W. H. Harvey, author of “Coin’s Financial School,” makes the following itemized estimate of the interest-bearing debts of this country, public and private. Most of the figures are derived from recognized official sources:
| The national debt, according to the official census of 1890, was | $ 891,960,104 |
| State and municipal debts (census 1890). | 1,135,210,442 |
| Railroad bonds, 1892 (“Poor’s Manual,” 1893) | 5,463,611,204 |
| Debt on farms and homes occupied by owner (R. R. Porter, Supt. Eleventh Census, in North American Review, vol. 153, p. 618) | 2,500,000,000 |
| Mortgaged indebtedness of business realty, street railways, manufactories and business enterprises (estimated from partial reports of 11th census) | 5,000,000,000 |
| Loans from 3,773 national banks (Statistical Abstract of the United States) | 2,153,769,806 |
| Loans from 5,579 State savings, stock and private banks and trust companies (Statistical Abstract of the United States) | 2,201,764,292 |
| These are figures on which something definite has been obtained; also the ratio of increase from 1880 to 1890, which was from $6,750,000,000 in 1880 to $19,000,000,000 in 1890. By computing the same ratio of increase we should now add | 8,000,000,000 |
| Mortgage debts on homes not occupied by owner (estimated) | 1,000,000,000 |
| Overdue accounts due merchants, wholesale and retail, drawing from 6 to 10 per cent. interest (estimated) | 5,000,000,000 |
| Debts due pawnbrokers, drawing from 60 to 120 per cent. per annum or 5 to 10 per cent. a month (estimated) | 1,000,000,000 |
| Private debts due from individuals to individuals and of which there is no public record or other data for census officers to obtain information (estimated) | 1,000,000,000 |
| Maritime debts (estimated) | 1,000,000,000 |
| Overdrafts, judgments, overdue taxes and miscellaneous items not included in the foregoing (estimated) | 4,000,000,000 |
| ———————- | |
| Horrible total | $40,346,315,848 |
In commenting on his figures, Mr. Harvey says: "Debts, a non-producing industry, growing to such a magnitude that the profits derived from all the producing industries of the country will not more than pay the interest on these debts, make the producers thereafter work for the benefit of the money-lending or non-producing class. When such a condition as to debts arises as we now have, all money nearly gravitates into the hands of the money-lenders and piles up in the money centers. The effect of debts upon civilization has never been understood generally. A prosperous country can carry about a certain proportion of debt among its people without apparent injury, but when it reaches the present proportion—a proportion only reached three times before in the known history of the world—it produces commercial paralysis and the financial enslavement of the people. All the people make goes to pay the money-lenders their interest.
“When you pay money to a merchant or a manufacturer that you may owe, the money you pay him is paid by him to others for material and other products of his business, with no charge or embargo upon it; but when you pay back to a money-lender a debt you owe him, the money stops there until it is loaned out again to come back with interest. When this grows to such an extent as to require all or most of the money in the country to pay the interest on debts, then commerce slackens and there is little or no money among the people except as loaned out by the banks and others whose business it is to loan money. They are dealing in the blood of commerce, and when they take it from the arteries of commerce there is commercial sickness and distress.”
The Abstract of the Eleventh Census (page 189) gives the true valuation of all real and personal property in the United States as only $65,037,091,198. Against this we have an interest-bearing debt of forty billions.
But Mr. Harvey’s figures are by no means complete. He says nothing about the capital stock of the great railroad, telegraph, telephone, insurance and other corporations, most of which is “water.” The reader may say that this is not debt. But it is debt, as it represents what the companies owe to their stockholders; it draws interest; it must pay salaries and dividends. To say that we pay interest every year on forty-five billions is a very conservative statement. And the debt is constantly increasing, for the reason that there is not in circulation, of all kinds of money, enough to pay this interest. Let us figure it out. The average rate of interest is 6½ per cent. Let us say 6 per cent. At this rate we pay each year $2,700,000,000—over $40 per capita. Think of it! Forty dollars interest for every man, woman and child! Two hundred dollars for every family! And this exclusive of taxation, which adds still more to the burdens of life. The most blatant gold-bug does not claim that there is $40 of money per capita in circulation. There can be only one result, and that result is abject, hopeless slavery—slavery under the guise of freedom, but still slavery—unless this burden of debt is thrown off before the patient people succumb entirely.
VIII.
THE LAWS OF PROPERTY.
By Lyman Trumbull.
“Property, or the dominion of man over external objects, has its origin from the Creator, as his gift to mankind.”—Blackstone (Dunlap’s Manual of the General Principles of Law).