A large proportion of the opposition to interest arises from a misconception of the phrase, “borrowed money.” The fact is that borrowing and lending have to do chiefly with other forms of wealth. Most notes are given for the transfer of all sorts of property under a promise to return equal value in the future. Money may not enter into the transaction at all, except as the standard of value is in terms of money. Even when money is exchanged for a note, the borrower hastens to part with the money for the tools or provisions which make him a profitable producer. In payment of his note he offers money again, simply because it commands every desirable form of value for the owner of the wealth. If a farmer wants a wagon without the present means to buy, he offers the dealer his promise to pay after six months, when the corn crop just planted shall have matured. If the dealer cannot afford to hold the note because he needs the capital in his business, that others may be supplied with wagons, either the farmer or the dealer carries the note to some one who _can_ afford to wait for returns, which may be either a banker, whose business provides just such accommodation, or a neighboring farmer who has just sold his wool. In either case, the first farmer borrows what he wants in carrying on his business, and at the end of six months, through a similar transaction of finding some one ready to take his product, pays his note with corn. (See p. 164.) Interest is never confined to money transactions, nor even to those in which terms of money are used. All owners of productive wealth gain interest in its use as truly as in lending it. The farmer is not a money-lender in general, because his wealth will bring him larger profit by its use as stock or machinery. Even when he borrows from his neighbors, it is possible that he secures a larger interest, though he calls it profit, than he pays the lender. Interest is often paid in kind. The laughable story of borrowing a hen from one neighbor and a sitting of eggs from another, to be returned after a time with advantage, is actually paralleled by some transactions. A friend of mine having a magnificent pasture agreed with his neighbor, who owned a fine flock of ewes, to pasture that flock for three years, returning at the end of that time just twice the number of sheep received. He explained to me that he had made a great bargain, since the wool would pay for the use of the pasture, and he should have at the end of the three years a flock about equal to the flock he returned. This bargain involved interest at the rate of 33-⅓ per cent, without any terms of money, and an indefinite profit to the owner of the pasture in addition to an average price for such use. This profit is his return for the risk undertaken; since he promised to double the flock under any circumstances, and if foot-rot or scab had ruined the flock under his management, he would still have the same obligation toward the owner.