Usury Part 23

"Well, if you wish," said Mr. Cooper, "I will discount your note at that rate for three years."

"Are you in earnest?" asked the would-be borrower.

"Certainly I am. I will discount your note for ten thousand dollars for three years at that rate. Will you do it?"

"Of course I will," said the merchant.

"Very well," said Mr. Cooper. "Just sign this note for ten thousand dollars, payable in three years, and give me your check for eight hundred dollars, and the transaction will be complete."

"But where is the money for me?" asked the astonished merchant.

"You don't get any money," was the reply. "Your interest for thirty-six months at three per cent. per month amounts to one hundred and eight per cent., or ten thousand eight hundred dollars. Therefore, your check for eight hundred dollars just makes us even."

There has come to this table, a letter recently sent by a wise uncle to his nephew, who sought from him his first loan. Usually the interest is minimized while the hopeful youth is permitted to indulge his dreams of fancied good, to be easily gained by a loan.

"My Near Nephew:

"I enclose a draft for forty dollars with a note for the amount to me, due in one year at six per cent., which please sign and return to me.

This is probably the first note that you have ever given, and there are one or two things about a note that maybe you have never discovered. One striking peculiarity is, that they always come due, though they are drawn for a year. It may seem a long time, but when you have a note come due at the end of the year it seems altogether too short and has gone before you are aware of it. Another peculiar thing is, that while interest is a little thing apparently, yet it never works on the eight-hour system, but continues steadily through the whole twenty-four, and through the whole seven days in the week.

Its about the most industrious animal of my acquaintance, working nights and Sundays as well, and apparently never becoming in the least fatigued, consequently, though it appears to be so slow, still if you do not watch it closely, the first thing you know you will be astonished at what an amount of work it has accomplished. There are other things equally striking about notes, but these two are the most important, and the ones I particularly wish to impress on your mind.

"_________________

"P.S.--Don't think from the tone of this that I'm not willing to let you have the money. I merely want to impress on you what it means to go in debt."

6. The evil was not hitherto so much felt. This, especially, is true in the United States. Great natural resources, unclaimed wealth, made the burden of a small debt unfelt. By appropriating the vast unbroken forests and untilled lands and unopened mines of precious metals, of coal and iron and gas and oil, there seemed such evident advantages from the borrowed capital that the evils were unnoticed, until these natural resources had been appropriated and were held in private hands, and the opportunities are found to be denied those who have come so closely after.

This system made it possible for one generation to grasp a continent; to grasp all its natural resources and hold them, and compel tribute from all that came after. Taking only a limited and short-time view, the advantages seemed great and the evils small. But looking at the welfare of the generations its evils might have been clearly discerned.

7. The evil was never before so great. The vast acc.u.mulations of wealth, so sure to follow the operation of usury, was. .h.i.therto unknown. Corporations, combinations for the handling of great interests, grasping the natural resources and monopolizing the natural wealth, gaining franchises covering a monopoly of privileges in transportation, light and communication by the telephone or telegraph, are comparatively recent.

8. The first appearance of indebtedness is a seeming, but false, prosperity. The young man who takes possession of a tract of land and then, with borrowed capital, improves it, building his house and his barns and his permanent buildings, and stocking it with animals that please his taste, has the appearance of abounding prosperity, but as the unending grind of usury continues, these, he comes to feel, are but weights to which he is chained, and in an agony of sweat he is compelled to wear out his life.

A city incurring debt is seemingly prosperous. Bonds are issued for the erection of attractive public buildings, for the paving of muddy streets, for the beautifying of public parks. These bond issues are signs of the prosperity of only one cla.s.s, the usurers. The ultimate burden is upon the laborers, who must pay every bond, interest and princ.i.p.al.

9. The opponents of usury have not always been wise. They have indulged in bitter invective rather than solid argument. The language of the fathers, especially, was unqualified in severity.

When the absurdity and unmitigated evil of usury is seen, and one feels that adequacy requires superlatives, it is not easy to restrain language and use mild terms. The divine prohibition was so clear and the effects so oppressive, especially to the poor, that it did not appear to the fathers to require argument. The divine authority was not, therefore, followed up with the economic basis or reasons for the prohibitions.

Usury crept in because it was not barred out by the sound reasoning of those who knew its evils. The vituperations were ignored as the rantings of ill-balanced minds.

10. Like every other wrong, it feeds upon itself. The very conditions it produces fosters and promotes its growth. At first directing effort and thought along material lines, ultimately the ideals become groveling. The purposes of a worthy life and the characteristics of a n.o.ble manhood are perverted. There comes a wrong idea of true greatness. There arises a false measure of manhood. That measure is wealth, and of all the grounds of distinction among men, wealth is the most sordid. Success is acc.u.mulation of wealth. Prosperity is getting rich. Whatever else a man may accomplish in life, if he remains poor he is accounted a failure. Yet to this pa.s.s, such a pa.s.s, have we come, that our national and age characteristic is that of material gain, commonly called commercialism. This was not the thought of our fathers who subordinated material gain to the development of n.o.ble manhood. This is a perversion of our American traditions, and is a menace to better development of the individual and of the state.

11. Wrong laws mislead the judgment and pervert the conscience. If there is a want of harmony between the moral and statute law when selfish interests are served, the moral law will be ignored. State laws ease the conscience that would be otherwise troubled. The rate of usury fixed by a state is used as a moral guide. When the legal rate is six per cent. it is wrong to take eight, but when the legal rate is ten per cent. then it is not wrong to take ten. The familiarity of our people with laws recognizing and enforcing interest rates has perverted their ideas of right and justice by subst.i.tuting the statute for the divine moral law. But state laws can also trouble the conscience that is at ease and be a teacher of righteousness. Let the ancient laws forbidding usury be placed upon our statute books and enforced, and it would not be half a generation till the conscience and reason both approved.

Nothing in history more shocked the conscience of Christendom than the compact of William and Mary with usurers in 1694. That was in direct conflict with the teachings and practice of all the ages among Christians. It has taken two hundred years for courts and states and financial inst.i.tutions to first dull the Christian conscience and then secure its approval. The world now awaits the coming of some captain of righteousness, equal in authority and influence in church and state, who will organize a return to the faith and practice of the fathers.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

CRUSHED TRUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.

The practice of usury is so general, and it is apparently so fully approved and sanctioned by many of the most intelligent and virtuous of our people, that those who believe in its prohibition and are disposed to pessimism may be utterly discouraged.

Truth must eventually prevail. Any custom or system built upon falsehood must sooner or later yield. The house built upon the sand must in time fall. It may be undermined by years of instruction and so gradually give way that the date of its overthrow can hardly be determined, or it may in its strength be taken in a storm and fall.

The whole commercial credit system built on this monstrous falsehood must either crumble or tumble.

The prophet Isaiah was hopeful and happy in the midst of the most unfavorable conditions of corruption and alienation from the truth, for he was able with his prophetic eye to catch a glimpse of the good time coming, when righteousness should completely triumph. "He shall teach us of His ways and we shall walk in His steps." "With righteousness shall He judge the poor." "Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins."

No prophet has fixed a date for the suppression of usury, yet no intelligent man of faith, familiar with the reforms of the past, when as thoroughly entrenched and as giant evils were attacked and overthrown, need be in despair.

We were enslaved by superst.i.tions. Haunted houses were numerous and the bewitching of people was frequent. Two hundred arrests for witchcraft were made in a single year, 1692, and twenty of these persons were put to death. These persecutions were urged and defended by Cotton Mather, a representative of the highest intelligence and culture of the times. His mother was a daughter of John Cotton, and his father the President of Harvard College. Now black cats and epilepsy inspire no fear, and ghost stories do not now terrify and unnerve our children.

Duelling prevailed among men of honor. Public opinion made it compulsory that personal differences between gentlemen should be settled in this way. Persons were branded as cowards who would not put their lives in jeopardy. Few had the courage to resist. Duels were common among the political leaders at Washington. Many a shot rang out at sunrise in the little valley at Bladensburg, the noted duelling ground. Jackson and Benton and Clay and De Witt Clinton were duellists. After the killing of Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr, in 1804, the whole country was aroused and an agitation began against the custom, but it yielded slowly. In 1838 and 1841 there were duels between distinguished congressmen. But now public opinion is so transformed that the "honorable and brave" duellist is a moral coward.

Gambling was a common sin. There were lotteries organized for the raising of funds for state and munic.i.p.al expenses. There were raffles at church fairs to support the ordinances in the sanctuary. The rules of the games were protected by the laws of the state. No one who had lost in a game could recover by law unless he proved that the rules of the game had not been followed. The rules for gambling were regarded as legitimate as the regulations of any business. The gambler was only a law-breaker when he "cheated." Now gambling is unlawful in every state and territory, and any newspaper advertising a lottery is shut out of our mails. Even an "honest" gambler is now cla.s.sed among robbers.

Intemperance was rampant through the eighteenth century and more than half the nineteenth. Whisky was king. Through a false physiology it became the almost universal opinion that in the great portion of the United States the climate required the use of "ardent spirit."

Ministers and all cla.s.ses of the people were thus deluded, and almost every person, adult or child, was a consumer.

"Upon rising in the morning a gla.s.s of liquor must be taken to give an appet.i.te for breakfast. At eleven o'clock the merchant in his counting-room, the blacksmith at his forge, the mower in the hay field, took a dram to give them strength till the ringing of the bell or the sounding of the horn for dinner. In mid-afternoon they drank again. When work for the day was done, before going to bed, they quaffed another gla.s.s. It was the regular routine of drinking in well-regulated and temperate families. Hospitalities began with drinking. 'What will you take?' was the question of host to visitor.

Not to accept the proffered hospitality was disrespectful. Was there the raising of a meeting house, there must be hospitality for all the parish: no lack of liquor; and when the last timber was in its place a bottle of rum must be broken upon the ridge-place. In winter men drank to keep themselves warm; in summer to keep themselves cool; on rainy days to keep out the wet, and on dry days to keep the body in moisture. Friends, meeting or parting, drank to perpetuate their friendship. Huskers around the corn-stack, workmen in the field, master and apprentice in the shop, pa.s.sed the brown jug from lip to lip. The lawyer drank before writing his brief or pleading at the bar; the minister, while preparing his sermon or before delivering it from the pulpit. At weddings bridegroom, bride, groomsman, and guest quaffed sparkling wines. At funerals minister, friend, neighbor, mourner, all except the corpse, drank of the bountiful supply of liquors always provided. Not to drink was disrespectful to living and dead, and depriving themselves of comfort and consolation. In every community there were blear-eyed men with bloated, haggard faces; weeping women, starving children." (Building of a Nation. Page 271.)

While "temperate" men were grieved at the tide of wretchedness and protested, they did not think it possible to get on without whisky.

Dr. Prime, for so many years editor of the New York Observer, told of the meeting of the family physician and the pastor at his father's home in a case of severe illness. When the physician took his leave the pastor followed him into the yard, where they had a long consultation. The pastor was anxiously seeking advice. Three drinks made his head swim, and the problem was how he could make more than three calls and not become unsteady. The doctor gave directions and Dr. Prime said that neither the minister nor the physician thought of the simple remedy, "not drinking."

It has taken two generations, but the transformation is marvelous. The minister can now call in every home in his parish and never once have an opportunity to drink. If Rev. John Pierpont was yet living, who was put out of his pulpit in Boston by an ecclesiastical council because he publicly protested against the use of the bas.e.m.e.nt of his church as a storeroom for whisky, he would see every minister losing his pulpit who would not publicly protest against such a desecration. Rev. George B. Cheever, the dreamer, in 1830, woke up the stupid consciences of the fuddled men and women; he wrote out his dream and published it, "Deacon Giles' Distillery," and went to jail for it, but even he never dreamed of the greatness of the temperance reform that has followed.

The overthrow of chattel slavery is complete and the human rights of the inferior peoples are recognized. Human slavery was of old, as ancient as history; it was widespread over the world; there was an immense and profitable commerce in human flesh; luxurious wealth and ease was secured by appropriating labor without compensation; it was thought that the Scriptures in both Testaments approved the holding of bondmen; there was a consciousness of superior gifts; there was a firm belief that the negroes, especially, needed the care of the superior race; that they were better off and happier than they would be in freedom; there was a deep-seated race prejudice that remains unyielding till this day. Yet the slave trade has ceased, stopped by armed vessels patroling the seas. The slaves, eight hundred thousand, in the West Indies were set free; the shackles were stricken off by the sword in the United States; Brazil adopted gradual emanc.i.p.ation, and chattel slavery disappeared forever from the civilized world.

The reform battles fought and won are a.s.surances that victory shall also reward those who contend against this sin of usury. There are also other good grounds for confidence.

1. They are seeking only a return--a reform: "a restoration to a former state;" they are not seeking for the establishment of some new and untried theory, but they are seeking a return to the faith and conduct of the righteous from the beginning and up seventeen centuries of the Christian era. The race is but temporarily deflected to the worship of the golden calf.

2. There is coming forward a great army of intelligent, virtuous young people. They are made intelligent by our high schools, seminaries and colleges. They are made students of the Bible and stimulated in righteousness by Sunday Schools, Christian a.s.sociations, Endeavors, Leagues and Unions. From these there shall rise up defenders of the truth, free from the burden of debt and unbia.s.sed by life-long a.s.sociation with conditions familiar to those older. The reformers in all ages have been young, and this reform will be no exception. There is a rashness in youth that needs direction, but there is also a dash and hope and confidence that is necessary to break away from old customs. One generation of intelligent, virtuous young people could give this evil its fatal blow.

Usury cannot flourish among the vicious and the unreliable. Other evils may flourish among the idle, the indolent, the treacherous, the deceitful and the dishonest, but industry and economy and integrity and faithfulness and honor and even G.o.d-fearing piety are desirable qualities in the usurer's victims. The higher the civilization, yes Christian civilization, the more is produced and the richer the harvest. The usurer has no use for a savage. This worm thrives in the living body and sucks its vitality. It cannot flourish in putrid flesh. Let the highest types of our young manhood avoid this sin and its death knell is sounded.

3. Present conditions stimulate an interest in this question. The unequal distribution of the vast wealth now being produced: the earnings of the many turned into the coffers of a few; the struggles between the employers and their employees; organized labor and combinations of wealth; lead to a closer study of this and allied economic questions than they have ever received before. The solution of these questions will expose the fraud of usury.

4. The patriotic spirit has not decayed in our people and rulers. They are as strongly attached to our free, popular inst.i.tutions as were the patriots of '76. There is alarm at the tendency to slip away from the early traditions, at the centralization of power, at cla.s.s legislation. The influence of usury is so strong to promote a favored cla.s.s and to concentrate power, that it must be resisted as an enemy to our republican inst.i.tutions. It gradually undermined and then destroyed the republic of Venice, and it is now doing its first work with us. It must soon emerge from its cover. Then our people will arouse with their patriotic fervor and fell it with one blow, and then bury it with the other enemies of the government that have from time to time arisen.

5. In the studies in sociology there is now a strong current toward Socialism. There is a desire to preserve the individual's interests and yet a stronger disposition to merge him in the general welfare.

There is a conviction that the privileges of individuals have been unduly guarded while the rights of the public were neglected, that the rights of individuals have received an excess of protection while the welfare of the great ma.s.s of the people has been sacrificed. The present problem of the student of sociology is, How can the rights of individuals be adjusted, yet so as to maintain the superior interests of all the people? This can be accomplished largely, if not completely, by the abolition of usury.