Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic viewElliott, Calvin
Religion
Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic view
Elliott, Calvin
Usury
(_a_) When it is recognized that vital energy alone produces all
wealth, no great fortune can be gathered in the life time of one man.
The earnings of any life, however long, or the earnings of a
succession of industrious, energetic ancestors, could not amass a
fortune to interfere with the rights and activities of others.
One may inherit a large fortune from wealthy kindred; he may discover
a fortune; he may draw a grand prize in a lottery; he may as a Turk
seize the properties of others and then bribe the courts to confirm
his claims; or a people may be "held up" by law and one, selfish and
conscienceless as a ghoul, may jump at the opportunity and appropriate
their earnings and their property and yet the robber keep out of the
penitentiary; but no one, however great his skill or brilliant his
genius, can earn one million dollars, nor the tenth of it, in his
natural life. To gain one million dollars one must earn twenty
thousand dollars each year for fifty years and save it all. He must
spend nothing for pleasure nor benevolence. He must spend nothing for
food nor for clothes.
(_b_) Wealth decays unless cared for and preserved. As wealth
increases, the task of protecting and preserving it increases. There
comes a time when production must cease, and all energy will be
required to preserve that already gained. When others preserve and
pay a price for the privilege, as in usury, the vital energy can
continue production, indefinitely.
(_c_) Abolish usury and the instant one ceases to produce he begins to
consume that which he has earned. He can not live upon the increase of
his earnings, but he must begin at once to diminish the supply.
Exacting usury he may consume only the increase and preserve the
principal untouched. He may not consume all the increase and add the
remainder to his capital and thus grow richer in decrepit age. Many of
those who have not inherited wealth, have not been wealthy until
advanced age. It came to them by the accretions of interest after the
productive period of life was past.
(_d_) It is not possible to secure perfect equality of conditions. If
all wealth was equally distributed today differences would begin to
appear tomorrow. This has seemed to some disheartening and they
abandon all hope of correcting the evil. They should look deeper and
promote the natural and God-ordained remedy.
The natural force for the preservation of the level of the ocean is
gravity. But the surface is seldom smooth. The winds lash it into fury
and pile high its waves, but gravity pulling upon every drop of water
tends to draw it back to its place and smooth down the surface again.
The wind cannot build permanently a mountain of water in the ocean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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