The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1917. THE PENULTIMATE OF SLAVERY

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 3 October 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1917. THE PENULTIMATE OF SLAVERY

(With which is incorporated The Taihapo Post and Waimarino News).

Two cases of usury brought under the notice of of Parliament on Monday mght are of such an alarming character as to make one wonder whether civilisation has not gone off at a tangent and is now on a disastrously retrograde course. We, in these latter days, have forgotten the words serfdom and peonage, and yet there is as great a use for them now as ever there was, and even more so, for there are some cases which conjure up vistas of infamy which were unknown in old-time serf dom. We are not going to exaggerate by saying that the poor woman who had to pay IS2 per cent on a loan of £2O while liquidating it in 35 weekly was in the bonds of peonage, but she was, or is, very little removed from it. She undergoes a great deal of the physical torture and very nearly all the mental torture that,the peon underwent in olden-times. This poor woman must almost of a certainty become hopelessly involved, but luckily her body cannot be retained in peonage, or slavery, till she work s out the impossible. We yet have courts of justice and if these courts give her no then there is bankruptcy, but, in any case, she must lose everything ,she possesses to give the human blood-suckers their 182 per cent. Neither Members or Ministers know of any law to prevent the practice of “Shylockism” in this enlightened, humane age, in this “God’s Own Country” Mr Hardman, Attorney General and the Prime Minister are appealed to, but they know of no law to curb the operations of the 182 per cent, vultures. Mr Herdman said he was not sure that such cases were not covered by the Money Lenders Act. But, if high interests were not charged people without adequate security would not be able to borrow at all; he would have the matter looked into. Verily, it s a short step to the repeal of bankruptcy and the imprsonment for debt laws when one hears extreme leecherv discussed with such pan'gfroid. The House does not know of any means of relieving the unfortunate woman and the ad-

mmstrator of justice apathetically remarks that lu will the matter looked into. If ih.-re is no law under which sued caf.es come w. ! he introduce on e anc ask the Home tc put it through a s speedily as possible. While on this subject, it comes to mind that one of our great thinkers and observers has suggested that the final, the supreme struggle for mastery between money and humanity in the world is not. now in the far future. The time is nearing when humanity will he convulsed in vehement efforts to free itself from the strangling toils of money, of capitalism; that the resultant will be one of two possibilities, civilisation will triumph and the world will progress, or money will reign and mankind will become its slaves. All this seems very farfetched, but that i s only because our minds have not been directed into the channels of evidence which lead to the evolution of such views. The world presents overwhelming evidence that all this is possible, and not only that, but that at the present time obtains to the most horrifying degree in some countries. The most revolting forms of slavery are lawful in Mexico under the name of peonage, and there is very little doubt that it was the intention ,of the Prussian military system to similarly subject the whole world. Fortunately, humanity has been given one more opportunity to throw off the shackles of might, and to unite and strive for the supremacy of right. IE is not Mexican capital that is responsible for slavery in Mexico, it is the capital of the millionaires of America, and to a lesser degree of other nations. Wars, riots, revolts and disturbances in Mexico have gained an opprobrium for that country, but they ! have all resulted in a struggle against. I slavery. At no time in the history of the world was there more revolting slavery than there is in Mexico today. It has been denounced by some humane people, hut it still goes on unchecked. the director of the German newspaper system in America, sent a man to Mexico who should prove the falsity of the charges, but he only verified them. There is some gratification in knowing that the chief abettors of slavery in Mexico were Germans, headed by the notorious Hearst, but. what is Britain and America doing to wipe this fearful slave stain off the slate of the world? Every country should have an inalienable right to govern itself as it pleases, but when laws are subversive of the right to one’s self-possession, they involve slavery. If slavery is an international offence then no nation should be allowed to enact laws that permit it. It may be thought by some of our readers that we have digressed, but that is really not the case; we have only shown the vista that the usury of some Auckland money-lenders opens up to us. All such leechery is a matter of degree; when one extorts 15 or 20 per cent we regard it as a small matter. When it emulates the greed of Shylock it becomes but when it is a debt at such interest that renders it utterly impossible and entirely out of the question for the debtor to get clear of during his or her lifetime, as is 'commonly met with in Mexico, then it is slavery. The creditor seizes the body of the debtor and does just as he pleases with it, even to destroying the life in it. Slavery was abolished in America; slavetraders were hunted and destroyed, but slavery is as rampant’ to-day, and in a hugely more vicious form than in the old negro slavery days, yet America and Britain lift not a hand against it. It is the greed for mpney and the inhumanity of the lender that extorts 182 per cent interest, it is the precisely similar lamentable qualities in profiteers that enslaves the human body; it is all for profit. There is no care or thought for the let alone the inherent right to one’s own person in the acquisition of millions.