Excerpt from Of the Rate of Interest; And of Its Influence on the Relations of Capital and Labor: Speech of H. C, Carey in the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, May 15, 1873

Precisely a century and a half since, in 1723, the General Assem bly of Pennsylvania reduced the legal charge for the use of money from eight to six per cent. Per annum. This was a great step in the direction of civilization, proving, as it did, that the labor of the present was obtaining increased power over accumulations of the past, the laborer approaching toward equality with the capitalist. At that point it has since remained, with, however, some change in the penalties which had been then prescribed for violations of the law.

Throughout the recent war the financial policy of the National Government so greatly favored the money borrower, and the laborer, as to have afforded reason for believing that the actual rate of inte rest was about to fall permanently below the legal one, with the effect of speedily causing usury laws to fall into entire disuse. Since its close, however, under a mistaken idea that such was the real road to resumption, all the Treasury operations have tended in the direction of favoring the money lender; the result exhibiting itself in the facts, that combinations are being everywhere formed for rais ing the price of money; that the long loans of the past are being daily more and more superseded by the call loans of the present; that manufacturer and merchant are more and more fleeced by Shylocks who would gladly take the pound of flesh nearest the heart from all over whom they are enabled to obtain control.

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