Business Life 141 



What impressed me most, I remember, was the 

 fluid nature of the credit extended by capitalists to 

 all willing to buy and improve land. Credit alone 

 opened up the country and developed it. And 

 credit established also a state of interdependence 

 between man and man which brought in its train 

 some curious results. Debtors, sensible that a 

 golden fetter linked each and all of them to a 

 common creditor, Capital, grew fearful of offending 

 that creditor. Many excellent plans devised for 

 the public weal, and for no other purpose, were 

 nipped i' the bud, because men could not be per- 

 suaded to vote against the will of those to whom 

 they were indebted. There is no such slavery as 

 debt. From the debtor's point of view, the very 

 cardinal virtues must grovel in the dust before that 

 false god — Policy. In the name of Policy every 

 debtor's knee must bow. 



As time passed, men began to chafe beneath their 

 chains, to fret and fume in secret. Finally, the 

 freemasonry of misery binding them together, they 

 began to talk openly of rebellion and repudiation. 

 Debt bred the Popocrat, the Silverite, the man who 

 wanted something in exchange for nothing. Debt 

 set class against class. 



Thus it will be seen that credit, percolating every- 

 where like a river in flood, irrigating the waste 

 places, making the desert to bloom and blossom, 

 accomplished great good and great harm. But the 

 harm is passing away, the good remains. A clever 

 writer once said that if you wish to change a man's 

 character, you must change his point of view. The 

 point of view of the Native Son has changed en- 



