But the most important practical point which we have now to determine is, whether the actual rate of interest is a natural rate flowing from free competition, or whether, like other values, it contains elements of Monopoly? - Now at a first glance it would seem as if nothing could be more subject to the law of pure competition, which of itself when absolutely free reduces all things to equality, than money; for it is at once the most nimble, the most unimpeded, and, in a way, the most lightly moving, of all things; and yet we shall find on closer inspection that it, too, like all else in the present stage of industry, partakes of the nature of a monopoly. In an ideal wheel revolving in the pure ether of a millennial time, there would neither be fluctuations of interest, nor interest itself, inasmuch as all industrial operations would be certainties, all securities equally good, all men honest, and none embarrassed in their fortunes; and whether money were invested or were kept in your pocket, it would be all the same.

But as that millennial time has not yet been reached, what we have now to note is that in the present stage of industry, where all new industrial undertakings, or expansions of old ones, have as their object the capturing by the use of machinery, inventions, new processes, etc., those powers of Nature in the soil or mines or machines, which will yield an increase of wealth as a free gift-over and above the labour spent on them; and as these must always require floating capital, or money, at short notice to establish and develop them, over and above the amounts on which industrial capitalists and speculators can at a moment's notice lay their hands; it follows that the possessors of this free capital, or ready money, when brought into a solid combination by the bankers and money-dealers, as against the unorganized and dispersed individual farmers, manufacturers, mine owners, and traders (never twice the same people) who must manage to get command of this money-capital if they are to snatch the gains which new enterprises, inventions, or improvements in methods of production will yield them; - it follows, I say, that the money-lenders must occupy the superior position in their bargains with these industrial capitalists, and that having a virtual modified monopoly, they will have the power to levy toll on all men who wish to borrow, whether for long or short periods, and will not refrain from exercising it.

For it is not likely that they are going to stand by and see the projectors of new enterprises, or the developers of old ones, who are dependent on them for the ways and means, quietly appropriating the spoils with which the powers of Nature arc about to present them, without being paid for this privilege at a modified monopoly rate. And the game of wealth being how you can get the greatest amount of it possible within the limits imposed by the legitimate rules of the game - whether by competition, or still better by combination - it follows that, having the power, the money-lenders of the central exchanges will always keep the interest of money above its natural value, and will take good care that it shall never fall to the zero point while their superior position, as possessors of a modified monopoly, over that of the industrial capitalists lasts; in the same way as an invading host which has taken the lands of a neighbouring country from its former possessors, will never, if they intend to live on rents, permit these rents to fall to zero, whatever may befall either the farmers, the capitalists, or the public in general, who are now in their power (otherwise they would not have entered on the conquest); or as the capitalist masters of industry are not going to allow the wages of the men - so long at least as they are dependent on them for their livelihood - to swallow up their own profits, whatever the state of the labour market may be.

In a word, in the present stage of industrial development, the laws of Political Economy, as in an auction room where certain prices are reserved, will never be allowed to operate quite freely, but only within limits, inasmuch as they will always be controlled by the incidence of Power which springs from the existence of the economic monopolies which different classes of industry possess and exercise over those below them, and which proceed from above downwards in a graduated series of exploitations, the bankers and money-lenders squeezing a 'forced gain' out of the individual capitalists, who in turn squeeze another out of their workmen, while the landlords - were they few enough to hold solidly together, and could keep out the corn of foreign nations - could squeeze all alike. Now all these monopoly powers, which interpose themselves between the different classes of an industrial community are, it is to be observed, purely economic; and whether it be a single nation that we take as our standpoint, or the world of nations, they must and will take their tax and toll in the shape of unearned gains, so long as the present industrial regime lasts, - an economic tax and toll which can only be neutralized and redressed by Governmental taxation in turn, whenever this shall be found expedient from the higher political point of view.

Meantime we may remark that these economic exploitations, though differing in form from exploitations by the sword or by despotism, are none the less real exploitations, and, what is more important, that they find their fulcrum in that 'freedom of contract' which is the basis of the present industrial regime, involving as it does, as we have had so often to repeat, the freedom to combine, out of which these monopolies arise, as well as the freedom to compete which can at best only partially mitigate their effects.