Loan shark

“ The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected first to excommunication—literally—and [pg 9] then to outlawry, is that of the usurer, or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediæval mind there was something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediæval position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity for profit—that is, a potential property interest—was outlawed. In consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the business. ”

“ We do so not to infer that Congress need make particularized findings in order to legislate. We relate the history of the Act in detail to answer the impassioned plea of petitioner that all that is involved in loan sharking is a traditionally local activity. It appears, instead, that loan sharking in its national setting is one way organized interstate crime holds its guns to the heads of the poor and the rich alike and syphons funds from numerous localities to finance its national operations. ”

“ The National Federation of Remedial Loan Societies covers twenty-eight cities, where societies lend money to the poor at reasonable rates to protect them from the loan sharks, the New York organization alone having a fund of millions for this purpose. A rapidly increasing number of large employers have changed their attitude towards their employes, in that they now aid instead of discharging those who incur debt—the latter policy having played directly into the hands of the loan sharks. ”

“ All experiences point to the contrary, for it is common knowledge that sharks will gobble up anything thrown overboard from a ship, from a corpse swathed in canvas to a lump of coal. This omnivorousness has been noticed in an able article published in Chambers’s Journal many years ago, the writer putting forward as a plausible reason for it the number of parasites that infest the stomachs of these fish. In this, however, they are by no means singular, all fish harbouring a goodly number of these self-invited boarders, the shark certainly entertaining no more than the average. ”

“ The captain seized a gun, shot the fish in a sensitive part, which then cast out the sailor into the sea, who was taken up, amazed and terrified, but little hurt.
"Every one knows that the shark is a most voracious creature. Its teeth are only incisive. It has no power of holding. It can snap and sever limbs, or trunk, or head, sheer and certainly as though its jaws were a guillotine. But in that case it secures only what is within the jaws. The rest is apt to be lost. Its habit, therefore, is to swallow the prey alive, that it may lose nothing. ”

“ The head is flat; the fore-part of the snout is projected forward; the wide mouth, pushed far back, is supplied with sharp triangular teeth.
The bold robber has seen the diver and comes at him. If he loses his coolness, he will be the spoil of the greedy Shark. He draws his dagger, which he carries with him for such an event. Dexterously he avoids the animal and stabs him deep with the dagger. A great stream of blood stains the water. In his death struggles the mighty animal threshes the water with his great fins and seeks safety in flight. ”

“ There is no fish more cowardly, and yet more desperately savage than a shark. I have seen one harpooned twice, with a hook in his jaws, and come again to a fresh bait, yet will they suffer themselves to be scared by the smallest noise, and hardly ever take their prey without it is quite still. Generally speaking, any place surrounded by rocks where the surf breaks, although there may be no passage for a ship, will be secure from sharks. It was not until a great distance had been accomplished, that the swimmer became apprized of his danger, and saw by his side one of the terrific creatures ”

“ At the order from the lieutenant for the men on the keel to relinquish their position they instantly obeyed, the boat was turned over and once more the expedient was tried—but quite in vain; for no sooner had the two men begun to bail with a couple of hats, and the safety of the crew to appear within the bounds of probability, than one man declared he saw the fin of a shark. No language can convey an idea of the panic which seized the struggling seamen; a shark is at all times an object of horror to a sailor ”

“ Evidence, they claim, has always been at second-hand and the testimony of seafaring men they reject. Well, without wishing to lock horns with the learned, you may be interested in firsthand evidence of man-eating sharks.
I saw a nurse shark, perhaps the deadliest species of the shark family, attack a sailor from our ship, one Eric Johanssen. Johanssen dived off the ship for a swim against the express command of my father that no member of the crew leave the vessel. We were anchored in Paramatta River in Sydney Harbor. ”

“ My belief is that they will attack a native as quickly as a white man, if they are molested. Possibly the color of the white man's body may attract a shark's attention quicker than the dark skin of the natives.
They are more ferocious when traveling in pairs. Sharks are not very vicious among the islands, especially where they are right out in the ocean and fish food is plentiful. They are more dangerous in harbors like Sydney and Melbourne. I have never known a shark to attack any of the native boys who dive round the ship for coins thrown by passengers. ”

“ The pearl fishers of the Gulfs of Panama and Nicoya only use a short stick, with which, if the sharks get above them, they stir up the mud, under cover of which they swim along the bottom for a little distance, and then shoot up to the surface. Of the equality in which a good swimmer armed with a knife feels himself in encountering a shark, there are numerous instances. ”

“ Look at the shape of it—more like a Zulu assegai than anything else; it is a weapon, primarily; a thrust of it would kill a naked man. The Manihiki people spend a lot of their time in canoes on the open sea—after bonito by day and flying-fish by night—and those waters swarm with sharks. They have developed their paddle into a weapon of defence. The Samoans carried a special shark club for the same purpose."
I asked his opinion on the disputed question of sharks—whether, in general, the shark is a real menace to the swimmer or the paddler of a small canoe. ”

“ Small chance for the poor fugitive, with the ravenous shark following silent and inexorable. We lay on our oars and watched the result. The hunted fish doubles, springs aloft, and dives down, but all in vain; the black fin is not to be thrown off, double as he may. Anon the springs become more feeble, the pursuer's tail partly appears as he pushes forward with redoubled vigour, a faint splash is heard, the waters curl into an eddy, and the monster sinks noiselessly to enjoy his breakfast in the cooler depths beneath. ”

“ I have never known a man taken at Port Moresby or in the Mekeo district by a shark, nor do the natives there—who are at the best a cowardly lot—show fear of them; but on the bars of the Opi, Musa, and Kumusi Rivers, I have known the brutes swim alongside a whaleboat and seize the blades of the oars in their teeth. On one occasion, at the Kumusi River, my men caught a shark, the belly of which contained several human bones, a human head, the complete plates forming the shell of a large turtle, and the freshly torn-off flipper and shoulder of a large dugong or sea cow. ”

“ I think your plan of making a straw man is not at all a bad one, and I have little doubt, as you say, that the shark would swallow it. In that case it would 27certainly die and we should be free at last from our great calamity. But wait a minute; I am afraid, when the doll is made, there is nobody who will venture to take it out to the sea. People have had so many bitter lessons from trying to kill this shark that, however much money you offer, no one, I fear, will agree to take it out into the bay. ”

“ The really hungry shark is a ravening murderer—dangerous as a wounded buffalo, reckless as a mad dog.... I have seen one tear the paddle from the hand of a man beside me and sink its teeth, over and over again in a frenzy, in the bottom of a heavy canoe. How long do you suppose a swimmer would have lived? And it's not only the big sharks that are dangerous. I remember one day when a lot of us were bathing in Penrhyn lagoon. Suddenly one of the boys gave a shout and began to struggle with something in the waist-deep water—clouded with blood by the time I got there. ”

“ While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of both.
The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony. ”

“ Of the many different varieties of sharks, there are but two that will attack a man in the water. These are the blue shark, and the ground, or shovel-nosed shark. No more danger need be apprehended from the common brown shark than from a porpoise. We have often seen a Kanaka jump overboard in a perfectly calm day, and swim after them with a sheath-knife, endeavoring to stab them, but Johnny Shark would keep out of his reach. And whenever we had a whale alongside, the sharks would be around in great numbers, and yet never touch the boat-steerer, who was overboard on the whale. ”

“ At last Jack gave orders that no more sharks were to be caught, for they dirtied up the deck, and besides, some of the larger ones had broken up things on the deck with their tails. A large shark could easily kill a person with a well-directed blow of the tail. ”

“ In a little time we got accustomed to them, and often have I seen them gliding in and out among our lines, far down in the depths of the lagoon, though they did not prevent us from catching as many fish as we required. Sometimes, however, as we were hauling up a fish, a shark would catch hold of it and deprive us of our prize. We never went out without catching a large quantity, so we had always a good supply of fresh fish—the rest we preserved. ”

“ Possibly the bottom, which was clear, was favourable for his enemy; whose blow, if he succeeds in striking while the shark is descending, is fatal. I think he had struck him, for the blue shark is seldom seen in shoal or discoloured water; yet now he floundered on towards the bottom of the bay, madly lashing the water into foam, and rolling and pitching like a vessel dismasted. For a few minutes his conqueror pursued him, then wheeled round and disappeared; while the shark grounded himself on the sand, where he lay writhing and lashing the shore feebly with his tail. ”

“ The harpooners and officers from their lofty position on the cutting stage slew scores upon scores by simply dropping their keen-edged blubber spades upon124 the soft crowns of the struggling fish, the only place where a shark is vulnerable to instant death. The weapon sinks into the creature’s brain, he gives a convulsive writhe or two, releases his hold and slowly sinks, followed in his descent by a knot of his immediate neighbours, all anxious to provide him with prompt sepulture within their own yearning maws. ”

“ They have also some curious ideas that the erratic antics performed by a blind, finless, and broken-jawed dog-fish will frighten away his congeners; and, as the shark is almost universally disdained as food, this practice of dismembering them and returning them alive to the sea, pour encourager les autres, seems to the fishermen an eminently satisfactory one. ”

“ Care has to be taken not to inflict a very severe wound, because the moment the other sharks taste the blood of a wounded companion, they will immediately turn upon him and eat him. When the inquisitive shark is seen coming in the direction of the boat, the Malay who has accosted him in this way quietly jumps overboard, armed only with his small knife and a short stick of hard wood, exactly like a butcher’s skewer, about five inches in length, and pointed at each end. ”

“ If the body does not yet fill the hollow, the inhabitant clings desperately to it, wedging itself with wonderful plasticity into odd corners and against niches, resisting to the last efforts at eviction. Torn from its home the fish is a feeble, helpless creature, incapable of taking care of itself, quite unfit to be at large, though apparently belonging to the self-reliant shark family. ”

“ The shark betrays its presence by its black dorsal fin above the surface of the sea. When the fin disappears the danger increases, becomes terrible; the fear of the swimmer in the vicinity of that black, unseen peril overmasters him. ”

“ Of course, it is only among the ground sharks and fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny the way they know sharks and can sense the presence of a real killer--a tiger shark, for instance, or a gray nurse strayed up from Australian waters. Let such a shark appear, and, long before the passengers can guess, every mother's son of them is out of the water in a wild scramble for safety.
"It was after tiffin, and Miss Caruthers was holding her usual court under the deck-awnings. Old Captain Bentley had just been whistled up, and had granted her what he never granted before. ”

“ They then peer into the water, and when one of the fishermen sees a shark lazily stretching itself on the sand that lies under the overhanging rocks, he lets himself very quietly into the sea, dives down with the rope in his hand, slips the noose over the shark’s tail, and rises to the surface. As soon as he gets into the boat, the men drag the shark out of his retreat, and haul away until the creature’s tail is raised out of the sea, when it becomes nearly helpless. A sudden jerk brings it into the canoe, where it is instantly killed. ”