Show JUBILEE i SALT LAKE CITY April 101880 Editors Herald The resolution in the late Mormon conference to observe the fiftieth anniversary of Ihe organization of the church aj a sort ol jubilee in relieving the poor to a large degree from their indebtedness to the Perpetual Emigration Emi-gration Fund Company as well as to assist those made poor by the just past long and severe winter is very laudable and will resound to the credit of the proposers and supporters thereof I will make glad the hearts of many poor and struggling but probably honest and well intentioned people The rich have a jubilee all the time because they lack no earthly good and can obain all that they can desks in reason Those who are poor and in debt have their jubilee this year in their proposed release from certain indebtedness which has pressed down upon Bore of them like a nightmare for years until if they have hoped it has been hoping against hope over to liquidate their indebtedness These two classes the rich and the very poor have their jubilee the former every year the latter this year for once in tbeir hard lives iveaBut there is another class and that is composed of the careful industrious contriving people who succeed they scarcely know how in just paying their way as it were by the skin of their teeth and without the acceptance accept-ance of any charity by them From < one years end to apomer may are on a continual 1 strain Co make both ends meet and they just about manage to do i no thanks particularly par-ticularly to anybody else But they have neither surplus of worldly goods nor forgiven debts to excite them to jubilation Now the question suggests itself when and where and how doe isel this middle I the jubilation for worthy class come in How are they t be included so as to make the jubilation general This becms to me to be a question worthy of consideration Another thing The ancient Israel ite from whom this i custom of a j semicentennial jubilee of release has come bad also another regulation which torbade tho taking of usury or interest from a brother Israelite Why not adopt thin regulation I Why be content with half measures P Why not aboish the practice cf requiring interest for means expended in emigrating emi-grating the 10 r 7 Some people object ob-ject on principle to paying interest and wee object on principlo to paying pay-ing the principal The former have sound scriptural grounds for their objection ob-jection but tbe latter have not AH requiring of interest on loans is 9 speculation In requiring interest on money lent to emigrate the poor the emigration company evidently specu Isles on tie poverty of the poor not for the emolument of tao company but fur the benefit of the poor Now to speculate on too poor for the benefit bene-fit of the poor ia i a rstner paradoxical policy the necessity or the wisdom of which is not obvious to sac Therefore There-fore I ehoud be inclined to look upon such a policy wth positive disfavor Let us see how this policy works Suppose a poor man and wife with their family six children aie emi rated from Europe to this city by the company They are indebted to the company for the amount of thir emigration By 500 Now how long will i be before that poor man can repay the principal Year after year goes by and ho finds he cannot do i He ia i advanced in life and it is not a very easy thing for a man advanced in life to go to a new country and pick up money fast uDder new and strange circumstan I coB especially when he has a large family on his hands to support But as the years roll on he is reminded re-minded of his indebtedness and he finds that attached as an appendage to the principal there is a long and ever lengthening tail in the shape of interest and that tbe principal and interest together amount to 1000 The poor man still struggling to support sup-port > his family and pay his expenses learns by hard experience that no words are truer than those which say that debt is slavery J He feels enslaved slaved bound in chains and the honester be is the stronger do those chains appear to him and the more hopeless his slavery until i he does not feel like cursing the day he was born > he is very likely to think that he would have been freer in his native land in poverty may be but not in xtricably in debt and happier there than being a hopeless debtor in this land of liberty a hopeless debtor became the jubilee of release cornea only once in fifty years and may ever come in his time While the principal remains the same the interest terest is constantly cumulative Many persons indebted to the company might ba able gradually to pay the principal but it is the ever increasing interest which throws the cast of utter lopcleeeness into the features of their case casen may be sadi that the children should help the old man to pay his debt Well so they ought But bless your honest souls gentlemen that is hardly the way things are done in this part of the world Instead of helping the old folks the young folk think they are doing grand things if they only help themselves not only without helping the old folks but without calling on them for help Some young folks not only live with and on tho old folks but when the I young foka RO and get married they go and take their wives to live with the old folks and eat up any trifles of surplus victuals that happen to be lying around and not otherwise and promptly appropriated Thus the old folks at home have to help the young folks at home and often also have to help the young folks not at home So you will see even in this matter that its it-s vanity and vexation of spirit to reckon without your boat I mean your host of children In looking at these things in this light it certainly does eeem that the early and complete abolishment of the custom of chaging interest on loans by the emigration company would be very polite and would give Ii a fair and fitting finish to the admirable ad-mirable proposition to relieve the worthy poor from their indebtedness in this year jubilee JUBILEE |