INTEREST AND LOANS.

A number of commercial friends have been interested in the wonderful story of business organizations traced in the chapter on Great Beginnings of Modern Commerce. They have all been sure, however, that it is quite idle to talk of great commercial possibilities at a time when ecclesiastical regulations forbade the taking of interest. This would seem to make it quite impossible that great commercial transactions could be carried on, yet somehow these people succeeded in accomplishing them. A number of writers on economics in recent years have suggested that possibly one solution of the danger to government and popular rights from the accumulation of large fortunes might be avoided by a return to the system of prohibition of interest taking. There is {482} much more in that proposition than might possibly be thought by those who are unfamiliar with it from serious consideration. They did succeed in getting on without it in the Thirteenth Century, and at the same time they solved the other problem of providing loans, not alone for business people, but for all those who might need them. We are solving the "loan shark" evil at the present time in nearly the same way that they solved it seven centuries ago. Abbot Gasquet, in his "Parish Life in England Before the Reformation," describes the methods of the early days as follows:

"The parish wardens had their duties towards the poorer members of the district. In more than one instance they were guardians of the common chest, out of which temporary loans could be obtained by needy parishioners, to tide over persons in difficulties. These loans were secured by pledges and the additional security of other parishioners. No interest was charged for the use of the money, and in case the pledge had to be sold, everything over and above the sum lent was returned to the borrower."