Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/124

 cisions will be found quite fully collected in 2 Amer. & Eng. Enc. Law, p. 608 et seq. The fact that learned courts, in the absence of statutes, have been so impressed with the inherent differences existing between the legitimate transactions of building and loan associations and the ordinary transactions of the money loaner, that they have refused to apply to the former the rules of law governing the latter, ought in itself to be conclusive of the fact that these differences are such as to naturally suggest the propriety and necessity for distinct legislation for the two classes; and it will be noticed, too, that these differences are directly in the line of what would be proper payment for the use of the money in the one case and what in the other. Another fact is significant. The incorporation of building and loan associations in the territory of Dakota was first authorized by chapter 34, Laws of 1885; and § 6 of that chapter provides (and this provision is very common in the laws authorizing such corporations) that no premiums, fines, or interest on premiums that may accrue to the corporations shall be deemed usurious. In all ordinary loan transactions, when no consideration passed to the borrower except the loan of the money, any so-called premium that might be paid for such loan would at once be branded by the courts as a cover for usury, and the transaction would be declared usurious, with whatever results might follow. The law that brings these associations into existence declares them to be so far sui generis that the performance of their functions requires the suspension in their favor of certain rules of law that are applied to all other parties. It seems very clear to us that the operations of building and loan associations, when confined to their own numbers, differ so radically from ordinary loan transactions that the legislature was clearly warranted in placing such associations in a separate class for the purposes of such legislation as pertains to interest and usury; and, the classification being once established, the extent to which the classes shall be separated is purely a matter of legislative discretion. The legislature has the right to leave such associations untrammelled in the matter of premiums paid for loans, and it has an equal right to leave them untrammeled in the matter of interest proper.