"Then comes the great day. These people cannot pay that commission over again, and the loan company doesn't care to increase the loan, maybe, by including the commission in a new one. If they are unable to make arrangements with a bank, and that means they are going to deed them the property, seven cases in ten, foreclosure proceedings are instituted. The property is finally deeded by the sheriff to the mortgagee. Now here is another phase: This piece of property can then be sold quicker than before, for this reason: It is very easy to frame up a tale, to the effect that a party who was purchasing the place was a shiftless drunkard, or anything, and imagination can supply the rest; but, inasmuch as they had taken the property back, they are now offering it at a greatly reduced price and better terms. There are so many subtle ways of drawing people in, that it would take a volume to relate them all; but they come to the same in the end. Installment property at two thousand dollars can be bought for about twelve to not exceed fifteen hundred. Instead of commission and everything else, buying by the installment plan in this, and every overboomed southern town, costs from twice to three times what the property would actually cost, if the purchaser could pay half of the purchase price cash, for, in that way he could secure terms, and could pay interest rate on the remainder. In time he would get the same paid, and have his little home." "And that, you feel, is the reason for all this foreclosure?" said Wyeth. "That is the _cause_ of it. Why, advertising property for foreclosure has become a feature of competition, between the three Negro papers in this town. They get more money out of that end, than they do from the advertisements through straight business, for the purpose of selling it originally." "It would seem that the people would get on to such methods by and by," Wyeth commented. "Some, of course, do, and avoid it; but you cannot imagine how many do not. It all comes about through a lack of general intelligence. Too many of our people do not read anything; are, therefore, without any vision or judgment of their own. They don't know. And, of course, are made the goats of those who do." "So that explains why a portion of this town to the west, and which is occupied almost exclusively by our people, has such dreadful streets and no sidewalks whatever." "That's it. They will, perhaps, have none for the next twenty-five years. Too much property is being bought, and so little is being paid for, that it is a continual change about." "I find a great many of the people--intelligent people--who do not care to see this side of it," Wyeth remarked. "Half of the school teachers, for instance, seem to wish not to see it. And they get stung! But they are so anxious to be seen, and to be referred to in a position beyond their means, no wonder."