rent. and I will give you the means to keep
your head above water to-day.' And the
poor fellow is entirely at his mercy.
The law as you want to fix it is a beauti-
ful protection lo the class who need protection
in the State. I trust that the men who
want protection, the poor, the up-struggling,
will find it, and not those who, when they
are struggling to keep above the water, are
pressing them down under the flood to engulph
them.
Six per cent. is enough interest. In twelve
years it doubles the capital at that rate. And
if six per cent. be enough for the lender, why
put it in his power to demand ten ? This re-
port puts it in his power to demand! ten, fifteen,
twenty, or one hundred percent, if he
pleases, just according to the necessities of
the poor fellow who goes into the market to
buy.
The gentleman has attempted a parallel
with other commodities, but it does not hold
good at all. A man goes into the market to
buy flour. It has a fixed price. Suppose
the holder of that flour had it in his power,
by legislation in his behalf, to say to the
buyer, "You shall starve, or pay me thirty,
forty, or fifty dollars barrel for my flour.
Because are starving will sell it to you at
a starvation price. Starvation looks you in
the face, and you shall give me what I de-
mand." And the poor fellow might have to
do it. Just so with the poor man seeking
relief. He can give the capitalist the honest
six per cent. But he may be sinking, and
need the money lo save him; and yet we
come forward here in this usury repent, and
say, because it is a fact notorious that the
money dealers—I do not mean by that gen-
tlemen who invest their means in stocks and
securities at the legal rate—but it is a noto-
rious facts that the professional moneylender,
the real Shylock, the fellow who must have
what is nominated in the bond, takes and re-
ceives in the streets of Baltimore city from
poor necessitous men five per cent. a month,
yet you say that shall be a valid contract;
' and the terms shall be enforced by the courts
of your Stile.
Away with it I It does not deserve to be
seriously entertained by the men of this con-
vention or any one else. Is there any reason
in it?
Again, I would urge upon certain gentle-
men of this house another view of the case. If
you are going to declare a? a rule that the poor
borrower must pay seven per cent., I want to
know whether you do not in that byjust so
much embarrass the operations of your government?
If you put the legal rate of inter-
est up to seven, eight or ten per cent., when
the government goes into the market do you
not demand that it shall pay the same? Of
course you do. I do not know of a single
proposition which has been offered upon this
floor which strikes me as more unfair, more |
unjust, more reprehensible than this, that
goes to aid the power of money, itself the
great power in the community, that goes to
add to the power of money at the expense of
the poor men of the State—the borrowers,
for they are the poor men. The rich men
who want too make some great speculative
hit, and turn their hundred thousand or two
'. hundred thousand, do not borrow money at.
six per cent. It is the poor man, the man of
enterprise who is the borrower; and it 13
him that you tax the additional one per
cent. by this report as it is proposed to
amend it.
I hope there will be found upon this floor,
irrespective of party or anything else, gen-
tlemen enough to stand by the interests of
the people. and to say that they are heavily
enough taxed now. It is the poor people
who feel the tax. I should like to pay Stewart's
tax and the tax of some other gentle-
linen. I should like to be in that category. 1
hope there will be gentlemen enough irre-
spective of party upon this floor to set the seal
of condemnation upon Ibis, end to retain
the old order of things.
Mr. CHAMBERS, I rise to express my con-
currence in the views just expressed by the
gentleman from Howard (Mr. Sands.) It has
been a very Ions period since I first enter-
tained the idea that it was necessary to arrest
by some legal provision the enormous appe-
tite of the money-lender. It is a difficult
matter to date the period at which the system
of usury laws commenced, it seems that it
is not now deemed altogether proper to
abandon restrictions upon that class of peo-
ple, The proposition is to increase the
amount of interest, it is not to abolish the
usury law, but to increase the amount
of interest, it is not to abolish the usury
1 law, co nomine, but effectually and really
to do it. So far as my experience
goes, there is a class of persons who own
money, and there is a class of persons who
being without immediate funds desire to ob-
tain money for the purpose of improving
their condition, and who can expend it pro-
fitably. The money lenders need no protec-
tion, They are sagacious, discreet, and per-
fectly capable of taking care of themselves.
It is not for the benefit of that class that
usury laws are provided.
But there is another class, different alto-
gether. Young men coming of age, who
have been educated in the enjoyment of
means larger than at the death of their pa-
rents they have found themselves possessed of.
They are unwilling to retrench, but go heed-
lessly into the market, and unfortunately
there they find sharks prepared to meet them
and to devour them. It is notorious that the
man whose business has been habitually that
of a money lender is as utterly destitute of
conscience as an animal who never was de-
signed to have one. It is from these people |
