yor of New York for some years, tells, in his
reports, of harrowing cases of death after death resulting from
exposure due to this horrible form of exploitation.

Now when the immigrant or native found himself in a state of near, or
complete, destitution and resorted to the pawnbrokers's or to theft,
what happened? The law restricted pawnbrokers from charging more than
seven per cent on amounts more than $25, but on amounts below that they
were allowed to charge twenty-five per cent. which, as the wage value of
money then went, was oppressively high. Of course, the poor with their
cheap possessions seldom owned anything on which they could get more
than $25; consequently they were the victims of the most grinding
legalized usury. Occasionally some legislative committee recognized,
although in a dim and unanalytic way, this onerous discrimination of law
against the propertyless. "Their [the pawnbrokers'] rates of interest,"
an Aldermanic committee reported in 1832, "have always been exorbitant
and exceedingly oppressive. It has from time to time been regulated by
law, and its sanctions have (as is usual upon most occasions when
oppression has been legalized) been made to fall most heavily upon the
poor." The committee continued with the following comments which were
naive in the extreme considering that for generations all law had been
made by and for the propertied interests: "It is a singular fact that
the smallest sums advanced have always been chargeable with the highest
rates of interest.... It is a fact worthy of consideration that by far
the greater number of loans effected at these establishments are less
than one dollar, and of the whole twelve-fifteenths are in sums less
than one dollar and a half."[54]

On the other hand, the propertied class not only was able to raise money
at a fairly low rate of interest, but, as will appear, had the free use
of the people's money, through the power of government, to the extent of
tens of millions of dollars.

THE PENALTIES OF POVERTY.

If a man were absolutely destitute and took to theft as the only means
of warding off starvation for himself or his family, the whole force of
law at once descended heavily upon him. In New York State the law
decreed it grand larceny to steal to the value of $25, and in other
States the statutes were equally severe. For stealing $25 worth of
anything the penalty was three years in prison at hard labor. The
unfortunate was usually put i