be felt at once. Likely the first sensation on receiving a loan is an elation bordering on ecstasy.

The poor man who is offered a loan is usually greatly delighted. There is hope of relief from the limitations and restraints that have been as a wall round about him. The loan seems to throw down these walls and give him an opportunity to secure greater results and achieve success. But the delight is transient and the sense of greater liberty is brief. The prison walls are down, but the debt holds him like a ball and chain. He has only exchanged one restraint for another worse; he has leaped from the pan into the fire. The spirit loses its hopefulness and independence and becomes servile and cringing.

Milton represents our first parents, after their first sin, as intoxicated in delight, but the consciousness of their degradation and shame soon followed. So the first sensation from a loan is of relief and hope; the future looks bright, but the sense of subjection to the lender is sure to follow.

He forfeits the free, independent, self-reliant spirit that scorns dependence upon any man. He only looks the whole world in the face, who owes no man a cent.



CHAPTER XXIV.

USURY ENSLAVES THE BORROWER.

Timon of Athens said, "No usurer, but has a fool for a slave."

The borrower without usury loses his free and independent spirit and becomes cringing and servile, but when interest is paid it increases the severity of the servile service.

The lackey must not only care for the game taken, but he must add to the bag from his own hunting. He not only cares for the fish his master caught but must add to the basket from his own catching. The valet must not only perfectly preserve the clothes of his master, but must add to his wardrobe.

The borrower of the usurer must protect and preserve every farthing in value of the property or goods, and must also increase the amount.

The estimate put upon the mental condition of the person who will submit to such an imposition, by "Timon of Athens," must be admitted as fairly just, for a heathen. From the almost universal practice of usury, and the vast numbers enslaved, we must also admit that Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, knew what he was saying, when he slyly called us all fools in his proverb, "A wise man's heart is at his right hand but a fool's heart is at his left."

The object of the usurer in making a loan is to secure the service of the borrower; it may be called a favor, an opportunity, an accommodation, but that is its purpose and its effect. It may be called capital or a tool for production, but the appropriation of the service of the borrower is the result sought and secured.

To secure the service of a horse, there must be an outgo of wealth in its purchase price and in its harness and the vehicle. The service received is the return, the compensation for the payment made. That is money invested and repaid in service. The price was in accordance with the service the animal would be able to render. For more and better service a higher price must be paid.

There must be an expenditure to secure the service of a chattel slave. The purchase price must be paid and the tools and material or plantation must be supplied before his services are available. The price paid is in accordance with a reasonable estimate of the service the slave will be able to render during life. The outlay is made in consideration of an equivalent in service.

A loan is made for the same purpose and secures the same result. The price of the horse or slave must be paid before the service can be claimed. The loan must be made before there can be a pretext of a claim upon the services of the borrower.

There is this difference, however, that the purchaser pays for the services he expects to receive; he makes a real outlay for what is to be given him. The usurer pays nothing, he does not give a farthing; he makes no outlay; he merely changes the deposit from the bank vault, or his strong box, to his victim, and requires from him such an ample security that it is as safe in his hands as remaining in the vault. That he has bought the service of the borrower as another bought the service of the horse or chattel slave is untrue. He has given no equivalent. He retains every farthing of his wealth safely deposited with his victim. The service he receives does not diminish the value of his property nor discharge any portion of his claim.

The usurer, like all those who appropriate the labors of their slaves, claims that he is a real benefit to his borrower. He has given him an opportunity of advancement that he could not otherwise have had. He points to him possibly with some degree of pride, especially if he seems greatly prospered. The owner of colored slaves pointed to his well-fed and well-clothed and happy people, merry in their cabins, and made a claim that was equally plausible; that these people are far better off and far happier than they could be in freedom.

Their well-kept, happy, care-free condition did not make them freemen. They were slaves, though they may have been happy. They were slaves, though they preferred bondage to being their own masters. The usurer's prosperous victim is not therefore a freeman. Though he should prefer debt to independence, that does not make him free.

No one prefers to be in debt. Debts are chosen as the least of the evils. The natural resources are occupied and the opportunities of life are denied. Lands and all tools of production are withheld and the horns of the dilemma are debt or privation. The independent spirit shrinks from debt until the struggle of life becomes desperate, when he turns to the other evil and is enslaved.

This is not a temptation that comes to the idle and vicious. They could not secure a loan though they tried. An indolent, dissipated and vicious chattel slave would not find a purchaser in the market.

It is the industrious, virtuous and economical young man that is of value to the usurer, and the better his character, the greater his worth. For this reason their virtues are cried up to the usurers, as the favorable qualities of the chattel were presented in the slave marts. To secure a loan is an evidence of confidence in his business ability, and an evidence of the appreciation of his character. It is a flattering compliment, and promising relief to a condition that seems hopeless, he permits the yoke of bondage to be fastened upon him.

The usurer's slave is cheaper than the chattel. It requires less wealth to secure an equal amount of service. A loan of five thousand dollars at the prevailing rate of seven per cent. will bring to the usurer more than one dollar, clear gain, for every working day. That is as much as any one man, not professional or specially skilled, can hope to produce with that amount of capital, after caring for himself and his home. The borrower secures the lender from all loss, he largely relieves him from oversight, he directs his own labors, supports himself wholly; if sick, he supplies a substitute that the service does not stop, and when from the infirmities of age he is no longer able to give the required amount of service, one dollar per day, he returns the loan in full, which may be bound upon another victim, and thus continued forever.

In the days of chattel slavery labor was not so cheap. The price of a strong, faithful young colored slave, and the value of the tools for him to use, and the proportionate part of the plantation necessary for him to work, was about equal to the above loan. Then he must be clothed and fed; his work must be directed; if sick his labor was lost, and he must receive medical and other care; all risks of harvest from drouth or flood must be incurred by the owner, and the slave's term of service was limited by his death, when his purchase cost was lost, and there must be an outlay by a new purchase. One chattel slave could not bring his master such enormous returns.

Not only does financial slavery exact more labor for the amount invested, but it is more heartless than chattel bondage. The master had a personal interest in the slave he bought. His health and strength was an object of his care and his death a great loss. There was also often a mutual affection developed, as is sometimes found between a man and his horse or affectionate dog. There was sometimes real unfeigned mutual love. The master had a tender care over his slaves in their sicknesses and in their decrepit age, and sorrowed at their graves. The slaves were inconsolable in their grief at the death of their master.

The usurer has no personal interest in his slave. He has no care for his health or his life; they are of no interest to him. He may live in a distant state and has no anxiety about those who serve him. Their personal ills give him no concern. When they die, there is no loss nor any additional outlay required; the bonds are simply transferred to others, and the service is not interrupted.

Many faithful, industrial and honest borrowers are unable to return the loan. It is as difficult to retain property as it is to earn it. New inventions, new processes, new methods, new legislation and the changing fashions and customs, often sweep property from the shrewd and careful. "Riches make themselves wings; they fly away." If for any cause the borrower fails there is scant sympathy from the usurer. He charges him with being deficient in business management and thriftless. If the yoke of bondage galls and becomes so painful that in his distress the debtor turns from the struggle in one direction to struggle in another in hope of relief, he calls him fickle; and if at last, after a long and hard service, he is unable to return the loan in full, he calls him dishonest. His ear is deaf to the voice, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free."

There are those in debt yet struggling against hope to be free. They are slaving at work, but making no progress toward relief. The crisis must come. In the race with biting usury that knows no rest, night nor day, year in and year out, that knows no sickness nor delay, that keeps step with time, there is but one possible result. There can be but one final result, though the debtor may have a start far in advance, but if in the race it has become neck and neck, the end is near. Usury will sweep on with full wind, and unslacking pace, when the debtor falls exhausted. There is comfort, however, though the race be lost, for the distress of poverty is less than the agony of hopeless debt.

The old and ruined, who have lived honorable and industrious lives, who have endeavored to do their part in all the relations of life, yet have been in the slavery of debt all their days, and when their powers began to fail were stripped of the earnings of years, and besides, are compelled to bear the name of dishonorable debtors, are the most worthy of sympathy of any the world knows. The decrepit old chattel slave had hope of a home until the end, and a decent burial, but the debtor has nothing, not even an honorable name.

The young, who are yet free from personal debt, should be warned, and should not permit themselves to be beguiled by any of the allurements held out, nor by flatteries. As one prizes his independent spirit and freedom from the dictation of others, as he desires a successful life and a peaceful old age, he should avoid debt. As a Christian, who desires unrestrained Christian fellowship, whose benevolence will be from the kindness and love of his own heart, as one who wishes to bless all he meets, and to leave a name associated only with hallowed memories, he should avoid debt.

"Owe no man anything, but love one another."



CHAPTER XXV.

USURY OPPRESSES THE POOR.

Moses, Solomon and the prophets connect usury with the oppression of the poor. For this reason many have thought the divine prohibition of usury applied only to loans to the poor. By careful attention we will find that its evils are not confined to the immediate participants in the transaction. In the natural operation of economic laws the ultimate burden rests upon the poor. It is clear that when each member of a community contributes his portion to the common welfare the burdens are equally distributed. When any one fails to contribute his proportion the burdens are made heavier for the other members, and the burdens increase as the number increases of those who for any cause fail to contribute their part.

This is true in the family home life. When every member of the household is able, and with cheerful willingness does his full part for the family support and comfort, the burden is equally distributed. Let one member of the family be in any way disabled and his duties must be performed by others. If several are disabled the burdens upon the others may be greatly increased. If any are indolent the burdens are made heavy upon those who are industrious.

The same is true in the larger family, the community and the state, for political economy is but enlarged home economy. The burdens are lightest when every one contributes his full share to the general welfare. When any are idle the duties become heavier upon those who are faithful.

Usury makes it possible for many to live upon incomes from their property. They are not classed, nor do they class themselves, among those who are personally productive. This makes it necessary for the poor, those who have no property, to produce more in order to house and clothe and feed the community.

But those non-productive persons are consumers and are the most active consumers. They make heavy drafts upon the energies of others. They become extravagant in their habits and the spendthrifts of the world; while in proportion to their extravagant habits there must be severity and simplicity in the habits of the industrious and productive, on whom the support of the community rests.

The world does not grow richer nor are the conditions of life for one class eased by the extravagance of another class.

It is sometimes said that the idleness and the wasteful habits of some are for the benefit of others because they make a demand for more work. It would give the lumberman and nail-cutter and carpenter and glazier and plasterer and painter more work to call back the fire department and let the house burn, but that is not the way to house the houseless. Extravagance is wasteful destruction of property.

"It is insisted upon both moral and economic grounds that no public benefit of any kind arises from the existence of a rich idle class. Their incomes must be paid, though inconsistent with the public good. To illustrate, the London and Southwestern railroad contemplated a reduction of fares in cars of the third-class. It was defeated because it might reduce the dividends. The poor could not be relieved lest it should reduce the incomes of the idle."—Ruskin.

That family is happy and prosperous in which every member contributes personally his portion to its support and comfort. That condition affords the highest measure of relief for all. It is unfortunate if there should be an idler in the home who, as a parasite, feeds on the industry of the others; it is a double misfortune if that idler proves a spendthrift to waste the thrifty gatherings of the diligent. The same economic principles make it necessary for the highest good of every individual in the community that each shall contribute his personal part. "If any will not work neither shall he eat." If any insist upon eating and yet will not work, it imposes an oppressive burden on others to compel them to supply his table.

Again: The limiting of production is a hardness to the poor. Their welfare requires the largest possible product along every line of human needs. Over-production is a term of the trade and means only that the supply has become so great that it cannot be sold at prices satisfactory to the trade. But as the prices fall the market broadens. Consumption increases with the increasing abundance, and that which it was not possible for certain classes to enjoy now comes within their reach and may become possible to even the poorest. There never can be an over-supply of fruits and vegetables and grains and meats and shoes and clothes and salt and oil and fuel and houses until the wants of the poorest are supplied. Their welfare requires that there shall be no restraining of the supply until they come out of their huts into houses; until they can shed their rags and dress in clothes both comfortable and attractive; until their tables are supplied with nutritious food; until they have the means of discovering and cultivating their aesthetic nature by shaking off the repellant conditions in which they are mostly compelled to live.

The practice of usury restrains the supply by freeing so large a part of the people from the necessity of active productive effort by the incomes from their properties. Many born to wealth have never felt the necessity, and have never made an effort nor turned a thought along productive lines. The world has lost all that they might have added to the world's supply for human needs. Many, who have been successful in accumulation early in life, retire from active work while yet in full vigor, because they are relieved of the necessity by the income of usury or increase, and the most valuable portion of their lives is lost to the world.

Production is further limited by the demand that it shall yield an increase on the property employed. The shop is shut down when the goods cannot be sold at such a price as to pay a satisfactory profit on the investment. The shop stands idle until the stock is depleted and the demand raises the price of the goods and then the shop is again opened. The workmen could go on with their work, supplying the world with their goods, bringing the price down until within the reach of the poorest, but it is the owner of the shop that holds the key and demands that the supply shall be so far restrained that the price shall yield a satisfactory increase on the property.

Inventions and improved tools are a blessing to the poor when they make labor so productive that they can enjoy results of labor that could not be enjoyed by them before. They are not a blessing when used to gain an increase on wealth by employing less labor. Their proper use is to make labor more productive; their perverted use is to make property more profitable.

There is a natural restraint by the law of supply and demand when all needs are so supplied that there is no longer a sufficient compensation to the producer; but it is a perverted and unrighteous restraint to place property between productive labor and human needs and demand a reward for it before these human needs shall be satisfied. There is an utter want of pity for the poor in permitting them to go unhoused, unfed and unclothed, unless there shall be a profit by increase in supplying their wants. True benevolence requires that labor shall be made so effective as to fill every human need, but pure selfishness uses property to supply the need for a gain. This restraint for an increase on property is oppression of the poor for a price.



CHAPTER XXVI.

USURY OPPRESSES THE POOR—Continued.

The influence of any act is not limited to the person acting. The righteous act of a righteous man blesses himself and his generation and generations yet unborn. So the influence of a wrong act is not limited to the wrong-doer, but extends to others and is harmful to those who had no voluntary part in the act. Though the wrong be a personal habit and the sinner be himself the greatest sufferer, yet it is impossible to avoid causing distress to others who are themselves innocent.

Equity between those who participate in a wrong does not make a wrong act righteous. Thieves may be just among themselves, in the division of the spoils secured from others, but that does not make them upright men, nor does it make their business honest. If it were possible to preserve equity between the borrower and the lender upon usury, yet that would not justify the act nor remove the evil. The collection of their profits, which they divide equitably among themselves, imposes a burden upon others who have no part in the transaction. Their satisfactory agreement does not make the transaction less detrimental to the general good. It may the rather partake of the nature of a conspiracy against the public welfare.

The promoter of an enterprise on borrowed capital is practically but the agent of the lender. He may be the director and manager but he so conducts his undertaking as to gather the usury from others. When the opportunities for profitable investments become rare, and money accumulates and is lying idle, such promoters with their schemes are encouraged in order to gain a profit on the investment, though others suffer by it.

There lies upon this table a booklet, written in 1841, which charges and proves complicity between the bankers and brokers of New York at that time. The bankers loaned the brokers the money which they reloaned at very high rates. The banks refused accommodations to those in pressing need, compelling them to go to the brokers and to submit to their extortionate demands.

Though there may be an equitable arrangement between the owner of property and his broker and between the broker and his promoter, yet in the last analysis it will be found that this equitable arrangement, in its ultimate result, is of the nature of a conspiracy to compel the innocent poor to pay the profits of both; their consent is not first secured nor do they gain a single advantage and they are helpless to resist.

Though the transaction may have been between the rich, a rich lender and a rich borrower, yet the final result is that the interest is paid by the poor. In Calvin's letter of apology he supposes a case of equity between a rich land owner who is in need of ready money and the man who has money to buy a farm, but instead lends to his rich landlord and takes a mortgage. In this case the tenants of the borrower must pay the interest and finally the principal also. This increases the hardness of their hard lot. Though Calvin seems to appreciate the severe conditions of the ordinary tenant in his day, yet he fails to recognize that the very illustration he gives would result in greater oppression.

When one entrusts his money to a broker for investment he does not come in contact with those who earn the interest. It may pass through a number of agents and the source from which the interest is drawn is not regarded. When one entrusts his money to the "Security Co." in their great building, surrounded by all appearances of unlimited wealth, it is not realized that the interest returned is wrung from the poor. Money does not lie in the vaults. It is loaned to others who as agents do collect or gather from the poor. A loan is made to a milling company and the interest is gathered from all who buy their flour. A loan is made to a landlord and he collects the usury from his tenants. A loan is made to a street car company and increase is collected from the employes and from every rider. A loan is made to a merchant and he collects from his customers.

It is easy to see who pay the interest when we make a common pawnbroker our agent and see in his dingy rooms the evident distress and needs of his callers. Many shrink from his oppressions who are deceived by the splendid surroundings of the "Security Co." But the interest is exacted from the same class as truly by one as by the other.

Usury oppresses the poor by raising the price of all that he consumes. Without being consulted and without the power of resistance he must pay tribute to property for the very necessities of life.

He lives in a rented house. The owner has placed a mortgage on this house and the tenant must pay the interest and more in his rental or be ejected. The bread he must have is from wheat raised on mortgaged land and the interest must be met in the price of wheat. The mill is mortgaged in which it is ground and the interest must be paid in the increased price of flour. The railroad is bonded and the interest on the bonds must be paid in the price of its transportation, and the merchant has a loan to enable him to do business and the interest on this loan must be met in the increase of the profits on flour and all other goods he handles. By usury a tribute is levied on his bread from the wheat in the field until it reaches his tables.

In the same way he pays interest in the price of his meat, which is raised on a mortgaged farm, transported over a bonded railroad, dressed in a mortgaged abattoir and sold by a dealer doing business on borrowed capital.

The same is true of his clothes; a first tribute must be paid to property by the raw cotton or wool, then the transportation and the factory and the merchant, in addition to the compensation for their services, must meet also the interest upon their loans, and the whole is summed up in the price the poor man must pay. He has no option in the matter; he has no alternative, no method by which he can escape. The same is true with regard to his fuel and his light.

The same is true with regard to car fares. In every ride he pays an enormous tribute to invested wealth. The writer made a careful estimate of the accounts of a car line in a small city where the number of riders bore small comparison with the crowded cars of any metropolis. When the cost of maintenance of the plant, including the wear and tear and all repairs, and the cost of operation, covering all current expenses, including taxes, were compared with the receipts from the patrons of the road, it was found that less than two cents per passenger was necessary to pay these charges and that three cents had gone to pay the interest on the enormous bonded indebtedness and dividends on the inflated stock.

The wage-earner, the pensioner and every person living upon an annuity or fixed income from any source, must thus pay usury or interest on obligations they never incurred. A large portion of their living is thus taken from them, and under a system of general usury they have no way of avoiding it. They must pay an enormous tribute to property in providing the common necessaries of life.

Usury lowers the poor man's wages. The owners of property forbid its use until such a concession is made by the laborer as they may demand for the material and tools of production. Those who will use them and give the owner the highest return for their use secure the work, i.e., those who will bid the labor the lowest, who will use the tools and work up the material the cheapest.

The demand of capital has come to absorb a large portion of the produce of labor. In 1890 the wage-earners created a value of $3,579,168,172 and received out of it wages amounting to $1,981,228,321, leaving in the hands of the employers $1,687,939,851. Labor thus received a little less than 53 per cent. of its product. In 1900 the wage-earners created a value of $4,640,784,931 and received out of it wages amounting to $2,323,407,257, leaving in the hands of employers $2,317,377,674. The employers and employes divided labor's product so evenly that the difference does not amount to one-eighth of one per cent.

The decade 1890 to 1900 has been of unprecedented prosperity to capital, but the advantages to labor have not appeared. When the number of laborers at the beginning and the close of the decade are considered the annual income of the wage-earner at the close of the decade is actually $7 per year less than ten years ago.

The tribute to property must first be gained, the wages are secondary. If the tribute is not paid the enterprise is regarded as not successful and the industry closes.

There is no protection for the laborer except the selfishness of capitalists themselves in competition to secure the services of labor. But the selfish strife has rather resulted in the combination of their capital to dispense with labor or to cause the same labor to produce more by the employment of more capital. The effect is to give employment to capital rather than to labor. If labor can be dispensed with by borrowing more capital, then a loan is secured and the laborer is dismissed. Thus capital is made to crowd out the laborer and gains for itself his reward. This diminishes the call for labor and increases the number of the unemployed and they become competitors for the privilege of working. The opportunities for labor becoming fewer, the strife for work becomes fiercer. The laborer is helpless to resist, as his wants do not stop; his family must be fed and clothed and housed. The struggle is unequal between "flesh and blood" and a material thing that, by a false economy, is given not only the power of self-support but also continuous increase. For this reason combinations of laborers never have been and never can be successful in a conflict with capital. So long as the false principle is admitted, all efforts must fail. So long as it is granted that property has earning power, the effort will be made by the owners of property, and always successfully made, to have property receive the larger portion of the reward. The true order will be reversed; the laborer will be given a mere subsistence while the increase will be claimed for the capital; the very opposite of the true order, the mere preservation or subsistence of the capital, while all the increase belongs to the laborers.



CHAPTER XXVII.

USURY OPPRESSES THE POOR—Continued.

Usury makes it possible to impose on the poor the principal burden of taxation. Though taxes are levied upon property it is a delusion to think that those who own no property pay no taxes. By usury the taxes are easily slipped upon the poor.

If the tax levy is one per cent. on property then in a year the one hundred dollars has been decreased by one dollar and is but ninety-nine, unless that dollar has been supplied from other earnings of the owner. Thus vacant lots, jewels and hoarded stores are a burden to their owner. But when the property can add to itself an increase, then there need be no diminution of the amount, and no sacrifice is necessary on the part of the owner. If the wealth is placed in the form of a loan on mortgage on a house, the tenant in his rental pays the interest on that mortgage, which meets the tax and also yields a revenue to the owner, and leaves the wealth undiminished. The tenant earned the tax, and both property and owner are relieved. The mortgage may be upon a manufacturing plant, when the operatives pay the tax from their earnings.

The bonded debt of a city or state, in the ultimate result, is collected from the productive labor. To pay the interest and principal of the bonded debt of a city the tax levy is increased, and a greater proportionate amount of labor is appropriated. Laboring people without property are often amazed at the indifference of property holders when a great bonded debt is incurred, as both interest and principal are to be paid by a tax upon property. Those who make the loan to the city, and all who hold mortgages and dividend paying properties, are complacent because the taxes of a hundred years would never diminish their property a dollar, though the tax levy should be doubled. It would raise the interest on money, diminish the price of labor and raise the price of goods, but those who profit by the gain of usury are untouched by it.

Recently complaints were made by the tenants of one of the poor districts of London because their rentals had been greatly increased. The reply of the landlord was direct and clear: "You have voted for public improvements and now you must pay for them."

The same is true of the interest and principal of the national debt. The revenue is raised from a levy upon importations, as, for example, tea, the tax on which is ten cents per pound. The tax is collected from the importer and by him attached to the price for which it is sold to the wholesale dealer and by him attached to the price he charges the retail dealer and by him the amount is collected from the consumer. Sufficient notice is usually given that the importer and the dealers may dispose of all their goods before the tariff is removed. A public announcement of such a purpose was recently made in reference to the tax upon tea.

The tax collected from the consumer is far heavier than the mere levy of the government. The importer demands a profit on the amount of revenue tax he has paid as well as on the amount he pays for the goods. This results in greatly increasing the burdens of the poor. The revenue tax recently imposed by Great Britain of three pence per cwt. on wheat and five pence per cwt. on flour resulted immediately in the addition of one penny to the price of the four-pound loaf to the consumers.

Again: This attributing to property the quality of self-perpetuation and increase has led to its incorporation and in a manner separation from those who own it. Property must always have an owner.

Personality must always come in else there are no rights to be considered. Labor apart from a person laboring and property apart from a person owning are impersonal and no ethical or moral laws can be applied to them. They are only physical forces and material things. The wind may push against a tree and overcome its resistance and the tree falls. That is merely an abstract force against a material thing. But when my energy is exerted against your tree and destroys it, then personal responsibility and personal rights must be considered. A righteous adjustment between labor and capital can never be arrived at without the consideration of the personal elements on both sides. The moral and ethical laws must be applied as well as the physical and economic.

Incorporated property, however, has eliminated from it the ethical and moral responsibility of personality and is regarded as possessed only of economic and physical qualities and restrained only by legal statutes.

Incorporated properties are not generally managed by those who own them. The managers are employed by the owners, who are ready to pay large compensation to those who have the tact and brain and nerve power and peculiar quality of conscience to gain for them a satisfactory increase. It is their work to press this irresponsible material body up against "flesh and blood."

The incorporation employs the laborer when his labor earns a satisfactory dividend on the capital, and lays him off or discharges him whenever it seems most to the advantage of the investment. A plant is built and operated for a time and then the plant is closed, or the location is changed without the slightest regard to the sacrifices of the poor laborers who have gathered around and are left stranded.

Laborers everywhere throughout Christendom need and beg for a Sabbath of rest, but neither physical needs nor conscientious scruples are regarded when a greater dividend can be gained in seven days than in six.

On the part of the workman, resistance is useless. He can do nothing but yield to the economic and physical force managed by those in whom human sympathy and pity for the suffering and helpless are not permitted. The dividend must be gained though it be necessary to grind the poor.

The owner of this steel plant is in a distant city. All employes, from the manager down to the porter, must so serve that he shall receive the dividend. This mercantile house is owned by a woman on a pleasure trip round the world. All who are connected with this business must so serve and sacrifice that she shall receive her income regularly. This railroad is owned by those who have gone a-yachting in southern seas. It must be so managed that the revenues shall not fail whatever the sacrifice required of others.

The writer once heard an American statesman, who afterward became President of the United States, deliver an elaborate and carefully prepared oration on a great occasion, in which he discussed the growing power and controlling influence in state and national affairs of incorporations. He did not formulate a remedy but said, "The problem to be solved by the next generation is, how shall the people be protected against the encroachments of incorporated wealth?" It need scarcely be said that there was no discussion of that question during the campaign which closed with his election to the presidency.

Usury is both the basis of the incorporation and the instrument of its oppression. Incorporated wealth must not be permitted to claim personal rights and yet escape personal responsibility. It must be held to the same ethical and moral laws as the individual. Personal responsibility must not be eliminated from property. It must not be divested of personal responsibility and then pressed as a mere material thing up against "flesh and blood."

No instrument of oppression ever surpassed in severity the usury of incorporated wealth and retained the pretense of respectability. It is sucking the blood of the poor every hour, yet they cherish and pet the vampire, not realizing that it is their blood upon which it feeds.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

USURY OPPRESSES THE POOR—Concluded.

Usury increases its burdens in proportion to the poverty. It is the most oppressive upon the poorest. Property in any measure is a relief. However small the amount may be, to that degree it assists in bearing the burden. Those who have a home are relieved of the burden of usury by rent. Those who own their shops or farms on which they can employ their labor are relieved of the usury of tools and material. From the conditions now prevailing the burden of usury rests on all those, the half of whose income is the product of their own labor. The one who receives one-half his income from the interest on property and one-half from his own labor has no advantage from usury. The income of his labor would bring him as many of the comforts of life as his labor now does, plus the income from his property. There is no advantage until a greater part of the income is derived from property. A small savings account, adding a few dollars annually to the income, is a very small offset to the constant drain from usury in all that we buy and upon all our earnings. The full burden however is upon those who have nothing but their own productive energy; who receive only wages and must buy in the market. As the relief afforded by property decreases, the oppressive burden of usury in present conditions increases.

It is a fair estimate that usury is oppressive until relieved by the income from property to the amount of one-half of the entire income received. When less, the oppression begins and leans its full weight and without pity upon the poorest and most helpless.

He that has no property is dependent upon others for employment and in his wages must give a part of his product as tribute to the capital he uses. This, in the case of the average wage earner in this country, is not less than one-third, that is, he who earns one dollar and a half will receive as wages one dollar, the other half dollar is retained by the employer as due for the capital invested. Then having no home he must pay tribute to property in shelter for himself and family. The rent will be higher in proportion to the poverty of the apartments. The poorest tenement returns the highest rate of interest to the landlord.

His decreased wages do not make the necessities of life proportionately cheap to him. He pays usury in the price of the fuel which he burns, of the oil, gas or electric light in his home. In the price of vegetables, bread and clothes and shoes. There is an increased outgo at every turn which he cannot avoid. He is helpless to resist.

He can but struggle staggering along while work is given and his health and strength remain. When these fail he falls and must become entangled in debt, from which there is no hope of being able to extricate himself.

The state recognizes the hopelessness of the poor man who is in debt and has provided a relief by bankruptcy, by which he may again arise and struggle on. This discharge in bankruptcy is an act of mercy but the relief from the oppressions of usury would be an act of justice. Grinding the helpless poor between low wages and high prices and then relieving them by the act of bankruptcy is only pulling them out of the mill to throw them into the hopper again, for the wage earner who has no protection from any property is between these upper and nether mill stones.

Those who defend the fraud of usury always take to cover behind the widow and the fatherless. They plausibly pretend to be zealous for their protection while endeavoring to hide their own greed. Their pleas are often touchingly pathetic. "A thrifty loving father was taken away by death from a dear wife and sweet little ones. They had always leaned on his strong arms. He was their joy, their protector and their support. This widow and her fatherless children are left with nothing to support them except the saved hard earnings of this husband's life. As these earnings are their only support they are deposited with care with the 'Security Co.' for safety and that the regular interest dues may be received without fail. If there should be one failure they would suffer. The 'Security Co.' loan their deposits as opportunity offers. They take some local mortgages and also some mortgages on western lands. They buy some bonds of a milling trust and also of a railroad and street car line and some national bonds and loan on personal security to local merchants and traders. From all these sources the interest is regularly collected and regularly paid to this widowed mother, without which she and her little fatherless dear ones must suffer. 'Certainly,' they say 'usury is not oppressive to the widow and the fatherless. Usury comes to the help of the helpless.'"

Another faithful industrious father was taken away from his wife and his little ones. He had been their stay and support. He was sober and thrifty but sickness and untoward conditions made accumulations impossible. When he, the head of the home, was taken away there was nothing for the support of these helpless little ones and their widowed mother but her own arms and head and heart. There was no time for sentiment and tears. These little ones must be sheltered and their hungry mouths must be fed. Restraining her grief, she bravely undertakes the heavy task.

She rents a room but the rental is high, for the interest must be paid on a mortgage held by the Security Co. She finally finds a shop where she secures employment but the wages are low, for the shop is heavily mortgaged to the Security Co. and the interest must be paid or the shop will be closed and even this opportunity for scant wages will be lost. The distance requires that she shall ride to her work but the round trip costs two nickels and one of them goes to the Security Co. for interest on their bonds and stock. She buys a loaf of bread but the wheat was raised on a western farm mortgaged to the Security Co. and the interest was charged up against the wheat. The wheat was floured in a trust mill and the interest on the Security Co. bonds were charged up against the flour. It was transported by a railroad that charged up against it the interest on the bonds held by the Security Co. It was baked in a mortgaged oven and handled by a local dealer doing business on capital he had borrowed of the Security Co. How much of her bread money went for interests is an intricate problem. She only notices that her loaf is small.

The same oppressive tribute must be paid on all that she buys to feed and clothe herself and her little ones.

The first widow does not live upon the earnings of her husband. They are untouched at the end of a year nor diminished as the years pass. By the operation of usury she has lived upon the hard earnings of this poor widow. The laborers on the western farms contributed to her support in decreases of wages; the operatives of the railways, the workmen in the mill, the baker and merchant all contribute a portion, but it cannot be denied that the heaviest burden comes upon the poorest. The rich widow has fed her children with the bread which the poor widow earned.

The flaunting sympathy for the poor of those who themselves feed upon them, is rank hypocracy. Nor can those who have grown fat by the practice of usury, condone the crime by tossing back to them a portion of the unjust gain.

"Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul?... Is not this the fast that I have chosen?... To undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free?... Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?"



CHAPTER XXIX.

USURY CENTRALIZES WEALTH.

The dictum of Bacon that "Usury gathers the wealth of the realm into few hands" is readily proven and fully verified in the experience of these times. The tendency to centralization under a system of usury or interest-taking is so strong, and the modern result so apparent that the statement only is necessary.

Usury not only enslaves the borrower and oppresses the poor who are innocent of all debt, but it also affects the rich by gathering the wealth of the wealthy into fewer and fewer hands. There is a centralizing draft that threatens and then finally absorbs the smaller fortunes into one colossal financial power. It is as futile to resist this as to resist fate. Wealth cannot be so fortified and guarded as to successfully resist the attack of superior wealth when the practice of usury is permitted. The smaller and weaker fortune, using the same weapon as the larger and stronger, must inevitably be defeated and overcome, and ultimately absorbed.

Rates of interest do not affect the ultimate result. Under a high rate the gathering is rapid, under a low rate the accretions are slower, but the gathering into few hands is none the less sure. Rates of interest only place the convergent center at a nearer or more remote period.

If any interest is right, compound interest is right. When simple interest is due and paid, it may be loaned to another party, and thus the usurer secures interest upon his interest, though not from the same debtor. When the interest is to be paid annually, it is to be assumed, if not paid, that the debtor takes it as a loan in addition to the face of the note of his obligation. This saves the care of receiving and re-loaning to another. The custom of usurers, however, is to renew the note, adding the interest to the face, if unpaid. The mass of bank paper is renewed each ninety days: Compounded four times a year, whether to the same or to another debtor, the result in accretion is the same.

Few realize the rapidity at which a loan increases, accelerating in geometrical progression as time passes. Any loan will double itself at three per cent. in twenty-three and a half years; at seven per cent. in ten and a fourth years, and at ten per cent. in seven and a third years. One dollar loaned for one hundred years, at three per cent., would amount to nineteen dollars; at seven per cent. one thousand dollars, and at ten per cent. thirteen thousand.

The island upon which New York stands was bought from the Indians for the value of twenty-four dollars by Peter Minuits in 1626. Yet, if the purchaser had put his twenty-four dollars at interest, where he could have added it to the principal at the rate of seven per cent., the accumulation would now exceed the total value of the entire city and county of New York.

M. Jennet quotes the elaborate calculation of an ingenious author to show that 100 francs ($20) accumulating at five per cent. compound interest for seven centuries, would be sufficient to buy the whole surface of the globe, both land and water, at the rate of 1,000,000 francs ($200,000) per hectare (nearly four square miles). From this we can gather that $20 at five per cent. compound interest for 700 years, would buy all the earth, mountains, and swamp lands, and water, at $80 per acre.

Another mathematical genius says, had one cent been loaned on the first day of January A.D. 1, interest being allowed at the rate of six per cent. compounded yearly, then 1895 years later—that is on January 1, 1895—the amount due would be $8,497,840,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (8,497,840,000 decillions). If it were desired to pay this in gold, 23.2 grains to the dollar, then taking spheres of pure gold the size of the earth, it would take 610,070,000,000,000,000 to pay for that cent. Placing these spheres in a straight row, their combined length would be 4,826,870,000,000,000,000 miles, a distance which it would take light (going at the rate of 186,330 miles per second) 820,890,000 years to travel.

The planets and stars of the entire solar and stellar universe, as seen by the great Lick telescope, if they were all in solid gold, would not nearly pay the amount. A single sphere to pay the whole amount, if placed with its centre at the sun, would have its surface extending 563,580,000 miles beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune, the farthest in our system.

It may be added that if the earth had contained a population of ten billions, each one making a million dollars a second, then to pay for that cent it would have required their combined earnings for 26,938,500,000,000,000,000,000 years.

Anyone can figure on this and see if it be correct.

Had Peter only thought to put one cent at interest, there would be no call now for Peter's pence.

With any accretion allowed, the concentration of wealth is irresistible. However small the amount of capital, if permitted to grow at any rate of increase it will ultimately absorb everything. Any finite quantity permitted any finite rate of increase, will, in finite time, gather all that is less than infinite.

The only difficulty in this accretion is to secure debtors that will not die. We inherit the property of our fathers, but fortunately we do not inherit their personal debts. This difficulty is being overcome by bonds of corporations and nations that live on, though the individuals composing them may, age after age, pass away. This makes the increase perpetual. Generations may come and go, but the concentration of wealth goes uninterruptedly on.

This is not visionary theory, but is shown in the practical results everywhere apparent.

The usurers of England, a little over two hundred years ago, secured a charter for a bank on the condition that they loan the crown or government 1,200,000 pounds sterling, about six million dollars.

This was a perpetual loan, never to be repaid, but annual interest at eight per cent. was to be paid by the government forever. This constant annual interest paid to this bank has made it such a financial power that it reaches and draws to itself of the resources of all lands. The aggregated wealth of the institution, if the accretions were continuous, would now be $25,165,824,000,000. The wealth of the United Kingdom is estimated at fifty billions, and all Europe two hundred billions, the United States seventy billions, and the whole world's wealth at five hundred billions.

Were the accretions of the bank at eight per cent. undisturbed and unconsumed, it would now take fifty worlds as rich as ours to pay that debt. It is sometimes wondered how there can be such an accumulation of wealth in one institution as to control the finances of the world.

It is often attributed to superior wisdom or some profound, occult manipulation. It is but the natural operation of the principle of interest—accretion from age to age.

The managers may be stupid dolts, only so they do not interfere with the usurious principle in its eternal pull on the resources of mankind.

The interest bearing debt of the United States, at this date, is about one thousand millions. This in one hundred years at six per cent. would amount to $340,000,000,000; five times the whole present wealth of the nation.

The smallest national bank organized, by the deposit of $25,000 of bonds yielding two per cent. interest, and permitted to re-loan the same funds to its private customers at eight per cent., could gather to itself in one hundred years, $345,225,000.

The wealth of an individual or of a family may also grow with the years as they pass. The property may be in public bonds or that of incorporations, requiring no care or effort on their part, yet it may be continually increasing. A usurer in any community in one life comes to absorb the wealth of that community, though the amount loaned at the beginning was small.

The accretions are the irresistible result of the principle of usury.

The wealth is more and more centralized as the years pass. Great trees in the forest shadow the smaller, and rob them of the sunshine and moisture until they perish. Great fish in the crowded pond feed upon the smaller. Individual manufacturers are absorbed by the great combinations called trusts. The stockholders of a railroad are absorbed by those who have large and controlling interest. But the railroad is itself absorbed by another yet greater corporation, and this again by a great combine that eliminates the influence of all but the chief control, and tends to a complete centralization of all the systems.

There is no escaping from this centralizing draft upon all resources, when the system of interest-taking is as general as now. Freedom from personal debt does not deliver us. The farmer, the most independent of men, in his own home, free from personal debt, yet must contribute to this centralizing by paying interest on bonds in every shipment of produce, and every mile of railroad travel. He pays tribute also in all the tools that he buys, in the food that he eats and the clothes that he wears.

This centralizing draft is constant, though not always equally apparent. Certain favorable conditions may hold in check, for a time, the adverse influence and cause a temporary distribution of wealth to the producers. Its force is not, however, destroyed, but only restrained for a time, and then draws with accumulated power.

Times of industrial depression and commercial disasters are occurring over and over again. Some economists attribute them to the peculiar industrial and monetary conditions of the periods in which they occur; but they have seldom agreed as to the causes of any particular panic. They are so regular in their recurrence that some economists have thought they must be produced by some constant cause; like the moon causing the tides of the ocean. Both are true. There is a general and there is also a secondary or superficial cause.

The times of greatest commercial disasters in this country were in the years 1809, 1818, 1837, 1873, 1893.

The political economists can assign as reasons some peculiar conditions prevailing in each of these periods, but the wisest have never gone deep enough to discover the general cause; this constant centralizing draft of usury.

In these periods of commercial disaster there is no destruction of property. There is only a general shake up and redistribution. All the wealth of the country remains, but after the disaster wealth is always found to be in fewer hands. Some have become rich, many who were thought to be wealthy are ruined, and the number of the poor has been multiplied.

A patient may be afflicted with some deep-seated, chronic disease that makes him very easily affected by a change of the weather, by a change of his diet or of his bed, and these may be assigned as the causes of his frequent relapses, and they are the immediate or secondary causes, but the real cause is the deep-seated, chronic disease. Cure that disease and the changes in conditions, now so serious, would not be noticed by the healthy man.

The real and constant cause of our recurring financial disasters is this centralizing usury that directly opposes the distribution of wealth that is natural, when the producers of wealth are permitted to receive and enjoy it. Root out this evil, and then the trifling differences in our harvests, changes in our tariff laws, currency legislation, and the score of other things that now affect us, would be unfelt by the healthy body politic.

If this centralizing power is destroyed then the natural distribution would be undisturbed, and these, so-called, panics would be unknown.



CHAPTER XXX.

MAMMON DOMINATES THE NATIONS.

The debt habit has been diligently cultivated and encouraged, until the nations are enslaved. Public bonds imply bondsmen, and the nations are no longer free. There is a mortgage upon the inventive genius, industry and productive energy of the world.

Usurers greatly prefer an organized government as a debtor. The individual may die, but a nation's debts bind from age to age, are bequeathed by the fathers to the children, and thus descend from generation to generation. The bonds of no corporation, however great and rich, can be so secure. They embrace special industries, while national debts are a claim upon every industry and a mortgage upon every foot of soil, and every dollar of present personal property, and of all that may be produced in the whole realm.

If we express the world's indebtedness, the national debts, in the terms of our currency, as nearly as we can reduce the currency of other nations to such an expression, we find the national debts as follows, in 1890:

Denmark $ 33,004,722 Great Britain 3,848,460,000 United States 915,962,112 Germany 1,956,217,017 Austria-Hungary $2,666,339,539 France 4,446,793,398 Russia 3,491,016,074 Italy 2,324,826,329 Spain 1,251,433,096 Netherlands 430,539,653 Belgium 360,504,099 Sweden 64,220,807 Norway 13,973,752 Portugal 490,493,599 Greece 107,306,518 Turkey 821,000,000 Switzerland 10,912,925 ———————- These debts aggregate $22,955,386,008

Hundreds of millions have been added to these national debts in the last ten years. Nearly every nation has increased its indebtedness, possibly no nation has decreased it, and others, like China, with its recent great loan, and little Korea, with its twelve millions, must be added to the list. The debts of the nations of Europe have been increased until they now amount in the aggregate to twenty-three billions. The debts of the nations of all the world have increased one-half since 1890, and now aggregate thirty-three billions.

These great national debts are practically perpetual, and though they may be at so low a rate of interest as three per cent., they absorb the energies of the people, and, like a glacier grinding over the earth, crush all beneath them.

Public debts are incurred to relieve the present wealth of the burden of present duty. Debts place the whole burden on producers of the future. They relieve those who hold the wealth now, but are a draft upon those who make the wealth that is to be.

An individual incurring debt places a mortgage upon his productions; by a pledge of future production he relieves himself of the strain of the present.

A family incurs debt; a part of the members of the house are strong and capable of productive labor, and a part are not; the whole burden of the payment comes upon the productive members of the home. The weak and helpless and the indolent, though strong, bear no part of the burden. This family has a home, and a mortgage is placed upon it to secure the present needs. The burden of paying the interest on this mortgage, and the final payment of the principal, is wholly on the capable and industrious members of the family.

National debts are incurred to relieve the present wealth of the burden of present government calls and obligations, and to roll it upon those who shall produce wealth in the future. So the debt of a city, state, or nation is a present relief to property holders, by placing the producers under future obligations.

A street in a city is to be paved; no additional tax is levied; but bonds are issued running twenty years.

This relieves the present wealth of the burden, placing it upon those who shall produce the wealth that shall be in twenty years.

The expenses of a great war must be met. Present taxes may be slightly increased, but to meet the burden consols or public bonds are issued to be paid at a distant date. This relieves the present wealth, but binds it upon those who shall be the producers of wealth in the generations to come. Hume says, "The practice of contracting debts will almost invariably be abused by every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit with every banker, than to empower statesmen to draw bills in this manner on posterity."

These public bonds are the golden opportunity of the usurers. Not only is their wealth relieved of all burden, but it affords an opportunity of profitable investment with the best possible debtor. They can pose as enterprising citizens, and urge great public improvements, and at the same time gain a most sure and profitable investment. They can pose as patriots in time of war, and urge that it be pressed with energy at whatever cost of treasure and blood. It is not their blood that is shed, nor their wealth that is wasted. It gives them the opportunity of binding their burdens on the nation for the producers of the coming generations to carry.

Usurers never wish public debts paid. They wish them issued for as long time as possible, and then reissued, or the time extended before they are due. This is done by the figment called refunding, as if it were a concession and favor to a poor debtor. It is but a device to keep the burden on the public back. It is not a financial feat and triumph for the chancellor of the exchequer to refund a public debt. He but yields himself as a tool to the usurers to continue their loans. They resist the payment when due, but when an officer is found willing to extend them before they are due all trouble is avoided and the accretions of interest are not interrupted for a day.

Those who hold the bonds of a nation direct its destinies. The nation borrowing is servant to the lender, just as an individual. The nation compromises its freedom and becomes the slave of its bond-holders. The usurers use their power for the advancement of their own material interests, and hold all other purposes of government as inferior to their own ends. This subordination of a people, to the creditors, is fatal to republican and constitutional governments; the form may be preserved for a time, but the substance of free government has departed.

The concentration of wealth carries with it the concentration of power, and is inimical to republican institutions. A proper distribution of wealth and power must be preserved or popular government is put in jeopardy.

The first bank of deposit and discount was the Bank of Venice, in the republic of Venetia. It continued its existence for six hundred years, until the government that gave it life itself perished. From its long continuous business, and its success as a bank, it has been spoken of in every work on banking as a model. It began its association with the republic in 1171, and dominated it, sapping its life, and assuming its functions, until the bank practically ruled the state, and when one fell both perished in 1797. The usurers received their hold on the state in a time of the greatest need. The republic had been impoverished by the crusades, and was in dire financial straits. Advantage was taken of this by the usurers to so bind the bank and state together that when one lived the other must, or both must die together. Stock in the bank was a loan to the state at four per cent. annual interest. The union seemed to promise great prosperity for a time, but really absorbed all the republic's vitality during the last hundred years of their life.

Venetia was at the first a pure democracy. The Doge was elected by the people and administered the government, himself being the responsible head. He, later, chose advisers, or a cabinet, to be associated in the responsible duties. After this, and about the time of the association with the bank, a representative council was elected by the people, and the government was administered by the Doge and this council. This was gradually transformed from a government of the people to an oligarchy; and as the years passed there were no steps taken toward a return, but the authority and power was more and more centralized. The ruling class was, in a hundred years, limited to those families enrolled in the "Golden Book." In another hundred years the government was in control of the "Council of Ten." Later the secret tribunal of three was the terror of the people and the instrument of their oppression. The republic was only such in name, the people were deprived of all voice in the government, and the Doge became a puppet to obey the ruling cabal.

Shakespeare went to Venice to find his typical usurer in Shylock the Jew. He found there also his typical Christian, Antonio. Antonio was a benevolent great soul, who loved his friends, supported all benevolences, and hated the usurers. Shylock hated him because he would lend without interest, and was constantly reproving him for his usurious practice.

The contest between the usurers and the people of the Venetian republic was a struggle for the life, but the usurers never relaxed their hold. They dominated until the end.

Another great triumph of the usurers was in England at the time of great need. William and Mary had been placed upon the throne by the Protestants, but were in need of money to carry on the struggle for its complete establishment. This was the usurers' opportunity. Former kings, in like straits, had confiscated the wealth of the usurious Jews, Lombards and Goldsmiths, and appropriated their property as a penalty for their unchristian practice, but William and Mary entered into a contract with them to gain their assistance, giving them special privileges to secure a permanent loan. They were to loan the crown 1,200,000 pounds sterling. This was never to be repaid, but interest at the rate of eight per cent. per annum was to be paid forever. This loan was a marvel of success. There was a great rush of usurers to place their money with the crown as a perpetual loan at that rate of increase. Their usuries, which had hitherto been counted dishonest gain, were henceforth to be honorable, and they esteemed as patriots.

Thus, the first Protestant power in the world was established in the hands of usurers, and bound to continue associated with them forever. The story, by Macauley, of the establishment of the Bank of England, is familiar to all students of English history.

This bank is a great corporation; the Board of Directors is composed of twenty-six members, who elect their own successors, and thus it is entirely independent. It makes laws for its own direction in the name of the people or defies their control. In 1797 it secured an order from the privy council ordering itself to suspend specie payment. It obeyed its own order promptly, and at the same time announced their strength and that the order would be temporary; but for one excuse and another it was continued for twenty-five years.

Sir Robert Peel, in 1844, having become convinced of the dangerous and disastrous influence, expanding and contracting its loans, secured the enactment of a law to regulate and limit its circulation. This law was distasteful to the bank, and was, upon its enactment, defied by open disobedience. It has not only dictated the laws for its own regulation, but directed both the domestic and the foreign policy of the government. It has subordinated the public weal to financial profit. This corporation of usurers manage all the finances of the kingdom, and has more influence than Crown and Parliament combined. As a great uncrowned king it dictates the diplomatic policies of the United Kingdom. Its influence has not been extended to promote Protestant Christian faith, Jews are not zealous for any Christian sect; nor for the purpose of lifting up the degraded and enlightening them; nor in the east has it exercised its power to relieve human suffering, but its diplomatic policy has been mercenary greed always.

It should be noted that the enlightened Christian people of the United Kingdom are not the English government. There has been, for two hundred years, a power behind the Throne, behind Parliament, behind the people, essentially selfish and commercial. This has controlled India for profit, while the benevolent people were anxious to christianize and uplift. It has befriended the Turk while England wept over the Turkish barbarities. It forced opium upon China while the Christian people sent missionaries. The people of England love freedom, yet the government has endeavored to crush it in the American colonies and everywhere throughout the world, when in conflict with a selfish commercial policy. The English people cry out against human slavery, yet in the struggle in the United States, when slavery was in the balance, the English government earnestly espoused the cause of those who upheld slavery. The English people rejoiced that the slave trade in Africa was abolished, yet the government enacted the hut tax, and compels now the service of the young and vigorous blacks in the mines, sending them back to their people when their strength declines.

In the establishment of the republic of the United States there was a strong resistance to any debt or subordination to usurers. The history of banks in the United States shows a struggle at the birth of the nation between the usurers, who demanded the management of the finances, and the people who resisted. This struggle continued for half a century, when the people triumphed, and for thirty years there was no hint of a purpose to overthrow what was regarded as the settled policy of the nation.

The first bank was incorporated in 1791. Its establishment was strongly resisted, but being urged by the Secretary of the Treasury, a charter was granted for twenty years. When that charter expired by limitation in 1811, there was a struggle by the usurers to secure its renewal, but they were defeated. They did not, however, abandon their effort. In 1816 they secured the charter of the second bank of the United States. This charter was also limited to twenty years, expiring in 1836. There was a tremendous struggle for its renewal, but the chief executive, backed by a strong political party, so completely defeated it that the usurers for the time yielded, and for thirty years the settled policy of the government forbade the alliance with usurers and the making of any public debt. Many of the leading statesmen of that period were very pronounced in their opposition.

"The banking system concentrates and places the power in the hands of those who control it.

"Never was an engine invented better calculated to place the destines of the many in the hands of the few, or less favorable to that equality and independence which lies at the bottom of our free institutions."—J.C. Calhoun.

"I object to the continuance of this bank because its tendencies are dangerous and pernicious to the government and the people. It tends to aggravate the inequality of fortunes; to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer; to multiply nabobs and paupers, and to deepen and widen the gulf that separates Dives from Lazarus."—Thomas H. Benton.

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. I am not among those who fear the people. They and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debts."—Thomas Jefferson.

"Events have satisfied my mind, and I think the minds of the American people, that the mischief and dangers which flow from a national bank far overbalance all its advantages."—Andrew Jackson.

The usurers were compelled to remain under public condemnation during thirty years, as sentiment was strongly against them and conditions were not in their favor, but they did not relax their watchful effort nor abandon hope of ultimate success. When the nation was struggling to prevent its dissolution in 1861-5, and unusual war measures seemed necessary to meet the great emergency, the usurers saw their opportunity and came forward, as they did in Venice and England; they would loan the government the funds necessary to carry on the war, if the government would comply with their conditions and grant them the privileges demanded. They asked that their loan be perpetual, like the English loan; that they should be freed from the burdens of the government; that their loan should be free from taxation; that they should receive their interest semi-annually, and not in the common legal tender, but in coin; that they be permitted to issue their own notes as currency to be loaned to their customers; that the government discredit its own issues and endorse theirs; and that they be given a monopoly by taxing out of existence all opposition.

These were great demands, and were regarded as extortionate and oppressive. The struggle was severe, but the enemy in the field was threatening the life of the nation, while the usurers were urgent and posing as patriots, that they might accomplish their ends. True patriots, anxious to defeat the enemy in arms, regarded these usurers at home as equally the enemies of freedom. They were in a strait betwixt two foes.

Secretary McCullough said, "Hostility to the government has been as decidedly manifested in the efforts that have been made in the commercial metropolis of the nation to depreciate the currency as has been by the enemy."

The opposition to the usurers was very strong and bitter, but the conditions were in their favor and they gained a decided advantage. In the Senate the vote stood twenty-three yeas to twenty-one nays. It was carried only as a war measure. There was an effort to limit the usurers' privileges to the war and one year after its close. This was not successful, but their loan was confined to the war debt, and their time to its payment, limited to twenty years.

This action caused great distress and dark forebodings of evil to many of the thoughtful. It was setting aside the policy of the nation, which had been generally acquiesced in as wise and judicious and safe for many years. The old patriot Thadeus Stevens, in the opening of a speech in a preliminary skirmish between patriotism and usurers, said: "I approach the subject with more depression of spirits than I ever before approached any question. No personal motive or feeling influences me. I hope not, at least. I have a melancholy foreboding that we are about to consummate a cunningly devised scheme, which will carry great injury and great loss to all classes of people throughout the Union, except one." Later he said, in excuse of the action, "We had to yield, we did not yield until we found that the country must be lost or the banks gratified, and we have sought to save the country in spite of the cupidity of its wealthier classes."

The usurers have never relaxed the hold they secured by this victory, and have since been continually increasing their power. They obtained an extension or "refunding" of the war debt, and a renewal of their charters by the general laws, so their hold is indefinitely extended. Bonds are no longer limited to the covering of war expenses, but are issued freely in times of peace. The traditions of the fathers have been cast to the winds, and their fears derided and their policy changed. The usurers have been firmly in the saddle for many years, and have defeated every effort that has been made to unseat them.

The great debts of the nations have brought all mankind into subjection to the usurers. Those who hold the bonds have the destinies of the race in their hands. They pervert the ends of government; the protection of life, liberty and the highest good of all the people; they make governments their tools to gather and appropriate the earnings of the many.

They have exalted Mammon upon the throne of the world, and scoff at the God of heaven, who seeks the poor and needy, and who would in love lift up every son and daughter of the whole race.

Milton presents Mammon as one of the devils cast out of heaven with Satan, and as saying in the council of the demons, "What place can be found for us within heaven's bound, unless heaven's Lord we overpower?... How wearisome eternity so spent in worship paid, to one we hate."

The reign of Mammon subordinates character and virtue and liberty and human life to sordid gain, yet he holds the scepter of power.

He elects legislators and senators. He elects governors or directs their arrest if they refuse to obey him. He elects presidents and dictates their policies. He places kings on their thrones and holds them there while they do his bidding. He strips a Khedive of power, and yet retains him as a collector of revenue. He steadies the Sultan's tottering throne, and compels six great Christian powers to stand by in silence while humanity is outraged. The Armenian's blood must be permitted to flow because the persecution is by a great servant, the Sultan, who pays interest on bonds, and his victims are only freemen. The murder of one hundred thousand Armenians meant nothing to Mammon. But when the Cretans were persecuted by the same Sultan, the suffering and bloodshed was soon ordered stopped by these same six powers, at Mammon's command. The Cretans were servants of the common master; the Cretan bonds were endangered. The cry of suffering humanity came up to deaf ears, but the cry of endangered bonds was heard from afar by this reigning god of wealth.

The little republics of Africa were freemen, and therefore Mammon sees them strangled with indifference. Mammon gathers the civilized nations around China and demands that she shall be enslaved by all the bonds she can safely carry or submit to vivisection and distribution.

This enslavement of the race is not by the destroying of intelligence, nor by denying the first principles of civil liberty, nor by crushing the aspirations for freedom, but by producing conditions that make the application of these principles and the exercise of freedom impossible. Though the race may increase in intelligence and theoretically have correct views of personal freedom and civil liberty, yet the conditions produced necessarily by usury utterly prevent their realization. The intelligence and aspirations of the race never were higher than at present, their subjection and subordination to material wealth was never more complete.

The scepter wherein lies Mammon's power to sway the nations is usury. When bonds bear no increase his sovereignty is gone. All motive to involve the nation in debt at once disappears, and the power to control is lost. Moses' law was divinely wise that forbade interest, that his people could not be enslaved and might remain a free people forever.



CHAPTER XXXI.

EFFECT ON CHARACTER.

The greatest factor in life in all ages is not material wealth, nor social position, nor genius, nor education, but character. Since man is above things, the highest purpose is not the gathering of that beneath him, but the developing of the best and noblest that is in him.

The highest possible purpose and work is the developing of virtuous manhood.

This was the thought of our fathers when they came to these shores and built their homes and established the free institutions which we now enjoy. They sacrificed material advantages that they might be free men and secure for themselves and for their children the opportunity to reach in faith and practice the ideal manhood.

No material advantage can be regarded with favor that is detrimental to the characters of men. Position, wealth, education, are worse than worthless when associated with a corrupted manhood.

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."

The test of truth is its developing of the virtues and graces. Falsehood is detected by its quickening the vices that degrade and destroy. "By their fruits shall ye know them."

Virtues are linked together so that the promoting of one gives strength to the others. All vices are also so linked that the stimulating of one quickens other vices.

Virtues and vices are opposite, so that the encouraging of a vice or fault discourages the opposing virtue. When you discourage a virtue, you encourage a vice.

The old-fashioned virtues which our fathers prized, and which they regarded essential elements of worthy manhood, were industry, and honesty, and self-reliance, and brotherly sympathy, and the devout recognition of God's divine sovereignty.

1. Usury discourages industry and encourages idleness. The laborer is stirred to diligence when he gets good wages. When his wages are meager he becomes discouraged, relaxes his efforts and may abandon his work altogether. When he knows that he is receiving less than he is earning, and that a part of his earnings are appropriated by another, he is embittered and becomes indifferent. When he receives all he earns, and the more diligent he is in his work the more he receives, he is stimulated to the utmost.

This will be especially true if it is made impossible to secure a gain without earning it. The benefit of full wages may be largely lost by the knowledge of persons who, without productive effort, are appropriating the earnings of others. The influence of their easy, indolent lives may destroy or counteract the beneficent influence of good wages. The laborer may be led to despise his well-paid tasks and yearn for their ease, and thus become indolent.

One is encouraged to idleness when he discovers that he can secure his bread by the sweat of another's face. He is likely to relax his efforts if he does not forsake all personal productive occupations. He may give great care and the closest attention to the management of his wealth, loaning to others and collecting the increase, but not to productive industry.