he world.

Production is further limited by the demand that it shall yield an
increase on the property employed. The shop is shut down when the
goods cannot be sold at such a price as to pay a satisfactory profit
on the investment. The shop stands idle until the stock is depleted
and the demand raises the price of the goods and then the shop is
again opened. The workmen could go on with their work, supplying the
world with their goods, bringing the price down until within the reach
of the poorest, but it is the owner of the shop that holds the key and
demands that the supply shall be so far restrained that the price
shall yield a satisfactory increase on the property.

Inventions and improved tools are a blessing to the poor when they
make labor so productive that they can enjoy results of labor that
could not be enjoyed by them before. They are not a blessing when used
to gain an increase on wealth by employing less labor. Their proper
use is to make labor more productive; their perverted use is to make
property more profitable.

There is a natural restraint by the law of supply and demand when all
needs are so supplied that there is no longer a sufficient
compensation to the producer; but it is a perverted and unrighteous
restraint to place property between productive labor and human needs
and demand a reward for it before these human needs shall be
satisfied. There is an utter want of pity for the poor in permitting
them to go unhoused, unfed and unclothed, unless there shall be a
profit by increase in supplying their wants. True benevolence requires
that labor shall be made so effective as to fill every human need, but
pure selfishness uses property to supply the need for a gain. This
restraint for an increase on property is oppression of the poor for a
price.

CHAPTER XXVI.

USURY OPPRESSES THE POOR--Continued.

The influence of any act is not limited to the person acting. The
righteous act of a righteous man blesses himself and his generation
and generations yet unborn. So the influence of a wrong act is not
limited to the wrong-doer, but extends to others and is harmful to
those who had no voluntary part in the act. Though the wrong be a
personal habit and the sinner be himself the greatest sufferer, yet it
is impossible to avoid causing distress to others who are themselves
innocent.

Equity between those who participate in a wrong does not make a wrong
act righteous. Thieves may be just among