During the 1930's, especially in the early depression years, welfare associations of African intellectuals, for the most part Government clerks or mission employees, were formed in Northern Rhodesia. Originally conceived as guilds of conscious elites, what many Europeans of the period distastefully referred to as ”detribalized natives“, these associations quickly became, or were considered to have become, organs of wider significance. Many persons who later rose to prominence in politics and the trade union movement acquired their first organizational experience in these short-lived, rather underestimated protest bodies. As the name suggests, there were many resemblances to nineteenth-century British workmens' associations; certainly in the line of rail towns stretching from the Falls to Ndola, the Duke of Wellington's convictions were resurrected by Government a century later in another land. When Government directed its basilisk gaze at these associations in 1933, they quickly succumbed. Still, one is justified in studying them, if only because they serve to increase the number of Africans in African history.

In the process of industrialization Western Europe went through a period of serious social tensions. For a while this phenomenon became of the utmost concern to all men engaged in socio-political thinking and action. In some countries one spoke - and sometimes still does - of “the social problem” or “the social question” in the singular to indicate its over-all importance.

The two jurisdictions with the greatest volume and complexity of laws dealing with usury are the United States and Israel. England, the wellspring of our common law, and one of present-day Israel's legal fonts, did away with all regulation of interest over a century ago. All of continental Europe contains only two or three jurisdictions which apply legal limits to interest on loans. The communist countries present a special situation since private loans at interest have no official place in the economic system. Islamic countries, like Pakistan, constitutionally frown on interest but it is present in practice, thereby embarrassing the secular authorities. However, the extent of legal experience with loans at interest in all other jurisdictions combined does not rival that wealth of elaborate study which is to be found in judicial decisions and legislative documents in American and Jewish law. It is, therefore, of interest to examine from a comparative standpoint the approach to usury taken by United States' courts and by Jewish legal authorities to see in which respects they differ and are similar.