“First,” I said, “I should do away with all interest on money. Interest on money is the root and ground of the world’s troubles. It puts one man in a position of safety, while another is in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a radical distinction in human society.”
“How do you make that out?” he asked.
“The lender takes a mortgage on the borrower’s land, or house, or goods, for, we will say, one-half or one-third their value; the borrower then assumes all the chances of life to repay the loan. If he is a farmer, he has to run the risk of the fickle elements. Rains may drown, droughts may burn up his crops. If a merchant, he encounters all the hazards of trade: the bankruptcy of other tradesmen; the hostility of the elements sweeping away agriculture, and so affecting commerce; the tempests that smite his ships, etc. If a mechanic, he is still more dependent upon the success of all above him and the mutations of commercial prosperity. He may lose employment; he may sicken; he may die. But behind all these risks stands the money-lender, in perfect security. The failure of his customers only enriches him; for he takes for his loan property worth twice or thrice the sum he has advanced upon it. Given a million of men and a hundred years of time, and the slightest advantage possessed by any one class among the million must result, in the long run, in the most startling discrepancies of condition. A little evil grows like a ferment—it never ceases to operate; it is always at work. Suppose I bring before you a handsome, rosy-cheeked young man, full of life and hope and health. I touch his lip with a single bacillus of phthisis pulmonalis—consumption. It is invisible to the eye; it is too small to be weighed. Judged by all the tests of the senses, it is too insignificant to be thought of; but it has the capacity to multiply itself indefinitely. The youth goes off singing. Months, perhaps years, pass before the deadly disorder begins to manifest itself, but in time the step loses its elasticity; the eyes become dull; the roses fade from the cheeks; the strength departs, and eventually the joyous youth is but a shell—a cadaverous, shrunken form, inclosing a shocking mass of putridity; and death ends the dreadful scene. Give one set of men in a community a financial advantage over the rest, however slight—it may be almost invisible—and at the end of centuries that class so favored will own everything and wreck the country. A penny, they say, put out at interest the day Columbus sailed from Spain, and compounded ever since, would amount now [A. D. 1890?[1890?]] to more than all the assessed value of all the property, real, personal and mixed, on the two continents of North and South America.”
“But,” said Maximilian, “how would the men get along who wanted to borrow?”
“The necessity to borrow is one of the results of borrowing. The disease produces the symptoms. The men who are enriched by borrowing are infinitely less in number than those who are ruined by it; and every disaster to the middle class swells the number and decreases the opportunities of the helpless poor. Money in itself is valueless. It becomes valuable only by use—by exchange for things needful for life or comfort. If money could not be loaned it would have to be put out by the owner of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor; and as the enterprise would not then have to support a double burden—to-wit, the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his back—but would have to support only the former usurer, that is, the present employer—its success would be more certain; the general prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and there would be, therefore, more enterprises, more demand for labor, and consequently higher wages. Usury kills off the enterprising members of a community by bankrupting them, and leaves only the very rich and the very poor; but every dollar the employers of labor pay to the lenders of money has to come eventually out of the pockets of the laborers. Usury is therefore the cause of the first aristocracy, and out of this grow all the other aristocracies. Inquire where the money came from that now oppresses mankind, in the shape of great corporations, combinations, etc., and in nine cases out of ten you will trace it back to the fountain of interest on money loaned. The coral island is built up of the bodies of dead coral insects; large fortunes are usually the accumulations of wreckage, and every dollar represents disaster.”
How Wealth Accumulates.
As proof of the fact that it is a mighty fortunate thing for humanity that the Rothschilds did not conduct a bank in the year 1 A. D., I reprint from the Twentieth Century the following article by H. C. Whitaker, which shows the beauties of interest-drawing:
“Had one cent been loaned on the 14th day of March, A. D. 1, interest being allowed at the rate of 6 per cent., compounded yearly, then, 1894 years later—that is, on March 14, 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, each the size of the earth, it would take 610,070,000,000,000,000 of them to pay for that cent. Placing these spheres in a straight row, their combined length would be 4,826,870,000,000,000,000,000 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 of solid gold, would not nearly pay the amount. A single sphere to pay the whole amount, if placed with its center 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.”