666 THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION. 



deadly plague, if you would save your homes from his 

 relentless grasp. With loan agencies and ten to fifteen 

 per cent interest and a slick-tongued agent, many farmers 

 might be induced to go in debt and mortgage their farms 

 for the purpose of making some improvement. But we 

 again say, if you would shun the fate of others, who have 

 lost their farms, don't mortgage. So long as the govern- 

 ment continues to pay her bonded indebtedness, it releases 

 more money, which naturally seeks safe and easy invest- 

 ment. There is no safer investment than real estate; 

 hence there is a growing desire, as the bonds are paid off, 

 for the capitalist to invest his money in land. He reasons, 

 naturally enough, that it will not only return him a fair 

 interest from year to year, but that the land itself will 

 become more valuable in the course of time. To those 

 who have never studied the power of interest, it would be 

 a startling statement to say, that if the money which 

 the outfit of Columbus cost, when he set sail from 

 Genoa, estimating the cost at the modest sum of 

 $5,000 had been put on interest at five per cent, and 

 compounded each year, the aggregate sum would amount 

 to more than one thousand billion dollars. If a young 

 man, when 21 years of age, would put $10 at compound 

 interest, at the age of 71 he would have the snug little 

 sum of eleven hundred and seventy-three dollars. 



A short time since the Astor estate sold thirty-two 

 lots in the city of New York for $325,000. These were 

 vacant lots and their value had been increased mainly by 

 the labor of others. This money invested in bonds at 4 

 per cent, interest would in fifty years amount to $2,307, 500. 

 Loaned on real estate at the average rate, say 8 per cent. , 

 it would amount to $15,275,000. In a township there are 

 thirty-six sections of land of 640 acres each. This would 

 make 144 farms of 160 acres each. Suppose that I am a 

 young man, 21 years of age, with a capital of $5,000, and 



