few.  But for the last four centuries there has been on the question of usury a gradual change of opinion, beginning in the commercial centers and progressing most rapidly in the countries with the most developed industry.  A moderate rate of interest is now everywhere permitted; but in all but a few communities the rate that can be collected is limited by law, and penalties more or less severe are imposed upon the usurious lender.

Usury laws are practically evaded in a number of ways within the letter of the law.[4] Many persons maintain that they do more harm than good even to the borrower, whom they are designed to protect.  In a developed credit economy, where a regular money-market exists, they are superfluous, to say the least, as most loans are made below the legal rate.  Such laws, however, have a partial justification.  In a small loan market they to some extent protect the weak borrower at the moment of distress from the rapacity of the would-be usurer.  There has been great need to check the rapacity of the “loan-shark” in the cities.  Usury laws are fruits of the social conscience, a recognition of the duty to protect the weaker citizen in the period of his direst need.  Their utility is diminishing; and at best they are only negative in their action, preventing the needy borrower from borrowing when his need is acute.  In many European countries a more positive remedy has been found in the provision of public pawn-shops.  In America a very little has yet been done in this way, and that mostly by private philanthropy.[5]

Sec. 5. #Public inspection of standards and of foods#.  The determination and testing of standards of weights and measures has long been a function of government.  English laws of the Middle Ages forbade false measures and the sale of defective goods, and provided for the inspection of markets in the cities.  Usually, the self-interest of the purchaser is the best means of ensuring the quality of goods; but personal inspection by each buyer frequently is difficult and time-consuming, requiring special and unusual knowledge of the products and special costly testing apparatus.  The states and the nation undertake, in some cases, therefore, to set minimum standards of quality, and to enforce them by governmental inspection.  Government coinage had its origin in this need.

This policy is applied, however, mainly to commodities affecting health; its application to art products, except to protect the morality of the community, would be difficult or unwise.  Recent legislation in many lands and in all of the American states has developed greatly the policy of insuring the purity or the safety of many articles consumed in the home; notable is the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.  The federal law levying a tax on oleomargarine, however, was designed as protective legislation in the interest of the farmer.  Public regulation and inspection sometimes raises the price, but the cost is small compared with the convenience and the benefits resulting to the citizen.