Looking to the future, then, there is no State in the Union--certainly none outside of New England--that has a greater interest in supplying her mechanics with the greatest possible amount of capital; or in supplying it at the lowest possible rates of interest. And this can be done only by using her real estate as banking capital. CHAPTER VIII. THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE "NATIONAL" SYSTEM. SECTION 1. Under the "National" system there are less than 2,000 banks. But let us call them 2,000. Calling the population of the country forty millions, there is but one bank to 20,000 people. And this one bank is, _in law_, a person; and only a single person. In lending money, it acts, and can act, only as a unit. Its several stockholders cannot act separately, as so many individuals, in lending money. So far, therefore, as this system is concerned, _there is but one money lender for twenty thousand people_! Of these 20,000 people, ten thousand (male and female) are sixteen years of age and upwards, capable of creating wealth, and requiring capital to make their labor most productive. Yet, so far as this system is concerned, there is but one person authorized to lend money to, or for, these ten thousand, who wish to borrow. And this one money lender is one who, proverbially "has no soul." It is not a natural human being. It is a legal, an artificial, and not a natural, person. It is neither masculine nor feminine. It has not the ordinary human sympathies, and is not influenced by the ordinary human motives of action. It is no father, who might wish to lend money to his children, to start them in life. It is no neighbor, who might wish to assist his neighbor. It is no citizen, who might wish to promote the public welfare. It is simply a nondescript, created by law, that wants money, and nothing else. Moreover, it has only $177,000 to lend to these 10,000 borrowers; _that is, a fraction less than $18, on an average, for each one_! What chance of borrowing capital have these ten thousand persons, who are forbidden to borrow, except from this one soulless person, who has so little to lend? If money lenders must be soulless--as, perhaps, to some extent, they must be--it is certainly of the utmost importance that there be so many of them, and that they may have so much money to lend, as that they may be necessitated, by their own selfishness, to compete with each other, and thus save the borrowers from their extortions. But the "National" system says, not only that the money lender shall be a soulless person, and one having only a little money to lend, but that he shall also have the whole field--a field of 10,000 borrowers--entirely to himself!