The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1922-05-12
INTEREST, THE
MOTHER OF DEBT

run probably ruin, Ill tne great ma
tions of Europe Adam Smith
(1776).
"Ihe practice of contracting debts
will almost invariably be abused by
every government. 1t would scarcely
be more imprudent to give every prod
igal son a credit VITA every banker
than to empower statesmen to draw
bills in this manner on posterity."-
David Hume.
"Let us understand then, in the out
set, the moral difference between a ma
tonal debt and the national store. A
national debt, like any other, may be
honestly incurred, in case OF need, and
honestly paid in due time. But if a
man should be ashamed to borrow,
much more should people; and if a
father holds it his honor to provide
tor his children, and would be asham-
ed to borrow from them, and leave,
with his blessing, his note of hand,
for his grandchildren to pay, much
more should a nation be ashamed to
borrow in any case, or in any manner;
and if it borrow at all, it is at least
in honor bound to borrow from living
men, and not indebt itself to it's un-
born brats. If it can't provide for
them, at least let it not send their
cradles to the pawn brokers and pick
the pockets of their first breeches.
A national debt, then, is a foul dis
grace, at the best. But it is, as now
constituted, also a foul crime. Ma
tional debts, paying interest, are sim
ply the purchase by the rich of the
power to tax the poor. "-Ruskin,
"Fors Clavigera."
"You spend eighty millions of mon
ey in fireworks, doing no end of dam
age in letting them off. Then you
borrow money to pay for the fire.
works-maker's bill, from any gain
loving persons who have got it. And
then, dressing your bailitf's men in
new red coats and cooked hats, you
send them drumming and trumpeting
into the fields, to take the peasants by
the throat and make them pay the in
terest on what you have borrowed,
and the expense of the cooked hats be-
sides. This is 'tinanciering,' my
friends, as the mob of money-lenders
understand it. And they understand
it well. For that is what it always
comes to finally; taking the peasant
by the throat. He must pay-for he
only can. Food can only be got out
of the ground, and all these devices of
soldiership, and law, and arithmetic,
are but ways of getting at last down
to him, the furrow-driver, and snatch
ing the roots from him as he digs. p
Ruskin in "Fors Clavigera," Letter 8.
Public credit means the contract
ing Of debts which nation can never
pay."-William Goblet (1762-1835).
There is patent contradiction in
the term, '"Public debts" If we spoke
accurately we would call them debts
owed by the public" and owned pri-
vately. The whole question of private
credits, for the adjustment of which
the public is held responsible, will as
suredly stand thorough re-examina-
ton at the present moment when our
leading economists are demanding
their cancellation by billions of dol
lars.
"Three reforms are necessary steps
in the establishment of peace: (a) the
creation of a real democracy; (b) the
transfer of the right to declare war
from the sovereign to the people; (c)
the abolition of the power to contract
public debts, which makes it easy for
states to obtain the financial means
required for war without any popular
control. Kant.
"The national debts of Europe rep
resent a series of colossal crimes
against the people. They were in
CURED in the prosecution of unneces-
sary wars and for the support of un>
necessary standing armies. One class,
representing less than one per cent of
the people, owns the debts--the other
class pays interest on them. Every
child inherits either an estate in these
debts or an obligation to pay interest
on them. Thus the fruits of a great
crime have been transmitted into a
vested right to one class of people or
vested wrong to another Glass;
Kim's "Mind and Hand"
"There is nothing really more mon
strous in any recorded savagery or alb
surdity of mankind, than that gov
ernments should be able to get money
for any folly they choose to commit,
by selling to capitalists the right OF
taxing future generations to the end
of time. All the cruelest wars inflict-
ed, all the basest Injuries grasped by
the idle classes, are thus paid for by
: the poor hundred times over."-Rus-
kin, "Fors Clavigera."
GAS long as the British aristocracy
carried on war itself and bore the eX-
pense, a public debt did not exist.
When, by their increasing powers in
the House of Commons, they could
saddle the debt on the working classes,
debts began to rise and war after war
followed" Bloch, "The Future Of
War"
Are we not justified in saying: "No
interest, no bonds"? Debt is but a
means to an end: the end sought is in
terest. 1t would appear, therefore
, that the advocates of the cancellation
of war debts have put the cart before
the horse. They deal with effects
rather than with causes: interest is
the cause. Let them cancel all war
debts: if they leave interest un;
, touched, they have left untouched the
, cause of debts--the same sinister
enormity which has produced the in
ferno from which man cries to be de-
! livered, is left in all its power to work
out the same evil destiny.
In addition to the war debts which