ough a similar
transaction of finding some one ready to take his product, pays his note
with corn. (See p. 164.)

Interest is never confined to money transactions, nor even to those in
which terms of money are used. All owners of productive wealth gain
interest in its use as truly as in lending it. The farmer is not a
money-lender in general, because his wealth will bring him larger profit
by its use as stock or machinery. Even when he borrows from his neighbors,
it is possible that he secures a larger interest, though he calls it
profit, than he pays the lender. Interest is often paid in kind. The
laughable story of borrowing a hen from one neighbor and a sitting of eggs
from another, to be returned after a time with advantage, is actually
paralleled by some transactions. A friend of mine having a magnificent
pasture agreed with his neighbor, who owned a fine flock of ewes, to
pasture that flock for three years, returning at the end of that time just
twice the number of sheep received. He explained to me that he had made a
great bargain, since the wool would pay for the use of the pasture, and he
should have at the end of the three years a flock about equal to the flock
he returned. This bargain involved interest at the rate of 33-{~VULGAR FRACTION ONE THIRD~} per cent,
without any terms of money, and an indefinite profit to the owner of the
pasture in addition to an average price for such use. This profit is his
return for the risk undertaken; since he promised to double the flock
under any circumstances, and if foot-rot or scab had ruined the flock
under his management, he would still have the same obligation toward the
owner.

Such bargains will always be made so long as both parties are benefited,
for no possible construction of laws and no diatribes of fanatics can
prevent them. Any calculation as to the enormous growth of wealth by
interest is more than balanced by a similar calculation of the
multiplication of wealth by production. If Abraham's shekels at compound
interest make an impossible sum of money, Abraham's flock of sheep with
the ordinary rate of increase makes an equally impossible worldful.

_Varying rates of interest._--Interest rates are subject to fluctuation and
variations under the natural relations of borrowers and lenders very much
as are prices of commodities. Variations, in comparison of different
regions, are due to several causes. In any community where enterprise is
great and industrial