urage a virtue,
you encourage a vice.

The old-fashioned virtues which our fathers prized, and which they
regarded essential elements of worthy manhood, were industry, and
honesty, and self-reliance, and brotherly sympathy, and the devout
recognition of God's divine sovereignty.

1. Usury discourages industry and encourages idleness. The laborer is
stirred to diligence when he gets good wages. When his wages are
meager he becomes discouraged, relaxes his efforts and may abandon his
work altogether. When he knows that he is receiving less than he is
earning, and that a part of his earnings are appropriated by another,
he is embittered and becomes indifferent. When he receives all he
earns, and the more diligent he is in his work the more he receives,
he is stimulated to the utmost.

This will be especially true if it is made impossible to secure a gain
without earning it. The benefit of full wages may be largely lost by
the knowledge of persons who, without productive effort, are
appropriating the earnings of others. The influence of their easy,
indolent lives may destroy or counteract the beneficent influence of
good wages. The laborer may be led to despise his well-paid tasks and
yearn for their ease, and thus become indolent.

One is encouraged to idleness when he discovers that he can secure his
bread by the sweat of another's face. He is likely to relax his
efforts if he does not forsake all personal productive occupations. He
may give great care and the closest attention to the management of his
wealth, loaning to others and collecting the increase, but not to
productive industry.

There are activities that look like virtues, but they are perverted
efforts. The slave-driver may work as hard as the slave in his efforts
to appropriate the earnings of others. The thief may work in the night
and endure more hardness to secure the property of another than would
be necessary to honestly earn it. The usurer may give his thought,
night and day, to the placing of his wealth the most securely and at
the best rates of interest, and at the same time abandon all effort in
the direct management of useful productive enterprises.

The complete result of usury upon the habit of industry can be
realized in those who have grown up under its influence; those who
have an income secure from invested funds. When there is no need,
present nor prospective, there is no motive to active industry, and
the love of ease and pleasure gro