Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
241 
countries of the old world. Some of our writers upon wealth sta¬ 
tistics inform us that as much property is now held by four per¬ 
sons in each hundred of our population as by the other ninety-six. 
At the present accumulative power of money, the four will soon 
draw to themselves the other half, and the ninety-six be serfs and 
slaves to canital. 
Kellogg in his Monetary System, when speaking of the rights of 
labor and property, says truthfully: “The avarice that pervades the 
civilized world has been ingrafted upon society by the too great 
power of money. In most countries it has made production by 
labor degrading to the child, whose necessity compels him to per¬ 
form it. The skill to gain by lending money, and by' taking advan¬ 
tage of others by bargaining, has been and is taken as evidence of 
superior talent, until by example and precept, avarice has been in¬ 
stilled into the minds of children. It has grown with their growth 
and strengthened with their strength, until it has corrupted the 
very foundations of society. The percentage incomes on banks, 
railroad, state, and other stocks, and the rates at which money can 
be borrowed and lent, are the great leading topics of a business com¬ 
munity. The topics are not, how we shall try to produce by 
our labor the greatest supply of all the necessaries of life for the 
general good, but on the contrary, how shall we contrive to get the 
largest possible percentage income with the least possible produc¬ 
tion on our part? This state of society is directly at variance with 
such a one as a just monetary system would naturally induce. It 
is as much opposed to the natural rights of society as falsehood is 
to truth; and no continuance of competition in production or dis¬ 
tribution under the present monetary laws will be any more likely 
to remedy the evils of this debasing system, than competition in 
falsehood would be likely to produce and sustain truth. We must 
begin improvement by doing away with the great gain by un¬ 
righteous percentage interest on money; and then the wealth will 
naturally be widely distributed among those who do the most for 
the good of man, instead of being gathered by a few, who thus be¬ 
come the great oppressors of the human family. 11 
This question of interest I deem of more importance than any or 
all other monetary or financial questions of the day. 
President Grant in his last annual message attributes the great 
cause of our industrial, commercial and trade prostration to a de- 
16 A 
