People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1895 — Jabs From Your Uncle Jasper. [ARTICLE]

Jabs From Your Uncle Jasper.

To the Editor of The People’s Pilot: Every phase of the economic question can be traced directly to the one disturbing element—interest. When justice is accorded every individual, interest, rents, profits, dividends—all forms of gain without labor—will have disappeared. Usury is any part of one individual’s production taken by another individual without equivalent recompense in labor production. It is any rate of interest. The whole social problem hinges on interest, and the rate per cent has nothing to do with its merits, for the smallest per cent is wrong and will eventually absorb the whole capital. Government banks, rightly organized and operated on the humane principle of charging for actual cost, only, on the business transacted, would entirely remove the power of the money-lender to extort interest from the borrowing securitygiver.

Now listen, friends, and weigh this basic truth with calm consideration: Justice gives the laborer all he produces. Justice compells everyone to produce all that he shall possess. Justice forbids any scheme of financeering by which one class shall derive sustenance—much less luxury and magnificence—from the labor of another class. Justice limits the use of the natural elements of production to equal opportunity for all. Your Un,cle Jasper.