signs of change.

5. The relation of things to each other have not changed. Plants must
have soil to grow in, animals must have vegetation to feed upon. Fish
must have water. And so with the thousands of relations of climate,
elements, soils, plants, animals, fishes, birds and insects, they are
the identical relations sustained ages and ages ago.

6. The nature of money has not changed. Its material and form and
denominations have been modified but the functions of money as a
storage of values and as a measure of values and as a medium of
exchange remain the same. Our gold and silver and paper money may be
more convenient and more exact, but its functions are just the same
as the Indians' wampum.

The law of supply and demand and the equity in commercial
transactions, great or small, are unchanged. Money could always be
used to make or gather more money in business. It is no more true now
than in the times of David or Nehemiah. If this had not then been
possible; if there had not been tempting opportunities, there would
have been no sin of usury for them to reprove.

Man's changed conditions are but trifling and incidental, relating to
himself. They do not affect a single natural or moral or economic law.

The changed conditions, which are urged as a reason that the
prohibition of usury is no longer binding, are only the conditions
brought about by the violation of that law.

The prohibition of usury is systematically violated. The neighbor in
the smallest transaction with his neighbor exacts usury, though it be
but a few cents. The credit system has become universal. It is the
rare exception now to "own what you have" and to "pay as you go."
Interest bearing bonds are issued by the smallest manufacturing plant,
by the great corporation and by the empire. These conditions do not
prove usury right. They only show how far true business, commercial,
and political principles have been perverted by this practice.

If violating a law annuls it, then any law can be pushed aside. Let
the claims of the Sabbath day be ignored. Let the houses of worship
remain closed upon that day. Let work be planned for seven days of the
week. Let the hum of the mills and the roar of commerce go on. Take no
note of the Sabbath day, either in business or recreation or worship,
and conditions will soon be upon us, such that we may urge as
plausibly, that the Sabbath is effete, possible to our slow going
fathers but inconsistent with the ne