ABSTRACT
Banks are founded by those who have capital and are consequently interested in obtaining the highest possible income from the capital which they invest in the foundation of these establishments, and this is why banks are so reluctant to encourage a decrease in interest rate; they do so, one might say, despite themselves and only because the improvement in credit relations necessarily has this effect; they consider themselves obliged to follow the trend imposed on them by transactions carried out outside their establishments and not as setting the trend. In other words, when the banks lend capital to workers, they play the role of owners of capital instead of being what they should be, namely intermediaries between owners of capital and workers, making more easily available to the latter the work instruments which they need and which are in the possession of men who do not wish, do not know how to or cannot use them. Banks should be representative chambers of workers, constantly occupied in obtaining for them the materials for production at the lowest possible price; they should always aim to lower the rent that the idle lender receives from the
worker who borrows; they should celebrate as a great occasion the day when it is possible for them to reduce their discount rates, as this reduction would prove that the most numerous and the most useful classes obtain capital belonging to the least numerous and the least useful classes at lower cost and consequently that production is easier and the producers wealthier. This idea being fundamental, we shall present it in several different forms. Until it has been understood, until is serves as a basis for credit establishments, as long as these institutions represent the interests of the idle rather than those of the workers, the banks will serve only to regularise to a small degree the exploitation of the labouring classes by the idle classes, to slightly reduce the enormous force usury has in crushing industry, to reduce the truly feudal charges that the industrialist pays the capitalist.
