Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1895-06-14

producing them; hence, legitimate interest
paid for use of the value of real wealth. is real
ly form of wages, and cannot be abolished
while private ownership of property continues
or the wage system exists.
Do men ever pay interest for use OF money
Most certainly not, but for the value OF the
goods-real wealth-product Of labor-whict
the borrowed money is at once exchanged for
used to transfer from the former owner to the
borrower If farmer borrows fifty or seventy
five dollars from neighbor or from the bank to
pay for horse, wagon or mower and rake,
it is the article he buys "a product of labor)
and not the borrowed money, upon and foi
which he pays the value of its use to him.
Legitimate interest for use of capital, as Mr..
Henry George so clearly demonstrated, is the
result of the reproductive forces Of Nature and
time, as when one buys mower to save grass
or reaper to save grain, that otherwise he
could not save, or buys young cattle to eat grass
or grain that otherwise could not be turned to
SO profitable use.
Having demonstrated that interest is rvalue,
and not for the money used in transferring the
value, and that quantity and quality of money
affects only prices, and not values-is only
medium of exchanging values, as you assert
is it not clear that increased volume of money
cannot even lower, much less destroy, interest.
On the contrary, does not both sound reasoning
and all previous experience teach us that as
prices rise and more money is used to transfer
the same amount of capital in garnering the
reproductive forces of Nature, and only by gar
nering the reproductive forces of Nature can
labor find employment and recompense? If a
man buys a horse or mower for fifty dollars on
years credit at six per cent, the interest paid
is three dollars; but if he pays 500 for the
horse or mower, the interest is six dollars.
In 1865, when the per capita circulation was
the largest in our history, no money could be
borrowed in Kansas for less than eighteen to
twenty-four per cent. on real estate mortgage,
and five per cent. per month on chattels or per-
sonal notes
! have used the words Legitimate interest"
to distinguish interest voluntarily paid for real
value received, in distinction from the arbitrary
exactions of monopolies, which is interest of a
spurious or law-made capital, and not real capi-
tai (product of labor.
You conclude by saying;
If the men who have silver bullion can have
it coined they will seek for their money such in
vestments as promise a return in profits; and
new enterprises mean more employment for the
laboring classes.
This is not compatible with your theory Of
the destruction of interest; for what are 'profts
on investments" but interest on the money in
vested2
This brings us back to the question of legiti-
mate and illegitimate interest, upon which the
entire question of "reforn" hinges.
So long as the laws permit opportunity of in
vestments which return certain rate of profits
(interest) on the money invested, what folly to
presume men will loan money for less interest
than investment will pay, much less for none
at all
Were investments confined to enterprises to
produce more wealth, they would, as you as
sume, give more employment to labor; but, un-
fortunately, our laws permit large class of
investments which do nothing to employ labor,
and much to tax it with ever-increasing burdens,
to-wit, investments in land, corporations for
seizing and exploiting the necessities of the
people for public utilities, etc: OF these, by
far the greatest in value and taxing power is