Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-01-01
GREAT SIN OF USURY.
IT OVERTHREW ROME, AND
THREATENS AMERICA.
Money Is Not Property-It Should and
True Money Does, Bear the Same Re
lation to Property as the Merchants
CBy Rev. D. Oglesby.D

(By Rev. ID. OgleSDy)
History informs us that old Rome
VAS 800 years dieing. 1t also tells us
that usury was the disease that killed
old Rome. The reason why it took
Rome so long to die was, it took that
long time for uSury to rob the wealth
producers and concentrate the wealth
in few hands. But when old Rome did
die 1900 men owned about all, we are
informed. Usury works much faster
now In the last thirty-five or forty
years, half the wealth of our country
has drifted into the clutches Of thirty
odd thousand families. The debts on
our country ($35 5,000, ,000,000) thirty-five
thousand million of dollars, equal at
least to half the value of the property
in our country. The reason why usury
works so much faster now than in the
days of old Rome is in consequence of
labor-saving machinery and perverted
socialism, or monopolies and trusts.
About 80 per cent of the labor
Df our country and the world is
performed by machinery. BY usurious
methods class of men called capital
lists have accumulated money, and they
own the labor-saving machinery. They
can take small proportion of the wage
workers, and by the use of machinery,
manufacture all that can be sold in the
| markets of the world, and the great
| majority of wage-workers are left in
| 1dleneSs to Starve, or steal, or fight
| The capitalist demands a certain per-
| centage of interest, or usury, on his
| capital. This usury must come or the
| mill stops. In order to augment the
| volume of interest or usury, capitalists
| combine and form trusts and monopo-
lies. By so doing the old rule of de-
mand fixing prices is swept away.
| These combines among capitalists is
| perverted socialism. 1t is socialism
among capitalists. All evil is pervert-
ed good. Every good can be, and has
been perverted; and when a good is
perverted, it becomes a corresponding
evil. If it is a great good when rightly
| used, it becomes great evil when per-
verted. Let us apply these principles to
the methods adopted in our country:
First, labor-saving machinery justly
used, would be the greatest imaginable
blessing If 80 or 80 per cent of the
labor of the world is performed by ma
| chinery, it follows as a logical sequence
that, if all shared a just proportion of
| its benefits, no one would need to labor
more than from two to four hours a
day. True socialism in society would
put labor on this basis. But true So
cialism is perverted, and false socialism
prevails. A few get all the benefits OF
the great inventions. Perverted social
ism robs the toiler of the world beyond
computation. Look at it. With true
socialism, each laborer would have all
he produced, while the labor of two
hours day would yield to him more
than the drudgery of ten hours does
now.
| Second, take the money question
Civilization requires the exchanging oi
commodities produced by labor Some
thing is necessary to show the relative
value of articles to be exchanged The
value commercially of any article con-
sists in the amount of labor required te
produce it. :
Justice demands some method tc
show the value in labor of articles t.
be exchanged. We call that something
money. Hence, the true function oi
money, and its only function, should be
to express the price value in labor o.
articles to be exchanged.
But its true function is perverted
Money is not property. 1t should, ant
true money does, bear the same or {
similar relation to property as the mer
chants scales do to the article,
weighed. The scales don't make an ar
ticle heavier or lighter, but they ex
u press its true weight. Money never
created dimes worth of property. La
Dor does that. Hence money should ex
press the amount of labor in any arti
Gle to be bought or sold. But none,
is perverted. 1t is reckoned to be prop
erty and so used. 1t is bought and sold
Usury or interest is the price of none.