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Show LOAN SHARKS. One of the peculiar phases of American life may be seen in the office of money lenders whose business it is to loan a few dollars to salaried persons per-sons with no note or other security. We have it on the authority of one of these salary loan sharks that Avhen they get a man coming he won't stop. There is a psychological reason back of the need of the money which makes him keep coining. In the first instance he probably needs $10, or thinks he does. Lacking experience and acquaintance with the money lender, he approaches with fear and trembling, which sad plight is dissipated by the heartiness with which he is received. Ten dollars for a few days i Easy enough. And the unfortunate unfortu-nate victim thinks he is happy in the possession of a debt of .$11 due next week. f Xow comes the day of repayment. How proudly proud-ly the deluded borrower swells up his chest as he enters the private office of the lender and lays before be-fore him the $10 gold piece accompanied by a silver dollar. He is there right on the day, on the hour, almost on the minute, and he is so proud of his innate in-nate honesty. And when the shark makes casual reference to him as a client the word seems sweet and the fact that he is a sucker is gone from him with his judgment. A few learned remarks bv the I lender on the financial situation of the nation, and the deluded borrower feels like the president of the First National bank of Podunk called into consultation consul-tation with the directors of the world's wealth. Come again? Well, if he doesn't he is the exception ex-ception to the rule. He needs not the cheery invitation. invi-tation. He is a client, and he is an honest man who pays up on time, even to the last cent called for in the contract. If he never comes again he probably will not be called a client again in all his life. But presuming he is actuated by base motives to defraud the money lender. Then his troubles begin. If he is established in the city, it is folly to attempt at-tempt it, and if he is a peripatetic, in his wanderings wander-ings he will be hounded by the shark in every city of the land. Life will become a burden, and tho "interest" on the money borrowed at 10 per cent a month grows rapidly. And he brands himself a thief, too, along with the shark. There is no law in Utah forbidding 10 per cent a month on salary loans. When the legislature enacted the usury law it was made to apply to chattels, chat-tels, so the sharks went out of the chattel loan business bus-iness except in cases when they had money not called for in the more profitable branch of their business. But the sharks are not so much to blame as the suckers. There must be a demand for money mon-ey under the conditions imposed by the lenders or they would have to go out of business. What the borrowers need is a law to protect them from their own folly. |