that smite his ships, etc.  If a mechanic, he is still more dependent upon the success of all above him, and the mutations of commercial prosperity.  He may lose employment; he may sicken; he may die.  But behind all these risks stands the money-lender, in perfect security.  The failure of his customer only enriches him; for he takes for his loan property worth twice or thrice the sum he has advanced upon it.  Given a million of men and a hundred years of time, and the slightest advantage possessed by any one class among the million must result, in the long run, in the most startling discrepancies of condition.  A little evil grows like a ferment—­it never ceases to operate; it is always at work.  Suppose I bring before you a handsome, rosy-cheeked young man, full of life and hope and health.  I touch his lip with a single bacillus of phthisis pulmonalis—­consumption.  It is invisible to the eye; it is too small to be weighed. judged by all the tests of the senses, it is too insignificant to be thought of; but it has the capacity to multiply itself indefinitely.  The youth goes off singing.  Months, perhaps years, pass before the deadly disorder begins to manifest itself; but in time the step loses its elasticity; the eyes become dull; the roses fade from the cheeks; the strength departs, and eventually the joyous youth is but a shell—­a cadaverous, shrunken form, inclosing a shocking mass of putridity; and death ends the dreadful scene.  Give one set of men in a community a financial advantage over the rest, however slight—­it may be almost invisible—­and at the end of centuries that class so favored will own everything and wreck the country.  A penny, they say, put out at interest the day Columbus sailed from Spain, and compounded ever since, would amount now to more than all the assessed value of all the property, real, personal and mixed, on the two continents of North and South America.”

“But,” said Maximilian, “how would the men get along who wanted to borrow?”

“The necessity to borrow is one of the results of borrowing.  The disease produces the symptoms.  The men who are enriched by borrowing are infinitely less in number than those who are ruined by it; and every disaster to the middle class swells the number and decreases the opportunities of the helplessly poor.  Money in itself is valueless.  It becomes valuable only by use—­by exchange for things needful for life or comfort.  If money could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor; and as the enterprise would not then have to support a double burden—­to wit, the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his back—­but would have to maintain only the former usurer—­that is, the present employer—­its success would be more certain; the general prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and there would be therefore more enterprises, more demand for labor, and consequently higher wages.