74 
Wisconsin' State Agricultural Society. 
constructing Shylocks, millions of dollars which belong on the 
farms of Wisconsin. If you had those dollars you could coax the 
soil to double its already magnificent yield; you could lay the foun¬ 
dation of more such beautiful cities as the one within whose limits 
we meet to-day; you could make your gardens more productive, 
beautiful, and fragrant, and compel your barren spots to bud and 
blossom with the sweetness and beauty of the rose. But all this 
is but the slightest trifle compared with the enormous aggregate of 
the 
BLIGHTING CURSE OF HIGH INTEREST. 
The government is paying an enormous interest on the national 
debt, and every producer in the country is feeling the effects of it. 
Business all over the country is stagnate—many of our once busy 
factories are as quiet as an ancient ruin, and the birds build nests 
in their chimneys; the strictest economy is practiced, and is a nec¬ 
essity in almost every household; thousands are without employ¬ 
ment or the means of obtaining the necessaries of life, and the pro¬ 
duce of our farms has been stored in Chicago and in our barns beg¬ 
ging a market in the very midst of hunger. And why this state 
of affairs? It is partly because a high rate of interest has tempted 
capital and business ability from the productive industries. The 
story of a New York millionaire illustrate this. Said he to a friend 
of mine; u When the war began I had several ships upon the sea, 
three hundred men in my employ, and five hundred other men were 
dependent upon my business for employment. The government of¬ 
fered seven and three-tenths per cent, for money and exempted its 
bonds from taxation, I found this to be equal to at least ten per cent. 
I then carefully calculated the profits from my business and found 
that they did not exceed that rate, and were constantly endanger¬ 
ed by the usual risks. I called home my ships and sold them, dis¬ 
charged my three hundred men, threw the other five hundred 
out of employment, shut up my store, invested my money in 
United States bonds, placed them in that vault, and now my only bus- 
ness is to sit here and wait for the coupons to mature, cut them off, 
collect the interest and invest it in more bonds.'’ Thus a high rate 
of interest tempted one man to withdraw $5,000,000 from active bus-' 
mess and to put it beyond the power of nearly a thousand men to 
live otherwise than by the practice of an economy which was often 
