Men, who consider themselves to be in advance of their age, have organized an active crusade against capital and interest; it is the productiveness of capital which they are attacking; not certain abuses in the administration of it, but the principle itself.
A journal has been established to serve as a vehicle for this crusade.
It is conducted by M.Proudhon, and has, it is said, an immense circulation.

The first number of this periodical contains the electoral manifesto of the _people_.

Here we read, "The productiveness of capital, which is condemned by Christianity under the name of usury, is the true cause of misery, the true principle of destitution, the eternal obstacle to the establishment of the Republic." Another journal, _La Ruche Populaire_, after having said some excellent things on labor, adds, "But, above all, labor ought to be free; that is, it ought to be organized in such a manner, _that money lenders and patrons, or masters, should not be paid_ for this liberty of labor, this right of labor, which is raised to so high a price by the trafficers of men." The only thought that I notice here, is that expressed by the words in italics, which imply a denial of the right to interest.

The remainder of the article explains it.
It is thus that the democratic Socialist, Thore, expresses himself: "The revolution will always have to be recommenced, so long as we occupy ourselves with consequences only, without having the logic or the courage to attack the principle itself.

This principle is capital, false property, interest, and usury, which by the old _regime_, is made to weigh upon labor.
"Ever since the aristocrats invented the incredible fiction, _that capital possesses the power of reproducing itself_, the workers have been at the mercy of the idle.
"At the end of a year, will you find an additional crown in a bag of one hundred shillings?
At the end of fourteen years, will your shillings have doubled in your bag?
"Will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of fourteen years?
"Let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction." I have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact, that many persons consider the productiveness of capital a false, a fatal, and an iniquitous principle.