The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-01-25


 evil that for years had not only i'm | peded the growth but was threaten 1 ing the commercial life of important sections of our country, because op- pressive and continuing usury in evita5ly means poverty and failure; and poverty and failure breed dis content which strikes blindly to de- stroy and tear down. Despair hates the conditions which has produced it and is ready to go to war against society and governments, regardless of means and reckless of conse- quences.
 The business man, the laborer, the farmer driven to ruin by what he be- ueves to be unjust exacions, sane toned or permitted by law becomes an anarchist at heart, carries within himself a sulIen resentment ready to be touched to volcanic outburst by the first approach of opportunity. He has no hope but vengeance. His fury when he may give it vent is dt- rected against the conditions under which he has been oppressed.
 The vice, or evil. or peril of usury it Is all three-is no new thing under the sun and was not peculiar to this country It was spreading among us, however, with rapidity no casual observer would suppose, and in different communities was silent ly and secretly sapping the life and eating away the foundations of com mercial and social life to an unsus- pected extent. I do not wish to talk politics or to discuss socialism. ] have had opportunity, however, to notice that states and communities in which literature presenting the most violent dangerous and incen- diary forms of perverted socialism was most eagerly read and accepted were precisely those In which my reports showed the interest charges to small borrowers were , most ex- tortionate.
 The sin is one the oldest known to humanity, and is believed to have i been indirectly aimed at in the Tenth i Commandment. The Hebrew word l for usury signifies 'CrueI biting" ! Probably 1t began to bite along with 1 the saber tooth tiger, Its derivation 1 may have suggested to a great Eng i fish judge of five centuries ago his attempt to distinguish between what l he called ''biting usury," meaning ex- | orhitHut Tatcc, and '-tUOthleSS us ury," or reasonable interest charges. By Divine ordina nee the Israelties 1 of old were forbidden to demand usury of the poor and needy, and in 1 Deuteronomy, we are told, Thou 1 shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother, usury of money, usury of | victuals, usury of anything that is lent 1 upon usury.' But by another law l they are permitted to lend to strang- ers-which banks these days, are not accustomed to do. Loans to the Canaanites and other heathen on us ury were, in fact, rather encouraged, the implication being that they might be conquered and overcome more readily this way than by the sword. 1 In ancient days, when men lived | to be three hundred to four hundred to nearly a thousand years old, he | who began to lend money at the age l of 25 or 30 must have accumulated quite a comfortable estate when
 gathered to his fathers, especially ii
 the interest was compounded. Think i of what Methuselah would have
 done. In this connection the thought occurs that if Noah had out any con.
 siderable amount of paper on terms
 similar to those which are being
 charged in some of our States. he
 may not have regarded the flood aE
 an unmitigated disaster.
 Tine Tsurer Unpopular in King Solo
 mons Days.
 The Israelities during the earl!
 years of their race maintained con
 sistently their opposition to usury although the Jews have figured st
 conspicuously since the Christian
 Era as such prominent opponents Five hundred years after Moses, King
 David and King Solomon had thing:
 to say against usury, and the usure1
 seems to have been a holy and Jus
 man, he who was entitled to entel into the courts of the Lord, as on' "who hath not given his money upol usury" The Jewish Talmud speak of rsury as practice expressly for
 bic cn.
 The subject of usury was specif
 cally dealt with tn the ancient code
 of most nations. Under the code O
 Manu, in India, interest was regard ed as of doubtful propriety, ant money Lending was prohibited alto
 gether to the superior castes, thu
 Brahmins and Kshattriyas, and eve, : for the other two grades, a sum len
 to a person in distress may not giv, . rise to any interest, because ther the interest would be eXtortionate The limits fixed by the code wert
 IA per cent. per month with SC
 curity, and l 1-2 per cent per mo-Itf
 without.
 Among the Mohammedans tn.
 charging of usury was expressly pro
 hFbited. Money lending in Turke!
 until recent years was almost ex
 clusively in the hands of Greeks anf
 other foreigners.
 The law of the twelve table among the ancient Romans author
 ized interest at the equivalent of 1 per cent per annum, subsequent, increased, toward the close of tn Republic to 12 per cent It was thel
 called "usuria centissima" because | 100 months 1t doubled the capita but this law was subsequently, abol l ished and interest laid under a tota 1 interdict.
 Julius Caesar enacted severe law against usurers. and Cato is said t have banished the usurers fror Sicily.
 Later on, Tacitus tells us that tn evil of usury greatly increased 1 Rome and the laws forbidding were continually eluded Some his torians tell us that from this periot