t is not at all improbable that the progress in the
technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus
leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from the process as a
whole.

The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected first to
excommunication--literally--and then to outlawry, is that of the usurer,
or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediaeval mind there was
something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the
furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediaeval
position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity
for profit--that is, a potential property interest--was outlawed. In
consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the
business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from
the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a
consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests
may be protected by the political boss.

Let us summarize the results of eight hundred years of experience in this
method of dealing with the usurer's trade. The business shifted from the
control of citizens to that of aliens; from the hands of those who were
aliens merely in a narrow, national sense, to the hands of those who are
alien to our common humanity. Such lawless, tricky, extortionate loan
sharks as now infest our cities were probably not to be found at all in
mediaeval or early modern times. They are a product of a secular process of
selection. Their ability to evade the laws directed against them is
consummate. It is true that from time to time we do succeed in catching
one and fining him, or even imprisoning him. For which risk the small
borrower is forced to pay, at a usurer's rate.

Social improvement through the excommunication of property interests is
inevitably a disorderly process. Wherever it is in operation we are sure
to find the successive stages indicated in the foregoing examples. First,
a gradual substitution of the conscienceless property holder for the one
responsive to public sentiment. Next, under the threat of hostile popular
action, the timid and resourceless property owner gives way to the
resourceful and the bold. The third stage in the process is a vigorous
political movement towards drastic regulation or abolition, evoking a
desperate attempt on the part of the interests threatened to protect
themselves by political me