The managers may be stupid dolts, only so they do not interfere with
the usurious principle in its eternal pull on the resources of
mankind.

The interest bearing debt of the United States, at this date, is about
one thousand millions. This in one hundred years at six per cent.
would amount to $340,000,000,000; five times the whole present wealth
of the nation.

The smallest national bank organized, by the deposit of $25,000 of
bonds yielding two per cent. interest, and permitted to re-loan the
same funds to its private customers at eight per cent., could gather
to itself in one hundred years, $345,225,000.

The wealth of an individual or of a family may also grow with the
years as they pass. The property may be in public bonds or that of
incorporations, requiring no care or effort on their part, yet it may
be continually increasing. A usurer in any community in one life comes
to absorb the wealth of that community, though the amount loaned at
the beginning was small.

The accretions are the irresistible result of the principle of usury.

The wealth is more and more centralized as the years pass. Great trees
in the forest shadow the smaller, and rob them of the sunshine and
moisture until they perish. Great fish in the crowded pond feed upon
the smaller. Individual manufacturers are absorbed by the great
combinations called trusts. The stockholders of a railroad are
absorbed by those who have large and controlling interest. But the
railroad is itself absorbed by another yet greater corporation, and
this again by a great combine that eliminates the influence of all but
the chief control, and tends to a complete centralization of all the
systems.

There is no escaping from this centralizing draft upon all resources,
when the system of interest-taking is as general as now. Freedom from
personal debt does not deliver us. The farmer, the most independent of
men, in his own home, free from personal debt, yet must contribute to
this centralizing by paying interest on bonds in every shipment of
produce, and every mile of railroad travel. He pays tribute also in
all the tools that he buys, in the food that he eats and the clothes
that he wears.

This centralizing draft is constant, though not always equally
apparent. Certain favorable conditions may hold in check, for a time,
the adverse influence and cause a temporary distribution of wealth to
the producers. Its force is not, however, destroyed, but only
restrained f