“All securities and title of property shall be certified to the treasurer by the auditor and recorder, and shall be appraised by a board of appraisers residing in the township where the property is situated.
“Not more than ninety (90) per cent. of the appraised value of any property shall be loaned thereon.
“The trustees of the respective townships of Ohio are hereby constituted a board of appraisers of the property on which loans may be asked in such township. For such appraisement, whether the loan is granted or not, the applicant shall pay said appraisers a fee of two dollars each. At least two of such appraisers shall go upon and assess the value of any such property.
“The borrower shall pay all incidental charges connected with any loan. The treasurer shall not receive more than one per cent. per annum on the money loaned, as his compensation for conducting and caring for said business; all interest received, less expense to said treasurer, shall be distributed pro rata to the depositors in accordance with the amount and time of deposit.
“A failure to pay interest for three years shall work a forfeiture of any loan made under the provisions of this act, and the property shall revert to the county without process of law further than order of court upon sworn statement of the treasurer as to such delinquency; and the mortgagee shall be permitted to occupy such premises for such a length of time as the payments made thereon shall amount to a yearly rental of four per cent. and taxes, after which the said property may be rented at not less than four per cent. and taxes, or sold at private sale at not less than appraised value.
“Any losses sustained by the depositors, through the defalcation or dishonesty of the county treasurer, or any other officer of a county, shall be paid by the county in full, and the said officer apprehended, his property, as well as any and all property transferred or assigned by him during his incumbency, shall be confiscated, and he shall be hanged by the neck until dead, without benefit of trial except to ascertain the certainty of such defalcation or dishonesty. In such cases there shall be no appeal, pardon or reprieve.”
No sooner was this law proposed than the telegraph wires were put in use to notify every banker in Ohio, as well as the principal bankers in Chicago, New York and other great centers.
Their hired agents were there. In two days the lobbies and corridors of the State-house at Columbus were crowded with well-dressed, well-fed, diamond-studded gentlemen from all parts of the country, crying out against such a law and picturing the direful results that would follow its passage.
Legislators were buttonholed, wined and dined, threatened, abused, coaxed, cajoled, persuaded and bribed for some five or six days. The newspapers of the country denounced the bill as “revolutionary,” “socialistic,” “destructive,” “ruinous,” and suggested that “the militia should be called out to drive the anarchistic law-makers not only from the State-house at Columbus, but out of the State of Ohio.” They bemoaned “the terrible disgrace that had already been brought upon the fair name of Ohio,” and claimed that “to uphold the honor and integrity of the State the bill must be overwhelmingly defeated.” Brilliant lawyers and leading business men were summoned to Columbus to oppose the bill and to tell the law-makers how bitterly the people were opposed to it.
All this time from ten to a hundred homes were being sold weekly by the sheriff of each county. Thousands were starving in Chicago, New York and other cities and towns, and all because during all their lives they had been paying directly or indirectly from six to ten per cent. interest to these same fat, well-dressed fellows who were now at Columbus trying to prevent legislation for the relief of the people.