1898

Pope Leo XIII stated the following on the subject of usury,"On the one hand there is the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth, which has in its grasp all labor and all trade, which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is powerfully represented in the councils of State itself. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering.

Rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless under a different form but with the same guilt, still practiced by avaricious and grasping men ... so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery itself."