upon. Fish must have water. And so with the thousands of relations of climate, elements, soils, plants, animals, fishes, birds and insects, they are the identical relations sustained ages and ages ago.
- The nature of money has not changed. Its material and form and denominations have been modified but the functions of money as a storage of values and as a measure of values and as a medium of exchange remain the same. Our gold and silver and paper money may be more convenient and more exact, but its functions are just the same as the Indians' wampum.
The law of supply and demand and the equity in commercial transactions, great or small, are unchanged. Money could always be used to make or gather more money in business. It is no more true now than in the times of David or Nehemiah. If this had not then been possible; if there had not been tempting opportunities, there would have been no sin of usury for them to reprove.
Man's changed conditions are but trifling and incidental, relating to himself. They do not affect a single natural or moral or economic law.
The changed conditions, which are urged as a reason that the prohibition of usury is no longer binding, are only the conditions brought about by the violation of that law.
The prohibition of usury is systematically violated. The neighbor in the smallest transaction with his neighbor exacts usury, though it be but a few cents. The credit system has become universal. It is the rare exception now to "own what you have" and to "pay as you go." Interest bearing bonds are issued by the smallest manufacturing plant, by the great corporation and by the empire. These conditions do not prove usury right. They only show how far true business, commercial, and political principles have been perverted by this practice.