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...
The Position of William. [Liberty, October 13, 1888.] John Ruskin, in the first of his Fors Clavigera series of letters to British workmen, opened what he had to say about interest by picturing what he called the position of William. Bastiat, the French economist, had tried to show the nature of capital and interest by a little story, in which a carpenter named James made a plane in order to increase his productive power, but, having made it, was induced by a fellow-carpenter named William to lend it to him for a year in consideration of receiving a new plank at the end of that time besides a plank for the use of it. Having fulfilled these conditions at the end of the first year, William borrowed the plane again on the same terms at...