LAND MONOPOLY. 667 



settle in that township as a money leaner. I loan five of 

 the one hundred and forty-four farmers $1,000 each at ten 

 per cent, interest, a very common rate. As they pay me 

 the interest I loan it to other farmers supporting myself in 

 the meantime by working for them by the month. By the 

 time I am seventy-one years old the farmers of that town- 

 ship will owe me $585,000, or in other words enough to 

 buy their farms at $20 per acre and the snug little sum of 

 $124,200 over. These are no imaginary figures. They 

 are based upon correct mathematical calculations. We 

 present them in order to show the immense absorbing 

 power of usury. Another important matter to which we 

 desire to call the attention of the reader is the importance 

 of reducing the legal rate of interest. One dollar on inter- 

 est at ten per cent, for fifty years, will, when compounded, 

 amount to $117, while at eight per cent it amounts to but 

 $47. The five thousand dollars in the above illustration 

 at ten per cent, amounted to $585,000, while at eight per 

 cent, it would have amounted to but $245,000, a difference 

 of $240,000. Eight per cent, ought to be the highest 

 legal rate of interest in any State. The following extract 

 from a speech of Gen. Weaver, at Lima, Ohio, bearing on 

 this subject, will prove interesting to the reader. He said: 

 "In looking over the history of the nations I came 

 across the history of the Jewish people about the time that 

 Artaxerxes sent Nehemiah to rebuild the Temple of Jeru- 

 salem, and I find it recorded about that time the Jewish 

 people had, through the system of usury, been completely 

 impoverished. So a complaint was made to Nehemiah 

 himself, and I want you to hear his own words. He says: 

 'The people complain that they have lost their oliveyards 

 and vineyards, and camels, and mules, and lambs, and now 

 we are selling their children into bondage, and neither are 

 they able to redeem them. ' And he says, ' I pray you, let 

 us leave off this usury,' and, strange to say, these money 



