Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
237 
to nearly $15,000,000,000, or an amount equal to the value of the 
entire property of the United States to-day. 
A hundred men, who loan money at ten per cent, compounded, 
with good security, will increase their fortunes four fold in fifteen 
years, while the same number of persons, who borrow at that rate 
of interest and invest in the legitimate industries—those which add 
to a nations prosperity and wealth—will not be able to double theirs 
in the same time, and if they lived as luxuriously and extravagantly 
as those of whom they borrowed, they would absolutely gain noth¬ 
ing. Nothing is, therefore, more clearly established, from examples 
given and others which are daily before us, than that the man who 
conducts his commercial or manufacturing business on borrowed 
capital at ten per cent., although he may conduct it with skill, pru¬ 
dence, and economy, will, in nine cases out of ten, if not ninety- 
nine in each hundred, come to bankruptcy, and those he employs 
to manage and conduct his affairs, barely obtain a living. The far¬ 
mer, also, who mortgages his farm for half or more of its value, to 
secure money at such ruinous and extortionate rates of interest, 
hoping that his surplus products will cancel this incumbrance, will, 
in a majority of cases be disappointed and sold out, after struggling 
for years to stem this mighty current of accumulative power which 
never slumbers or sleeps, not having respect even for the Lords day, 
and growing stronger and stronger by this ceaseless and incessant 
accretive power. An editorial in the Tleralcl , of Aurora, Ills., strikes 
this evil in its vital parts as follows: 
“ Ten per cent, will, every ten years, produce a crisis in which all 
the profits of the borrower are gobbled up by the lender. Ten 
per cent, paid on the investment will stop the wheels of every man¬ 
ufactory in the United States. Ten per cent, paid on the invest¬ 
ment in railroads, will stop their running or impoverish the coun¬ 
try through which they run. Ten per cent, paid on the value of 
farming property will eat it up in ten years. Ten per cent, on 
the value of town property will turn every poor man out of house 
and home. Ten per cent, paid by the merchant will soon drive 
him into bankruptcy; and to these high rates of interest may be 
traced most of the financial evils under which the country is 
now laboring.” 
Is there anything more sacred or divine about the accumulation 
of the labor of the past, whether the same is in money, lands, stocks, 
