286 Evolution and Social Reform: 



the actual to the tlieoretical in the matter of interest. The 

 legal rate of interest in tliis State, and in passing I 

 desire to express the opinion that the fixing of a legal rate, 

 excepting as a standard to which to appeal when there is 

 no rate by contract, is an injury to the community, the 

 legal rate in this State is six per cent, per annum. Now, 

 it is undoubtedly the common, thought that a sum of money 

 can be invested at this rate, and allowed permanently to 

 accumulate at compound interest. What is the fact ? 

 Suppose one dollar, one single little gold dollar, which is 

 the smallest of all the golden seeds which produce this 

 crop of interest, to have been invested at the beginning of 

 the Christian era, and allowed to compound annually at six 

 per cent, until this day. If you will consider the sum thus 

 accumulated as turned into gold, and this gold placed where 

 the sun now is, it would form a solid mass extending in all 

 directions beyond the eartli's orbit amass more than two 

 hundred millions of miles in diameter. From this one 

 dollar there would have accumulated in eighteen hvmdred 

 and ninety years a sum of wliich the market value of all 

 property real and personal which exists upon the globe, or 

 which ever could exist thereon at any one time, would be 

 an almost imperceptible fraction. Now compare this with 

 what has actually ever occurred in the way of accumulation 

 and you will obtain some faint conception of the relation 

 of theory to fact. What has become of this interest then ? 

 It has been stolen, it has been lost, it has been burned by 

 lire, it has been drowned by water, it has been destroyed in 

 battle : you will find it in houses and in shops, in pictures 

 and in statues, in roads and in bridges, in the grass which 

 covers the field, in the present grain which in the past did 

 not exist ; in the erect carriage and wide capacity of your 

 men, in the delicate complexions, the gentle voices and 

 manners of your women. In fine, interest is merely one 

 slight inducement to that habit of thrift and that effort for 

 extended powers and opi)ortunities which have made the man 

 of our age and race a different creature from the cave- 

 dweller and the wandering savage. It has been one of the 

 potent agents of human evolution, qualified and often 

 rendered nugatory by ojjposing forces. 



The two factors which are mainly responsible for tlie 

 development and advance of civilization are the accumula- 

 tion of capital and the existence of com])etition, that hete 

 7ioire of the Socialist. A i^rcat increase of interest-bearing 



