The Abolition of Interest Excerpted from the book; Individual Liberty Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press, New York, 1926 Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973. To-day, a weekly newspaper published in Boston in 1890, printed an editorial on the subject of interest which contained so many vulnerable points that the editor of Liberty was moved to criticize it. After pointing out the errors and fallacies in the editorial, he proceeded: The modern opponents of interest are perfectly willing to consider facts tending to refute their position, but no facts can have such a tendency unless they belong to one of two classes: first, facts showing that interest has generally (not sporadically) existed in a community in whose economy money was as important a factor as it is with us today and in whose laws there was no restriction...
Reform Made Ridiculous. [Liberty, September 17, 1881.] One of the most noteworthy of Thomas Jefferson’s sayings was that he had rather live under newspapers without a government than under a government without newspapers. The Czar of Russia proposes to make this alternative unnecessary by establishing a national weekly journal to be distributed gratuitously in every village, whose carefully-concocted news paragraphs, severely-sifted political items, and rose-tinted editorials shall be read aloud on Sundays by designated officials to the assembled multitudes. This absurd proposal is no more absurd than that of a delegate to the State Convention of the Massachusetts Greenbackers, who desired that the government should add to its functions that of the collection...