Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic viewElliott, Calvin
Religion
Usury : $b a scriptural, ethical and economic view
Elliott, Calvin
Usury
Personality must always come in else there are no rights to be
considered. Labor apart from a person laboring and property apart from
a person owning are impersonal and no ethical or moral laws can be
applied to them. They are only physical forces and material things.
The wind may push against a tree and overcome its resistance and the
tree falls. That is merely an abstract force against a material thing.
But when my energy is exerted against your tree and destroys it, then
personal responsibility and personal rights must be considered. A
righteous adjustment between labor and capital can never be arrived at
without the consideration of the personal elements on both sides. The
moral and ethical laws must be applied as well as the physical and
economic.
Incorporated property, however, has eliminated from it the ethical and
moral responsibility of personality and is regarded as possessed only
of economic and physical qualities and restrained only by legal
statutes.
Incorporated properties are not generally managed by those who own
them. The managers are employed by the owners, who are ready to pay
large compensation to those who have the tact and brain and nerve
power and peculiar quality of conscience to gain for them a
satisfactory increase. It is their work to press this irresponsible
material body up against "flesh and blood."
The incorporation employs the laborer when his labor earns a
satisfactory dividend on the capital, and lays him off or discharges
him whenever it seems most to the advantage of the investment. A plant
is built and operated for a time and then the plant is closed, or the
location is changed without the slightest regard to the sacrifices of
the poor laborers who have gathered around and are left stranded.
Laborers everywhere throughout Christendom need and beg for a Sabbath
of rest, but neither physical needs nor conscientious scruples are
regarded when a greater dividend can be gained in seven days than in
six.
On the part of the workman, resistance is useless. He can do nothing
but yield to the economic and physical force managed by those in whom
human sympathy and pity for the suffering and helpless are not
permitted. The dividend must be gained though it be necessary to grind
the poor.
The owner of this steel plant is in a distant city. All employes, from
the manager down to the porter, must so serve that he shall receive
the dividend. This mercantile house is owned by a woman on a pleasure
trip round the world. All who are connected with this business must so
serve and sacrifice that she shall receive her income regularly. This
railroad is owned by those who have gone a-yachting in southern seas.
It must be so managed that the revenues shall not fail whatever the
sacrifice required of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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