SITUATION IN THE NORTHWEST. 305 



pledges guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States, where it 

 reserves the right to do any and all things essential to the general 

 welfare of the people. Usurious rates of interest are demanded for 

 the use of money, ten per cent on personal security and eight to ten per 

 cent on real estate being the prevailing rate in Iowa and Minnesota, 

 and twelve per cent on personal and ten per cent on real estate in the 

 Dakotas, with bonus and usury often amounting to twenty or thirty 

 per cent, and thousands of cases could be given where it even exceeded 

 the latter ruinous figure. I refer now to country loans ; somewhat 

 lower rates may be obtained in cities. Chattel mortgages on short 

 time, and at high rates of interest and large bonus, with exorbitant 

 attorney fees, in many instances actually exceeding the face of the 

 notes, are placed on everything the farmer owns or expects to own, 

 teams, machinery, stock, furniture, crops for the current year, and for 

 three, four, or five years in advance : these short loans are renewed at 

 compound interest from two to six times a year; each renewal the 

 poor debtor pays what he can, adds new bonuses, compounds interest, 

 pays for making out and filing the mortgage. 



The failure of crops must not be charged with this condition of affairs ; 

 for while there have been partial or local failures some years, the aggre- 

 gate crops have steadily increased in quantity and decreased in value 

 for the past twenty-five years. Multitudes of banks, loan agents, and 

 money sharks have sprung into existence, swarming in every city and 

 village, and fattening off the dire necessities of the people. Where one 

 bank could easily transact all the legitimate business for a village or 

 county, seven or eight are located, supplemented by double that num- 

 ber of loan agents, and all of them seemingly prosperous. I have before 

 me a newspaper published in a small county in South Dakota, with forty- 

 eight notices of foreclosure of real estate mortgages in it, covering over 

 half the paper, and in which the attorney fees and publication fees 

 exceed the face of the original mortgages by over fifty per cent ; and 

 while that is an extreme case, it is an indication of the relentless methods 

 pursued. There are hundreds of cases where, in the course of five or 

 six years, the poor debtor has paid more than the amount of the original 

 loan in interest and usury, and found himself with a larger debt on his 

 hands at the end than when he started. 



Another serious bar to our prosperity has been excessive and discrim- 

 inating freight rates upon our railroads. With the two great rivers of 

 the continent and the Great Lakes upon our borders, it would seem that 

 competition would regulate that. But the facts are that, despite the 

 Interstate Commerce law and our numerous lines of supposed-to-be- 



