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 naïve 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."6
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.