236 
Annual Be port of the 
ity have to be exercised rigidly to do that, shall capital step in and take 
ten per cent, upon her share of the capital supplied? If so, labor 
must practice sell-denial which borders upon penury, want, and 
starvation, and occupy that position in society which is neither 
u establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquillity, or promoting 
the general welfare/ 1 
Take the population of Wisconsin in 1860, in round numbers 
776,000, with an assessed valuation of $350,000,000, and suppose 
that nine-tenths were producers and one-tenth capitalists, it would 
give in round numbers 700,000 laborers, or 140,000 families of five 
persons, each with an average capital of $2,500. With this capital 
the}’' pursue the various trades and avocations which help to make 
a great and prosperous state. They work on early and late to the 
end of the year, living economically, having all the necessaries, 
some of the comforts, but none of what may be termed in these 
days, luxuries; they give a trifle to charitable, benovolent and re¬ 
ligious objects; clothe their children comfortably, but not expen¬ 
sively; send them to the common school, and occasionally they all 
go to a lecture or other place for mental or social recreation, not 
otten, for funds will not admit; they practice self-denial in many 
ways and are temperate in all things. When all this is done, at 
the end of the year they take an inventory of their effects and find 
that they have increased their capital from $2,500 to $2,575, or 
three per cent. per annum. If this was their own capital, it is well. 
They have increased their capital, and with the same economy and 
good health in the future their gains, will be greater. But suppose 
this $2,500 capital was not their own and they have to earn ten 
per cent, or $250, to pay to a capitalist for the use of it for a year, 
a difference of $175 between their gain above a living and the sum 
to be paid to capital. If this family has lived upon $500 for the 
year, $175 must now be taken from it, even though it bring the labor 
of the family down to cost, a bare subsistence, food, shelter and 
clothing, or the cost of the labor of the ox and horse. And still 
the Government says: “This will insure domestic tranquility, and 
promote the general welfare. 
A single individual in Wisconsin is reported to be worth 
$15,000,000. This vast sum placed at interest, at the legal rate 
now in this state, ten per cent., would in about eighty years, or pos¬ 
sibly in the lifetime of some of our children now living, aggregate 
