Wisconsin State Agricultural Society . 
97 
higher seminaries of learning to-day, are of no particular benefit, 
for the knowledge obtained will be never applied in the practical bus¬ 
iness of life. The system should be changed, and the learner allowed 
to devote his entire time, under the best physical and mental culture, 
to those branches peculiarly adapted to his needs in the field of 
labor he has chosen, or is best calculated to fill, and not be compell¬ 
ed to waste valuable time and vital forces in obtaining knowledge 
he can never apply to his individual advantage or to better the con¬ 
dition of the human race. 
The finances of the country are eliciting much discussion, and 
numerous are the remedies offered by the writers upon this all im¬ 
portant subject for the evils complained of. The prime cause has 
been little discussed, and hence is little understood. It is the unjust 
accumulative power of money. Money has become such a power 
in dictating all values, and the amount now drawn from the surplus 
labor and products of the people to pay interest upon public and 
private debts has become so burdensome, that thinking men are 
investigating this subject, believing that a mystery surrounds this 
monetary question which ought to be solved and the people be 
enabled to see the real cause of stagnation in business throughout 
the country. The history of the past does not furnish us wibh a 
single example of a want of prosperity in business where money 
was plenty and at low rates of interest. The amount of money 
supplied by a government for the use and benefit of the people 
should at all times b& governed by the wants of business and the 
security which property can give, and which such money was cre¬ 
ated to represent, measure the valne of, and exchange with ease and 
facility. 
The amount of interest which money shall bear annually should 
be regulated by the power creating it. In no other way can it be a 
just, honest, and unvarying measnre of value for land or other prop¬ 
erty. No greater fallacy can be taught the rising generation than 
that money is a commodity and subject to like conditions of “ sup¬ 
ply and demand,” as the products of the industries. The material 
of which money is coined or manufactured is a commodity; but 
when converted into money and used exclusively as such, looses its 
power to be bought and sold under “supply-and-demand 11 conditions; 
because, in this new relation, it is a measure of value of all other 
