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I have never solved the perennial problem of why it is that if you've already settled there and borrowed money from New York and Boston bankers to develop a mine or an industry or a ranch why it was that the whole community should so resent paying the interest on that money which they had hired and sending it back East. The point was that they borrowed and then they did not pay off their debts. They allowed it to accumulate until it carried on through a second or third generation. The second or the third generation had to be sending money back to New York, Philadelphia and Boston - back East to those eastern bankers “bleeding us” - because the first generation had not amortized their debt. It was a farm debt. It was indebtedness for mining enterprises and mining operations and manufacturing. There was no capital among the pioneers. They had energy and labor. If they wanted capital, they had to borrow it. They borrowed it in good faith. The mistake was that they allowed it to accumulate over a number of generations without being amortized. It comes to the point now where the third and fourth generation gets good and mad when they see the money going back to the rich bankers of the East. It was Calvin Coolidge's old remark, “Well, they hired the money, didn't they?” It was perfectly pat. You begin to realize psychologically what it is and what the depriving of their own community of capital did.
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