EQUAL RIGHTS OF MEN.
All men have sacred rights that must be regarded. That these rights
are equal is so familiar and stale an expression that it hardly need
be spoken. "All men are created equal," each having rights, that are
inalienable, and each having the right to resist the encroachment on
his rights by another. To protect these rights governments are
instituted.
The vital energy of a man is his own and his right to it must be
regarded. Since the abolition of chattel slavery this has been
indefeasible except for crime.
He has a right to his own vital energy and to all that his own vital
force produces. He has a right to his property inherited, earned, or
however secured, except by fraud. He has no claim against the vital
energy of his fellow man, nor has he any claim whatever against the
property of another.
The working man needs capital. His vital energy must waste unless
there is material upon which it may be expended. There must be the
tree, land or material in some form, upon which he can work. But give
him the world raw and unsubdued and he can transform it again as he
has. He can build again everything on land and sea, the farms, towns,
and cities, and the floating palaces. He can again dig out the mines
and refine the silver and gold, mould the clay, smelt the ore and
shape the iron. His needs and his power, however, give him no claim to
the property of another.
The man of property is dependent upon the laborer. He may be the owner
of farms, forests and mines, of horses, flocks and herds, of railroads
and oil wells, yet these will not minister to him nor serve him
without the laborer. His coffers may be filled with gold, and his
barns bursting with grain and his stalls filled with fatlings, yet all
this wealth is useless and lost, unless touched with the vital energy
of an intelligent laborer. But his dependence and losses give him no
right to the labor of another.
He has no right, no just claim, to the services of another man, his
equal. All his wealth cannot confer the right. Wealth is but a thing,
in itself without rights, and can therefore add nothing to the rights
of its owner.
He may however use his wealth to command service by might, but not by
right. A club is but a thing having no will and no rights, yet in the
hands of a savage it adds greatly to his power and may be used by him
to oppress another of his tribe. A ruffian with his gun meeting a
defenseless man may so command him, that he is ready for the most
abject obedience. An armed highwayman may compel a brave man "to stand
and deliver." So a man may use his property to secure the service of
another but it gives him no right to that service.
The usurer, who has himself no rights against his fellows, uses a
thing, his property, as an instrument or weapon to command service.
He may place his hand upon every material thing another must have, and
withhold it, and the other is shut up and compelled, he has no
alternative. He must yield to the demands or suffer. Many men are
driven to the last extremity before they will borrow.
But if the borrower is very willing and urgent for the loan, this does
not change the nature of the act. The game may be shot upon the wing
as it is endeavoring to escape, or it may be snared in a trap by a
tempting bait. The wild broncho may be captured in chase, or beguiled
into the corral.
The voluntary sacrifice of others to the usurer does not make his
gains just. The foolish ones are now willing to invest in lottery
tickets, yet that does not make the lottery lawful. Slot machines are
being put out of the cities, because so many are ready to part with
their nickels. If there were none ensnared by them, they could stand
harmless.
The borrower may be greatly elated with the hope of gain, but the
injustice is the same, whether the services be secured by compelling
force, or by guile, or by the folly of the victim.
If we admit the supremacy of man over the material creation, all
subordinate to him, and no right to be, except to serve him, and also
admit the equal rights of all men, there is no escape from the
conclusion that the usurer can have no rightful claims to any portion
of the labor of the borrower, without surrendering to him some portion
of his property as compensation for the services received. He must
have less property when the service is rendered and the borrower must
have more property if the rights of both are regarded.
A false impression prevails, that the lender in some way gives the
loan to the borrower; that the borrower becomes somewhat the owner of
the property. The borrower is encouraged in this illusion and it
becomes a plausible basis for the claim upon his services.
When a loan is made to a bank it is called a "deposit" and rightly,
for it is only placed in the banker's hands and does not in any part
become his. This is true of any amount, great or small, whether the
deposit draws interest or not. The lender never loses his sense of
ownership of the whole amount, nor does the banker encourage the
fiction that he has become part owner.
Every loan is but a "deposit." The ownership of no part passes to the
borrower. It is seldom that the loan or "deposit" is not safer in the
keeping of the borrower than in the hands of the owner himself, when
secured by mortgages or personal sureties. The usurer gains the
earnings of the borrower but parts with no property. He receives the
service but gives nothing.
Two usurers, A and B, are neighbors. A has a garden he wishes dug. He
has an ax but no hoe. B has wood that he wishes cut. He has a hoe but
no ax. The laborer appears and wishes to do their work. Usurer A
agrees to lend him his ax to cut B's wood on the condition that he
shall return it unimpaired and work his garden for its use.
He cuts the wood, but has no hoe to dig A's garden for the use of the
ax. Usurer B now lends the laborer his hoe to dig the garden, but
takes the cutting of the wood for the use of the hoe. The confused
borrower knows he is defrauded of his work, though each seems to have
a plausible claim upon him.
A does not give the hoe to the laborer. He retains the full ownership
but deposits it in the workman's hands to be returned unimpaired. B
does not give away his ax, he only places it in the laborer's hands
also to be returned unimpaired. The full hoe and full ax is returned
and they have taken the services without compensation.
The result is just the same as if A and B had traded tools and A had
given the laborer a hoe to dig the garden, "the tool and the material
with which to work," and B had given him an ax to cut his wood, "the
tool and the material with which to work," without a pretence of a
payment for his labor.
Taking only a part of the borrower's or laborer's services does not
relieve it of injustice. The nature of the oppression is the same,
only less heinous and flagrant. He who took a penny belonging to
another is a thief as truly as the man who took a pound. Petit larceny
and grand larceny differ only in the amount stolen. The man who takes
three per cent. of the labor of another wrongfully defrauds as the man
who takes fifty per cent. The nature of the wrong is the same; they
only differ in degree.
It is a well known fact, however, often repeated, that ninety-five out
of every hundred who go into business with borrowed capital, that is,
who pay interest on "their material and tools," do give the vigor of
their lives to the service of usurers and at the end have nothing.
The element of time is only a figment that clouds the question of
right and deceives the borrower. In order that the labor of another
may be appropriated it is necessary to give him time to work. The
laborer may dig in A's garden a day or all summer and he may chop wood
for B a day or all winter. The result is the same. It is necessary
that the borrower be given time to earn something before it is or can
be appropriated. The question is, how rapidly can he earn, and how
soon can his earnings be collected? Long time loans with the frequent
payments of the earnings of the victim are the ideal conditions of the
usurer.