Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
233 
pidity of their possessors. We are never troubled, even in times of 
the largest products of the soil and manufactories, to procure the 
requisite number of scales, weights and measures, to weigh the 
crop, or the number of yard-sticks to measure the cloth. These 
have been fixed by Congress and are a standard by which we are all 
governed. This would be equally true of money, if regulated by 
law according ’to the true value thereof, the interest it shall accu¬ 
mulate, and according to the true meaning of the language referred 
to in the constitution. The preamble of this same constitution 
says that Government was formed “to establish justice, insure do¬ 
mestic tranquility and promote the general welfare.” 
Let us see whether this tremendous accumulative power of money 
“is justice and for the general welfare,” whether such rate of interest 
is right, and for the general good of the labor and industry of the 
producing interests. Capital is simply the amount saved from the 
labor of the past above subsistence. Now what proportion of the 
profits of the varied industries and legitimate activities of the world 
shall the labor of the present and the labor of the past have, both 
working together as they must do to advance these material inter¬ 
ests? If interest is so high that the laborer pays the capitalist all 
his surplus earnings, except a bare subsistence, food, clothing and 
shelter, with none of the luxuries of life, with no time or money 
for recreation, no means of social or mental culture, at the same 
time the capitalist is enjoying all these and more, and at the same 
time is adding and increasing his wealth, so that in the future he 
can take a still greater share from the surplus earnings of labor: 
Then is this justice and for the general welfare? If so, then the 
laborer of the present is a slave of the capitalist, who simply holds 
in his possession the labor of the past. 
Suppose a far-seeing individual, at the early settlement of the 
United States, say in 1620, two hundred and fifty-five years ago, 
realizing the wonderful accumulative power of money by high rates 
of interest, had conceived the idea of his immediate descendants 
owning the entire property of the country in 1875. If he had $10 
in British gold to invest at the legal rate of interest in this state— 
now ten per cent.—and had loaned it at that rate; collected the 
interest annually, and loaned that at the same rate, and continued 
to keep the principal and interest at work, it would have doubled 
in seven years, three months and ten days. But give it eight years 
