al advancement of the profits secured.

The every-day operations of a farming community illustrate both interest
and rent in all their complications and definitions. Every farmer, in
estimating the cost of his wheat crop, may properly calculate both the
interest on his capital invested in tools, teams, machinery and wages, and
the rent of his land, keeping distinct accounts of interest and rent; or
he may combine in one account as interest the use of capital in machinery
and land. If he owns the whole establishment, he is likely to combine both
interest and rent with the return for his foresight and energy in managing
the farm under the name profits. All these returns, however, come for
different reasons, though under the same general principle of values
expressed in the law of supply and demand. The farmer working a rented
farm and the one working a mortgaged farm are alike paying both rent and
interest, since every farm involves both the wealth accumulated by
exertion and the wealth advanced by increasing population. While the owner
of the mortgaged farm apparently pays interest, if at the end of the term
of the mortgage the farm is returned to its former owner by foreclosure,
the result is that the mortgagee, while nominally owner of the land, has
simply been a renter. In a fair settlement of equities he will have paid
for the use of the land he has cultivated. Interest and rent are thus seen
to be terms separated rather by peculiarities of application than by
difference of principle. It is proper, however, to treat them separately
for the sake of more perfect understanding of the conditions applicable to
each.

Chapter XXI. Principles Of Interest.

_Reasons for interest._--The propriety of interest under any circumstances
has often been questioned, and its rightfulness is still bitterly
disputed. Both church and state have at times denounced the receiving of
interest as criminal. Yet in actual practice of commercial life throughout
the world interest has been sustained in all ages. The Jewish law
prohibited interest between neighbors, where the reason for borrowing was
assumed to be poverty, but authorized it in dealings with foreigners,
where the transaction was assumed to be in trade. The principle upon which
interest in all productive industry is actually founded is that capital,
gained by exertion and saved by self-control, secures to its present
possessor such advantages of time and choice of use for h