Usury; Or, Interest, Premium and Discount

"Usury; Or, Interest, Premium and Discount" by S. H. Crittenden is a lecture that digs into the ideas of usury, interest, discount, and premium during a time when industry was changing how people did business. This book is mostly about what usury is and how it affects businesses, and the author explains how it fits into accounting and the law. Crittenden explains what interest is, which is what you pay to borrow money, and discount is what you get taken off of future bills. The lecture also goes over the history of usury laws while questioning if the laws work, suggesting that when you limit how high interest rates can be, the result actually creates more illegal usury and makes things harder on those who borrow. Crittenden pushes for a rethinking of laws about usury, pointing out that letting interest rates be decided freely fits better with how markets work and what's fair for customers.