MY LIFE 



had a large circulation, and in a revised edition, is still on 

 sale; and, together with numerous tracts issued by the society, 

 has done much to educate public opinion on this most vital of 

 all political or social questions. 



As, however, it was quite certain that it would take a 

 very long time before even the first steps towards land- 

 nationalization would be taken, I took every opportunity of 

 advocating such other fundamental reforms as seemed to me 

 demanded by equity and to be essential to social well-being. 

 One of the earliest was on the subject of interest, about 

 which there was much difference of opinion among advanced 

 thinkers. A discussion having arisen in The Christian 

 Socialist I developed my views at some length in an article 

 which appeared in the issue of March, 1884. As it still 

 appears to me to be logically unassailable, and is upon a 

 subject of the very highest social importance, I give it here: 



THE MORALITY OF INTEREST— THE TYRANNY OF 



CAPITAL 



By Alfred Russel Wallace 



Having read Professor Newman's defence of interest and your remarks 

 thereon, I wish to make a few observations on the general question. 



Your position, and also that of Mr. Ruskin, appears to be that money 

 should be lent only as an act of benevolence or charity, and that lend- 

 ing it in any other way is not only, in most cases, economically and 

 socially, injurious, but is also morally wrong. With the first part of 

 this proposition I am very much inclined to agree, but not with the 

 second. Looked at broadly, I believe that the power of obtaining 

 interest on capital, however great, with the corresponding desire of 

 the owner of capital to obtain interest on it, is, next to the private 

 monopoly of land, the great cause of the poverty and famine that 

 prevail in all the most advanced and most wealthy communities. To 

 prove this would occupy too much space; but I may just notice that 

 bankruptcies, with the widespread misery they inflict; the speculations 

 of promoters and financiers often bringing ruin on hundreds or thou- 

 sands of deluded investors; and the vast loans to foreign despots, 

 which can only be paid by the sweat and blood of their unfortunate 

 subjects, are the direct, and in the present state of society, the nec- 

 essary results of the interest-system. Professor Newman says that if 



