or sugar, a sack of coffee or salt, a pair of shoes or boots, a yard of calico or a yard of domestic, a hat, a cap, or a suit of clothes. Not a knife, a spade, a garden rake, a hoe, or a plow could be found. The destitution of every needful domestic article was general, and the people were in need of everything. But if the stores had been full of every variety of merchandise to supply every want, the people had no money. Confederate money was plentiful, but current money there was none. Here and there a little gold may have been found. The great body of the people had no money. Neither had a large percentage of the people anything with which to procure money. Those who had cotton

sold it at a high price, and were able to provide their home wants. Speculators in cotton who were able to remain at home during the war on account of their age, or the ability to secure substitutes, fared well. This class of men, who in 1861 were worth nothing, or at best a few thousand dollars, were in 1866 rich. A hundred bales of cotton represented forty thousand dollars. Men who were poor at the beginning of the struggle, were wealthy at its termination, representing fifty, a hundred, and two hundred thousand dollars in cash. They became the money lenders of the country. Some few were moderate and reasonable in their terms in aiding their unfortunate neighbors. Others were hard and exacting-veritable Shylocks. Their oppor

tunity had come, and they proposed to use it in full measure. It was the feast day for moneyed tyranny. The situation was deplorable to the poor

and the unfortunate. The times were out of

joint.

Add to these troubles the fact that quite a number of men whose solvency was unquestioned in 1861, had old debts to pay, and they had nothing with which to pay them. Some of these claims were security debts; others were for negroes bought when the war commenced. Hard, relentless creditors demanded payment with an urgency and a teasing persistency that drove the debtor to borrow money at exorbitant rates, and secured the same by a mortgage on his land. The foreclosure of such mortgage was in many instances a foreseen fact. A place worth ten thousand dollars was sold for half, and even one-fourth, of that sum. Hundreds of families that had never known what poverty meant, and unaccustomed to its pinching and humiliating distress, were homeless and beggars in the land of their birth. Many families nurtured in all the elegant refinements of life, were reduced to the hard necessity of doing the drudgery which a few short years ago was the work of slaves. The distress was bitter and keen. Others shifted their debts from one creditor to another, and, after years of hard toil, paid the principal and twice and three times that sum in interest. What a hard struggle it was! The milk of charity--the humane feelings -had soured in many a bosom.

This condition of affairs in the South introduced a vast credit system whose tremendous evils and exorbitant exactions have brought poverty and bankruptcy to thousands of families. As a policy,

it is vindictive in its subtile sophistry; as a system, it has crushed out all independence and reduced its victims to a coarse species of servile slavery; as a relief measure, it is cruel in its deception and in its demands.

It is proposed, in these pages, to portray the evils not of credit, but of the credit system, with such other concomitant evils as menace many vital interests of the Southern people. A crisis is approaching. The future is dark with storm-clouds.

CHAPTER II.

THE CREDIT SYSTEM.

“Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What lies, what meanness, what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double dealing! How, in due season, it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles! How, like a knife, it will stab the honest heart."D. JERROLD.

CREDIT is useful in an eminent degree. The

business system prevailing with such hurtful and dangerous tendencies in the Southern States, is enslaving the people, and, by its insidious operations, concentrating productive wealth in the hands of the few. It reduces a large body of people to a state of beggary, fosters a discontented spirit, checks consumption, produces recklessness on the part of the consumer, places a discount on honesty, and converts commerce into a vast pawning shop where farmers pledge their lands for hominy and bacon upon ruinous terms in harmony with the pawning system.

The doctrine of credit is, that it is confidence in the integrity and truthfulness of our fellow-men. These qualities form a strong basis of trust. Where they exist, doubt as to the fulfillment of a promise loses its sickly hue. Ability to perform the promise made is the foundation upon which confidence must

rest. These three basal elements-ability, integrity, and truthfulness-are the strong ribs of genuine credit.

When they are impaired by whatever circumstances, misfortunes and providential dispensations excepted, confidence is damaged. Where these qualities exist, trust is their normal outgrowth. It is natural to trust when all the conditions upon which it depends are favorable. Trust in our fellowmen must be measured by the essential elements that give it birth.

The basis of confidence is wealth, and wealth is composed of all those objects which can be used and exchanged for other useful things. Food, clothing, houses, land, and whatever object can gratify human desire and that can be appropriated, constitute wealth. Money in itself is not wealth. It has nothing to gratify human desires. It can satisfy no human want. The money of the civilized world could not have kept Robinson Crusoe from starvation. The silver of Peru, had it been coined into money, could not procure for Pizarro a pound of bread or a pound of iron. Money measures wealth; this is its function. Neither does wealth. consist in mortgages, bonds, and stocks. They are mere title-deeds to wealth. A mortgage upon a farm divides the ownership. These commercial instruments are the mere symbols of genuine wealth. A five-thousand-dollar United States bond is a lien on the wealth of the whole country. Should production cease, the bond would be worth less than the paper upon which it is written. None of these