Now, as in every civilized society, the vast majority of the population of this country are in debt, to some slight degree. It is only paupers, criminals, and lunatics who owe absolutely nothing. The day-laborer is pretty sure to have a small bill at the grocer's, and all his neighbors, in the ascending grades of commercial respectability, no matter how prompt and accurate they may be in the discharge of their obligations, are sure to owe the butcher and baker and milkman a greater or less amount. In fact the conduct of life on a cash basis would be impossible or intolerable. Of course, too, there are scattered all over the country men who owe a great deal of money and to whom little is due, and whose interest it would be to have the coinage adulterated. But then the number of these persons is very small, and they are mostly great speculators, who pass for rich men, and whose interests Congress is in reality not in the least desirous of protecting. Poor men, as a rule, are hardly ever greatly in debt, because nobody will trust them. We suspect that the number of those in this city who could borrow fifty dollars without security would not be found to be over one-twentieth of the population. The persons to whom loans are made by banks, insurance companies, and other institutions are almost all men of wealth or men who have the conduct of great enterprises, and do not need legislation to help them to take care of themselves. They are great merchants, or manufacturers, or brokers, or contractors, or railroad-builders. In fact, in so far as the debtors can be called a class, they form a very small class, and a class of remarkable shrewdness and of enormous power, over whom it is ludicrous for the Government to exercise a fatherly care.
The bulk of the population in this, as in every moderately prosperous community in the western world is composed of creditors. The creditor class, in other words, contains the great body of the American people, and any legislation intended to enable debtors to cheat is aimed at nineteen-twentieths, at the very least, of American citizens. Any mail who remains very long in the position of a debtor simply, and acquires no footing as a creditor, disappears from the surface of society. Bankruptcy or the house of correction is pretty sure to overtake him. It would be well-nigh impossible in this large city or in any other to find a man who had no pecuniary claims on someone else. The humblest hod-carrier becomes a creditor every day after making his first ascent of the ladder, and remains so until Saturday night, and continually replaces himself in "the creditor class," as long as life and health remain to him; and the same phenomenon presents itself in all fields of industry. Every sewing-girl and maid-servant is looking forward to a payment of earned money, and has the strongest interest in knowing for certain what its purchasing power will be.