Chapter 39

WHY THIS TRUTH WAS NEGLECTED.

That we may find the way of return, we must consider the reasons of our wandering. We must reverse our direction and retrace our steps. These reasons are not occult or hard to find.

1. The departure had its root in man's depraved nature. The natural tendency is evil, while the graces must be cultivated with great diligence. Evils grow as weeds grow in the garden, as thorns and thistles and briers cover the untended fields. This evil has not been disturbed by any book exposing its harm for a hundred years, and it has been two hundred since it was treated as a violation of the Eighth Commandment. This evil, thus left undisturbed, has flourished and spread over all the world.

2. Two and three hundred years ago the great doctrines were occupying the thought of Christendom. The doctrines of free grace, by repentance and an exercise of faith, were receiving close attention. The creeds of the denominations were being unfolded, and their defense and proof absorbed the thought of the wise and good. What shall we believe was the question?

3. Other great evils stood before the faces of those who labored for the uplifting of the race. Practices attached to the ecclesiastics, and degrading the organized church, were flaunted before the eyes of those who stood for true faith and pure living. These were attacked with vigor, while this evil, which had been especially the sin of the Jew, crept in and entrenched itself.

4. Covetousness is one of those secret sins that may lurk in the heart while there is maintained a fair outward life. Few will admit this sin. Priests declare that this is the one sin that is never voluntarily confessed. Usury is the common outward activity of this inward state, and when usury was made lawful by the statutes of the realm, the voice of conscience was silenced. The conscience that would cry out in protest against a rate of interest forbidden by law, will permit the same rate when the statutes of the state are changed.

5. Early education and natural buoyancy have led the debtors to be less sensitive to the burdens of usury upon them.

A large portion of our present arithmetic is taken up with percentage. The position of the student, in mind, is that of the creditor. This is presumed in the statements of the problems and lies in the thought of the student in all the calculations. If the statements of propositions and their conclusions were made to place the student on the debtor side, then the study of percentage would educate him to a horror of this sin.

When a loan is made, the attention of the borrower is seldom called to the rapidity of increase and the dangers of accumulation. If this were done, and a prompt return of both principal and interest required, at the end of the term the borrower would soon be alarmed at the hopelessness of permanent gain through debt.

Peter Cooper, it is said, taught this lesson to a friend who was talking of borrowing for six months at three per cent. We clip the following story:

"Why do you borrow money for so short a time?" Mr. Cooper asked.

"Because the brokers will not negotiate bills for longer."

"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 accumulations of wealth, so sure to follow the operation of usury, was hitherto 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 class, the usurers. The ultimate burden is upon the laborers, who must pay every bond, interest and principal.

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 noble 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 accumulation 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 pass, such a pass, 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 noble 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 substituting 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 institutions 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.