When property earns property, and the gain is secured with no struggle on his part, the temptation is presented and the disintegration of his character has begun. When there is no gain except by production, the whole thought and energy of the man is directed to that end, and his desire to secure that earned by another is restrained. The frank, open disposition is preserved. Honest productive toil drives out the spirit of speculation. Under usury, both lender and borrower are in the attitude of expectants of unearned gain.
3. It discourages the spirit of self-reliance.
Usury causes a broad separation between a man of property and the man of mere muscle or brain. It makes such large combinations of capital possible in immense shops and department stores and other enterprises, that the individual workman is belittled. Under the principle of usury, property can produce as well as brain or muscle. One having property can control both.
His property places him in a position as a superior. He comes to forget the relations he bears to men as equals, and requires that those who have only their natural gifts shall be cringing supplicants before him or be denied his favor. The borrower or the laborer who asserts his rights is endangered by the man controlling property, who has him in his power.
That independent, self-reliant spirit, that looks every man in the face as an equal yet lingers in the country among the hills and mountains, but is fast disappearing from the city. There has come to the laborer in the town or city a feeling of dependence upon others and a desire to secure their favor. They almost feel that they must apologize for being laborers, and beg for an opportunity to earn a living in some one's employ. One of the saddest facts, and most threatening of disaster in these present commercial conditions, is the common desire to be employed, to get a job, dependent on the whim of another, instead of a determination to direct one's own labor and be the manager of one's own business. The sound educational development is wanting in the daily occupation of the hired laborer, and there is a loss of manhood that has no compensation.
The independent spirit slips away so gradually that its going is scarcely noticed, but when once gone the degradation is complete.
A family of free Hebrews went down into Egypt, and for a long time was in favor with the rulers, but they gradually lost their independence and became more and more servile and cringing until the Egyptian masters dared to go into their homes and pick up their boy babies and take them out and drown them as if they were worthless puppies.
The hopelessness of the Ottoman Empire today is more in the cringing subordination and broken spirit of the people than in the oppression of the Sultan. His government might be overthrown in a day, but it would take ages to lift up that empire of prostrate slaves and to cultivate in them the self-assertion and self-reliance necessary to a free people.
Every man who loves his country and his race must view with alarm this growing feeling of subordination and cringing disposition. It is the very reverse of that democratic spirit or consciousness of equality that must prevail to secure the permanency of our republican institutions.
4. It destroys fraternal sympathy. Two classes are found in every modern community. The one is the laborers with muscle or brain, the other class, those whose property produces for them. Between these classes there is a great wall fixed. It cannot be expected that they will mingle harmoniously and be in sympathy in civil and social relations. Producing and non-producing classes can never be congenially associated.