The St. Johns herald., 1895-10-03
UsURIOUs DESp0TISlL.
Shylock Methods Employed by
 Berlin Money Lenders.
Thousands of Prussians Driven to Ruin or Fxtle Every Tear-3Xerry- ing for Money the
 Sole Remedy.


 All Berlin s;ghs under the despotism of-usury. The government, or at least the pillars of the government, sigh and suffer the most. For the past six months one huge trial for usury has followed another, and the end is not vet. In one of these trials last fall, says the San Francisco Argonaut. there were no less than one hundred and twenty-seven defendants, and the num- Der of witnesses amounted to nearly four hundred. A number of the worst usurers have been found guilty and sentenced to terms of Imprisonment ranging from six months upward to seven years, besides heavy fines in money. Quite 3 number of the shrewd- est and most dangerous had to be ac- quilted for lack of proof. The young capital of the new German empire will remain the most usnry-ridden city in the world, where the yampireism of a legion of Shylocks steadily sucks the lfe-blood of the higher as well as lower classes, and drives annually hundreds and thousands into ruin or into exile.
 The cause is expressed by the un- translatable word 'standerstruecksich- ten" by which is meant the thou sand and one considerations which Germans deem due to their rank or station in life. Prussia is poor coun- try, even to-day, after amalgamating into its domain large districts of more fertile and wealthier regions, such as Nassau, Hesse-Casscl, districts in Han over and by the Rhine. The Prussian nobility is the poorest of any civilized country, with the single exception of Italian. But the Prussian nobility, nevertheless, is as proud as the Spanish, vastly prouder than the British. Their poverty now and their claims to consideration, their station in life, their prominent position in the state lead to never-ceasing conflict. Their peculiar code of honor forbids them to engage in money-making pursuits, least of all in trade or commerce, and nothing is left them to live in accord ance with the cast-iron notions of their mind but either to enter the army as professional soldiers, to enter the gov erment employ, or else to till the mea- ger paternal acres.
 The latter occupation-which used to furnish to brothers, cousins and sons of such agricultural noblemen the secret wherewithal to live standesgesmaes d. e., according to their rank in Berlin or elsewhere-is becoming less and less profitable, owing to cheap American and East Indian wheat, cheap Russian rye, and cheap Australian meat. And the pay of Prussian army officers or government employees is still so wholly inadequate that it does not suffice even the most modest expectations up to the age of forty or so.s E.
 A "money marriagen is the sole rem- edy left them to adjust their affairs under normal conditions; but money marriages" too, are becoming less and less frequent, since the number of claimants to each wealthy girls hand is yearly becoming larger. The hunt for an American heiress or for some other exotic goldfish" is hence men, toned in the lexicon of these unen- viable young men as the dernier ressort. This rapid pen picture of the actual conditions confronting nine tenths of the young Prussian nobles on entering life is by no means complete. But it will serve to show why the usurer in Berlin has become power of the first magnitude.
 Each year scores of cases occur in Berlin of young hopefuls ending their brief butterfly existence by we'll directed bullet; of despairing fathers quitting the service of that state to which they had devoted the best years of their life at a personal and financial sacrifice; of middle-aged men disappear ing (and often turning up again in miserable guise in some transatlantic country) from their old-time haunts, and all this because the usurer at last has drawn the net close about them. And the number of poor, dowerless girls, of sisters and brides of these same young men, girls who of thelr own free choice abandon every hope of wifehood and motherhood simply to enable their lords of the other sex, their brothers in most cases, to cut a figure for time, to live standesge- macs, is fairly innumerable. These poor girls, silent, uncomplaining vic tims of hoary prejudice, are the real heroines in these tragedies of life. That is why Berlin is honeycombed with usury, and that is why uSury is a regular profession-or, rather, a fine art.