Eighth Commandment

Usury

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Usury

Genre: Speech

Track: 79

Dictation Name: RR130AR79

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

{?} today, we shall read today from the American Revised Version of 1901. Exodus 22:25-27, then Leviticus 25:35-38, and finally, Deuteronomy 23:19-20. First of all, Exodus 22:25-27. “If thou lend money to any of my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor, neither shall ye lay upon him interest. If thou at all take thy neighbour's garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him before the sun goeth down: for that it is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.”

Now, Leviticus 25:35-38. “And if thy brother be waxed poor, and his hand fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him: as a stranger and a sojourner; shall he live with thee. Take thou no interest of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon interest, nor give him thy vittles for increase. I am Jehovah your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.”

Finally, Deuteronomy 23:19-20. “Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy brother; interest of money, interest of vittles, interest of any thing that is lent upon interest: Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest: that Jehovah thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto and the land whither thou goest in to possess it.”

The law of interest, or usury, is a very important one for us to understand. Failure for us to understand this law has lead to some very unhappy consequences in Western Civilization. The very word “usury” has come to have a bad meaning. Actually, it simply means interest, but usury today has come to mean exorbitant interest, and we have laws against usury, whereby the interest rate is fixed as such and such a maximum, which in itself, is nonsense. Interest rates can be very low, at 50%, if you have inflation, and your money is depreciating 50% a year. So, interest rates are variable. They cannot be arbitrarily set by anyone, because it depends on a number of factors; to whom the money is being lent and the current rate of inflation.

The law has no reference whatsoever here to the rate of interest. It has reference simply to the fact of interest.

Now, the law states, first of all, that it is with reference to the poor who are fellow members to the covenant, fellow believers. What is the meaning here of the poor? “of thy poor brother.” Is it every believer? This has been the meaning that the church has given to it for centuries. The Medieval Talmudic regulations were similar, and so it was said that no Christian could lend to any other Christian on interest. This was the law passed to the church in the early Medieval period. This was the law also passed among the Jews in the Christian Era, and as a result, it became a sin for anyone, believer, Christian or Jew, to lend on interest. The result was that all kinds of technical regulations ensued, whereby money was lent, but technically, it wasn’t interest, and so you had money lending throughout the Middle Ages, Jews lending to Jews, and Christians to lending to Christians, and Christians to Jews, and Jews to Christians, with all kinds of technicalities used to evade the fact of interest.

As a result, money lending did exist, but with a bad conscience, and with all kinds of evasions of the law. A radical change came about in Western history with Calvin. Luther echoed the Medieval point of view, anyone who was a moneylender was a very wicked person, per se. Any banker, therefore, was regarded as one of the lowest people in the community. This point of view not only was echoed by Luther, it was the Medieval perspective, but also by the Anglican Divines, and I will quote one of them very shortly, but Calvin broke with all of this and pointed out the original meaning, in his commentary on Exodus 22:25, “The question here is not as to usury as some have falsely through, as if he commanded us to lend gratuitously and without any hope of gain, but since in lending, private advantage is most generally sought, and therefore we neglect the poor and only lend our money to the rich from whom we expect some compensation, Christ reminds us that if we seek to acquire the favor of the rich, we afford in this way no proof of our charity or mercy, and hence, he proposes another sort of liberality which is plainly gratuitous in giving assistance to the poor, not only because your loan is a perilous one, but because they cannot make a return in kind.”

Calvin then went on to break with the whole pagan tradition, the tradition that was so deeply ingrained among the Greeks from Aristotle, and among the Romans from Cicero, Plutarch, and all the rest, that interest, in itself, was an evil, and that the moneylender and the banker were the worst plights of civilization, that they were, in effect, the Greeks and Romans held, a class of people in conspiracy against mankind. Calvin said this was absolutely wrong, that there was no ground whatsoever for this position in the Bible. That, in fact, the Bible does permit money lending upon interest, but what this law does is to say that if there be a poor brother, a poor fellow believer who is in need, in such cases the loan must be without interest. You don’t confuse charity with business, in other words.

Before we go on to analyze the law a little more carefully, it is important to recognize what this total condemnation of interest has lead to. The churchmen whom the early centuries and the Talmudic rabbis at the same time, who said we will condemn all interest, were trying to say, “Well, here is a subject where we have to decide between who shall lend and who shall not, according to the Bible, and to whom it shall be lent, on interest, and to whom it shall not be, so we’ll simply say since the whole matter is morally suspect, we will abolish interest entirely.” Of course, they took the same attitude, did they not, on divorce, and the Medieval church simply said, “no divorce.” Now, the Bible, as we saw sometime ago, permitted it, recognized that it was valid and justifiable under certain conditions, that it was a remedy for evil, not in itself an evil unless it were contrary to the law.

So, the pagan hostility to interest was taken in by the Latin and the Greek church fathers and made a part of Western Civilization. The results we have with us today. Whether you look at most conservatives or whether you look at the socialists, you find the same myth of the bankers conspiracy, the moneylenders conspiracy. There’s not a shred of evidence to it, never has been, but this myth is one of the most deeply rooted in our culture and it goes back to the days of the Romans, and the Greeks, and you can go back and find, in the debates of Rome, statements that the world that they are engaged on is just a war engendered by the moneylenders and bankers in order to make more money. They didn’t bring any evidence to bear on the charge then, and they still have not brought any evidence to support their charges, and so, we have this myth that has been with us from pagan antiquity to the present, and there are many conservatives who, if you deny the validity of this myth, will be convinced that you are a sell-out to the international bankers, and of course, talk to any socialist or Marxist and he affirms the same thing, and will not allow you to confuse him with the facts.

It is important for us, therefore, to understand what the Bible here teaches. It has lead to a moral blinding of people, a fearful, moral blinding. To cite an example of this, one of the most distinguished and very fine Christian leaders, the Anglican Dean of Durham, the Reverend Thomas Wilson, was a most distinguished citizen. He served on a number of diplomatic missions, held high governmental offices, as well as serving as a distinguished churchman, and yet he wrote an entire book, a most voluminous book entitled Discourse Upon Usury, in which he presented in very lurid details, the moneylender, the banker, as the blight upon civilization. In describing the wickedness of moneylenders, Wilson, Dr. Wilson cited an example. His book is from 1572, “I know a gentleman borned a 500 pound lamb, that was the income annually from the lamb, and entering into usury upon pawn of his lamb did never receive above 1000 pound of meet money, or net money you would say, and within certain years, running still upon usury and double usury, the merchants terming it usance and double usance by a more queenly name, he did owe to master usurer 5,000 pounds at the last, borrowing but 1,000 pound at first. So that his land was queen gone, being 500 pounds inheritance for 1,000 pounds in money, and the usury of the same money for so few years, and the man now beggeth. I will not say but this gentleman was an unthrift divers ways in good cheer. May an evil cheer I may call it in wearing gay and costly apparel and roistering with many servants, no then needed, and with mustering and monstrous great hoes{?}, in haunting evil company and lashing out fondly and wastefully at cards and dices time served, and yet I do say he lost more by the usurer than he did by all those unthrifty means, for his vain expenses was not much more than 1,000 pounds because he had no more, whereas the usurer had not only his 1,000 pound again, but four times more, which is 5,000 pounds in the hole, and for want of this payment, the 500 pound lamb was wholly his, and this gain only he had for time.”

Now, let’s analyze this statement. First of all, it was a time of inflation, so the interest rates were high, very high. After all, who today wants to lend out money at 3% and 4%, when the rate of inflation will eat up the value of your money at a rate of 5% to 10%. It is estimated it will be perhaps 10% by the end of this year. You’re losing money if you lend it out at that rate, and if inflation is 50% and 100%, you’re going to charge a rate of interest commensurate with the inflation, and there is a market in money lending where supply and demand also hold good. So that, if there were cheaper rates of interest he could have gotten it, but the rate of interest was high because it was the only economical rate for the day. There was no sin on the part of the moneylenders, but by Dr. Wilson’s own account, here was a young man who inherited a very goodly estate. He could have lived well all his life. He borrowed money. He wasted it, gambled it away, spent it on wenching{?}, on clothes, on any and everything. There was sin in the situation, but the sin was the sin of the young heir, and what the misreading of this law has done is to produce from distinguished theologians like Dr. Wilson to the present, people both socialists and conservatives who, whenever the subject of money comes up are ready to turn environmentalist, are ready to condemn an entire profession that is acting properly and in terms of God’s law, rather than the person who is guilty, like this young heir.

As a result, we have a very serious moral leprosy infecting our world today, and just as Pavlov’s dogs salivated when the bell was rung, a socialist and a conservative salivate today when you mention international bankers, or bankers of any kind, moneylenders.

Now, let’s turn again to the biblical law, the nature of this loan to the poor. Our Lord echoed this law, and he said, “Lend to him that asketh, and turn them not away.” Did this mean then that any poor believer that came to you and asked for money you had to lend to him? This would put us in a bind, wouldn’t it, morally? Lots of poor Christians around. There are a lot of very simply, truly believing Negros in Los Angeles. Are you and I obligated to lend to every last one of these who are in need and come to us, and the answer is no. The reading here is the poor brother that is with thee. What is the meaning of this in the Hebrew? Well, the textual scholars have made clear what the meaning is. The reference is to someone who is working for you, supposing you have a farm. You’re a Hebrew living in Judea, or in Ephraim, and you have several hired hands, and they are short of money. It is to these people who are in your employment, to whom you are commanded to lend and the lending is an advance on their wages. This is exactly what the Hebrew has reference to.

Now, that’s a very different kind of situation than the Medieval church was legislating about, is it not? An advance on their wages. It could be also a loan to help them out, but normally, it was an advance on their wages. Now, if you felt and if you feel if you have a servant in your home who similarly needs funds, that a pledge of security should be taken because, while they are believers, they’re rather weak believers, and they have bad habits. You have a right to exact a pledge, and the pledge that is here spoken of is the outer garment, or tunic, with which the field hands would sleep at night, and it had to be returned at night. We’ll come to that subsequently, but this point is important. What it does require is that anyone who has any substance must feel a responsibility to the fellow believers who are working for him, to help him out, to exercise a paternal supervision, to give him advances on their wages when needed, or a loan in time of emergency, without interest, but if he feels security is required, he can exact security. We cannot be responsible for every poor person in the world, nor every poor fellow believer, and God never asks impossibilities of us. So the law here is very specific, very precise, very limited.

Thus, the prohibition of interest, of usury, is limited to a particular type of case. Charity is clearly the purpose of this law, charity towards those who are a part of our household, of our business establishment, but even here, we are not to confuse charity with a gift or with loss or with foolishness. The reasonableness of this law, a pledge or security can be required if need be. Gary North has written on this point and indicated that it forbids fractional reserve. When the prophets, in a number of passages, indict usury, they are indicting these loans to workmen at interest, and a seizure of their property for failure to meet the terms. There is, as I indicated, a reference by our Lord to the same kind of loan without interest in Luke 6:34-35 and elsewhere. Our Lord always spoke with the background of the law, and he simply said that they had the obligation to lend to anyone who asked of them, that is, who was in their employ. You can never take a text out of its context, and every word of our Lord is spoken in the context of the law. His approval of commercial loans with interest is apparent in Luke 19:23 and Matthew 25 and 27.

We must state further then that all loans in the Bible, commercial loans or charitable, are subject to the Sabbath law. That is, they cannot extend beyond six years to believers. To unbelievers, they can. Deuteronomy 15:1-6 indicates this. Short term loans alone are permitted to the believer because he has no right to mortgage his future. Man’s life belongs to God and it cannot be forfeited to men. The Sabbath, therefore, must be observed, the Sabbath year. Debt cannot be prolonged, and basic to the Sabbath rest is debt-free living. The standard is to owe no man anything save to love one another, and Moses declared if this law be kept there will be no poor among you. The unbelieving are excluded from the charity of this loan. That is, you can make such a loan to the unbeliever without interest, but you’re not required to by the law, to your unbelieving employees.

Moreover, there is no Sabbath release for the unbeliever and his debt. That is, his loan can be for ten years or twenty years. The reason is that the Christian is a free man in Christ, but the ungodly are already slaves by nature and they cannot be treated as free man. Their only solution is regeneration. The scripture cites the deliverance from Egypt and says, “Obey this law, remember the Lord thy God delivered you out of Egypt.” God reminds his people that the purpose of the law is to deliver man into freedom, just as he delivered them out of Egypt into the freedom of Canaan. The purpose of the law, in other words, is man’s freedom under God, to speak of deliverance from law is to speak of deliverance from freedom. Law is the way of freedom.

Next, to return to the matter of the pledge or the pawn as a security for debt. Certain kinds of pledges are specifically forbidden, and we read, for example, in Deuteronomy 24, “No man shall take the mill or upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” Deuteronomy 24:6, and the verses 17-18 of this same chapter, “Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge: but thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing.”

Then, in the 10-13 verses, “When thou dost lend thy brother any thing, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge. Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge abroad unto thee. And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the Lord thy God.”

Now, here again the reference is to workmen working for you. The pledge, in any case, whether it be for a workman in your employment or to anyone else, cannot be anything essential to a man’s work or living. His tools cannot be pawned. A widow’s raiment cannot be pawned. Thus, things essential to the life or to the dignity of the person cannot be made the security for a loan.

Similarly, no man has the right, as a borrower, to risk those things which are basic to his life and liberty. He cannot borrow those things, even though someone be ready to make a loan against them.

Finally, failure to restore a pledge or a pawn is spoken of in scripture as robbery. When repayment is made, the pawn must be restored, and Ezekiel 18:10-13, links such failure to restore a pledge with pagan worship, adultery, and murder as a fearful offense.

Today, the biblical law has rapidly given way to the state as the dispenser of charity, and today, increasingly, money lending is being taken from banks and money lenders and given to the state. The state, supposedly, is to be more charitable and today, billions are being lent to poor men, poor businessmen usually, by the federal government. The attempt, for example, create black capitalists is proving to be a total loss. Our money lending institutions have enabled black men to get started in business and done it successfully, because they’ve done it on a sound economical basis. The government doing it on a charitable and political basis today, government charitable basis, is throwing away our tax money in vast sums. The state dispenses charity to those who meet the state’s test. The result is that it enslaves politically with its welfare program. The biblical law is the path to freedom and to true brotherhood. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy word, and we pray that the correction of thy word may soon be forthcoming. Make us instruments, our Father, whereby our generation is corrected by thy word, established by thy grace, and made again a holy people unto thee. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?} foreigner, {?} he should become a believer {?} necessary or {?}

[Rushdoony] You’re assuming now a foreigner who is working for you in your employment?

[Audience] No.

[Rushdoony] Well, you can lend to a believer on interest, you see. There is no harm on loans on interest to fellow Christians, in what is a business proposition. It is only to those who are working for you who are believers, where you can make a loan without interest in cases of need. {?} is required. Usually it’s an advance of wages, but a loan, too, when necessary.

[Audience] {?} loan on this occasion {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, I see, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, there need be no change. It is up to him then, as a believer now, to extricate himself from debt, but you are not obligated to change a loan to a non-believer when he becomes a Christian, to reduce the terms in other words. If he request that the terms be shortened, alright, but the responsibility is his. He contracted it and the terms remain as per time of contract. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Pass what?

[Audience] {?} federal bank {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, those are not the free bankers of the world. Those are the various secretaries of the treasury and the ex-checker{?} and so on. It’s the governments of the world who have established things like the SDR, and so on, and it is they who impose their regulations upon free bankers. Banking is largely socialized today, it is so heavily controlled. The form of freedom is maintained, but the regulations are increasing all the time. So it’s not the bankers. It is the various states. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] He meant the physically, materially poor. Now, he wasn’t saying necessarily that this is going to be always true among believers. He said the poor are always with you, but Moses also said there shall be no poor among you in any area where you live faithfully to the law.

[Audience] {?} Are we allowed {?} someone else {?} how do we {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but we are still obligated to live in terms of the law with our enemies. An enemy is an enemy, you can’t change that fact, but God’s law says you are not to kill him, except of course, as war requires it, in self-defense, or to destroy the sanctity of his home, his property, his reputation in word, thought, or deed, You can do these things and still recognize he’s your enemy.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s a good question, and that has been extensively treated. Could we hold that, since we’re coming to the question, Thou shalt not witness, when we finish this commandment, and we will be treating that. That is an important question. Yes?

[Audience] Does the enemy establish ground rules of becoming your enemy by violating the laws of the church and {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] You’re not required {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the real deterioration is if you fail to recognize he’s your enemy. Here is a person who’s trying to destroy you. It’s going to deteriorate you if you don’t face the fact of life as to what he is. This doesn’t mean you get down and crawl on all fours like he is, or act the way he does. You maintain the law in relationship to him. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you were absent when we considered that. That’s a mistranslation there. They were to ask, in effect, for wages due to them, compensation, and the Egyptians gave it gladly to get rid of them, so it was entirely different.

Our time is just about up, and it was suggested that I report briefly on The Foundation for Economic Education conference that I attended Friday and yesterday. The time is brief to go into all that was said. Here are a few items that I thought were of interest. Whenever the take of income by tax levies, it was pointed out, reaches a point where it is not economical for the state to push immediately for more, the state begins inflation. So, when the percentages of taxes reaches 20-25%, inflation sets in in any economy, and today, of course, it is over 40% that is taken by the governments. As a result, inflation then becomes a way of life.

This points, too, I’m just giving scattered facts, since 1914, the French franc has lost 99.5% of its purchasing power because of socialism. They are a number of years ahead of us but we are gaining on them now.

The seriousness of inflation in our generation is greater than ever before in history for two reasons. We are the most specialized people in all of history, first of all. In other words, we are not as people were a few generations ago who could do a number of things like raise their own food and provide their own clothing, and be, to a degree, self-sufficient. We are specialized, so the breakdown that is coming is all the more deadly, and second, we are dependent on the free and uninhibited exchange of goods and services. Now, this exchange of goods and services depends, in turn, on two things. One is on the integrity of the money. We have to have a sound money, and this is beginning to disappear, and the other is the integrity of people. Consider what happens when you can no longer trust people. All the buying in the stock market, and the food market, and Mr. Reed pointed out that he started out that he starting working when he was quite young in the fruit market in Detroit, and he stated that the man with whom he worked would just, by raising his finger, purchase 10, 20, 30 carloads of fruits and vegetables, for which settlement could be made at a later date, and the market could change so he could lose money on that shipment. He might buy it thinking the price was going to go up, and the next day, the price of the cantaloupe or lettuce would go down, and he’s take a loss, but they would settle up without any problem.

When the integrity, which makes this kind of trust goes, then the flow of goods breaks down, and there are signs of a crack in the wall here also.

Then, this point, from Ed Obitz’s{?} talk on majoritarianism, Herman Finer{?} and the Road to Reaction, which is a book against free market economics, makes this statement: “In a democracy, right is what the majority makes it to be.” In other words, right in any moral sense is gone in terms of modern thinking. Orbitz also called attention to imposter terms that are commonly used today. He said most politics today uses what used to be called imposter terms, terms which are not a reality like “The People.” Who is “The People?” Politicians are always speaking in the name of “the people” or “the public,” and he said when someone speaks in the name of the people, put your hand on your wallet for you’re about to be had.

I think especially good was Dr. Rogie’s{?} lecture on the chimera of monopoly, and he began by telling a little story, he said, which is partly true, and he said he has a bird apartment house on a pole in his backyard, and he said the problem where they live is that they want these birdhouses for the purple martins, a very good bird, but the starlings, bad birds, very often beat out the martins for the bird houses, or bird apartments that they put up, and he said on this particular occasion, he and his neighbor were watching the birds flying around it and apparently fighting with one another to get it, and he said he bet on the martins and his neighbor was betting on the starlings. So, after awhile, his neighbor said, “Well, I think the starlings have won your bird houses,” and he said, “I think the martins have won it,” and they argued a little while and finally Dr. Rogie{?} said, “Well, to tell the truth, I’m not sure I can tell a martin and a starling apart. I don’t know too much about birds,” and he said, “Especially after two or three birds I’m not sure I can tell them apart,” and his neighbor said, “Well, since you’re honest I’ll be honest, too. I don’t think I can tell a starling from a martin,” and Dr. Rogie{?} said this story illustrates the situation with regard to the courts. Who is the bad bird and who is the good bird? The courts can’t make up their mind. So, that one and the same time, for example, he said some men were sent to prison in the big electrical case just two, three years ago for setting a price and also for the exact opposite, for undercutting prices. So he said in that case, who are the martins and who are the starlings? Both sides of something were called that, and he made the point that you have a monopoly only when you have governmental interference, and he said all the textbooks definitions of competition are invalid, and the government court definitions are invalid, by and large, and so they are continually fining people, and imprisoning them for directly opposite things.

And he said one of the most ridiculous cases not too long ago was when one enterprising young person back east got busy and decided they had baseball cards some years ago, you remember, when some of us were boys, with pictures of the athletes on them. Well, why not give baseball cards with bubble gum? So he contacted a bubble gum company and said, “I’ll get the cards and print them up if you’ll give them out with your bubble gum as a premium, and it’ll make you money and it’ll make me money.” Well, he went out and he tied up a lot of the top baseball players with the card idea, five dollars for a five year use of their card. The ball players were glad to have the kids get their cards and their pictures and save them. A big deal, you see? Five dollars for five years, and it made a nice little income for this person because he thought of revising this use of playing cards. Well, immediately he was taken to court for operating a monopoly. A government agency filed charges against him as a monopolist. Now, anyone else could have gone into the business. He wasn’t driving out any competitor, but he was a monopolist. Fortunately, it went before a judge who had a sense of humor and he threw the case out, but it very often is not thrown out and he cited the case of one of the bigger drug companies, and he gave the figures.

Company A in 1951 has 32% of the drug market. Company B had 22%. Company C 19% and Company D 18%. They just bought control of the market. In 1952, Company A dropped from 32% to 9%, and the other companies picked up the slack. In 1953 and 1954, Company A, one of the biggest drug companies, lost out entirely on the market, practically went out of business, and a new company, Company F, got 59% of the business with some new drugs, and Company D was out of the market. B and C had 10% and 16% between them. Company F, in 1957 had 60%, but in 1958, Company F dropped to 14% and a new company, Company H, got 78% of the market. Then, in 1965, Company A, which had been out of the market for twelve years, came back with some new drugs and got most of the market, and wound up in court as a monopolist.

Now, here is a case, he said, as clear-cut of competition as you can imagine, and he said no monopoly, no cartel has ever worked without support of the state. Fair trade laws are cartel prices. Trade unions are cartels with very special privileges and immunities. They even have the right to use violence{?}, the most important monopoly, and he went on to cite the farm program as a giant cartel, and he said there are over 200 farm products in the commodities market. Twelve of them are consistently in trouble, and these are the twelve where the government has interfered, and they cannot recover since the government has interfered. So, his point, of course, was emphatically there can be no monopoly without government interference.

Two very brief things and than we are through. From the Stanford Observer, an official Stanford alumni paper, some interesting facts because these are things I’ve often said, and since I’ve been away from Palo Alto for several years, I no longer see the evidence, but this was passed on to me. I’ve made the point that Stanford is not a private university. Private universities no longer exist. There are only state universities and federal universities and colleges. The federal government, they’re very unhappy in the lead article, has cut back its giving by two years, from $44 million in 1967-68, to $42 million in the last year, and $40 million in the current academic year. In other words, Stanford has been getting $40 to $44 million in recent years, each year from the federal government. What about the private support? This totaled $29 million last year. Twenty-nine million a year against $42 million last year. Is it a private university or is it a federal university? Is it any wonder that Stanford doesn’t care what the alumni think or say? When you add up those figures of $29 million last year, what you have to say also is that a lot of that was from endowed funds, so that they can thumb their nose as the day by day giver. They’ve already got a lot of this and the donors cannot touch it.

Well, one final note, a little bit of humor from the current Forbes magazine. Chappaquiddick Irish {?}. You know what Chappaquiddick is? It’s where Senator Kennedy had his little mishap, and this editorial by Malcolm S. Forbes reads, “One of the business community’s more dynamic tycoons has a great sense of humor. The other day he gave me a slip of paper on which were these alleged headlines from the Dublin, Ireland Dispatch, ‘God saves Senator Kennedy as Catholic Girl Drowns. Devout Pair Believed to Be on Way to Midnight Mass. Ted Prays for Almost Nine Hours Before Leaving Scene. Irish Government Blasts Italian Builder of Faulty Bridge.’” And with that, we are adjourned.

End of tape