Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/905

USURY. the District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the lender recovers the principal only; but in Idaho and Iowa the interest which the lender loses is paid by the borrower to the school fund. In Arkansas, Delaware, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, and Oregon, the usurious contract is wholly invalid, and the lender is unable to recover the principal; but in Oregon the principal which he loses is paid by the borrower to the school fund. In some of these States money actually paid on a usurious contract cannot be recovered by the lender; but the general rule is to the contrary; and in some States the actual receipt of usurious interest exposes the lender to further penalties, e.g. twice the excess in South Carolina, three times the excess in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and twice the interest paid in New Mexico and North Carolina. In some other States the lender is liable to prosecution and fine or imprisonment, but such prosecutions are rare. In Delaware any person may bring action against a lender who has received usurious interest, and if successful, will receive one-half of the principal of the debt, the other half going to the State.

Not infrequently special contracts are exempted from the operation of the usury laws, either because special risks are assumed by the lender, or on grounds of commercial interest. In several States corporations are not permitted to plead usury.

Usury laws are, in general, strictly construed. Whenever the law declares a usurious contract invalid, mortgages, trust deeds, and all forms of surety are also invalidated; but the courts do not assume that a legislature has intended to avoid the contract as regards the principal of the debt, or as regards the legal interest, unless such penalty is expressly imposed; nor is penalty, as distinguished from the protection of the borrower, incurred by merely stipulating for usurious interest, but only by receiving it.

In interstate cases (, q.v.), the question whether a contract is or is not usurious is governed by the law of the place where the contract was concluded, unless a different place was expressly or impliedly indicated as the place of performance. When a debt has been contracted in one State to be paid in another, and the rate of interest stipulated is usurious in one of the States, but not in the other, some of the courts apply the local law which will uphold the contract. Penalties in the strict sense (as distinguished from the legal protection given to the borrower) are not enforced outside of the jurisdiction in which they are imposed. See.

Consult: Turgot, Mémoire sur les prêts d'argent (1741); Bentham, Defense of Usury (London, 1787); Von Stein, Der Wucher und sein Recht (1880); Caro, Der Wucher; eine social politische Studie (1893); Murray, History of Usury (Philadelphia, 1866); Webb, A Treatise on the Law of Usury (1899).  UTA (Neo-Lat., from the Territory of Utah). A genus of iguanid lizards, several species of which are numerous on the Southwestern plains of the United States, one of which (Uta Stansburiana) is one of the most beautiful and graceful of American lizards. It is blackish brown

above, marbled with lighter dots, and banded with yellow below. Its long, slender tail has a crest of large vertically set scales. This genus combines structural characteristics of Sceloporus and Holbrookia.  UTAH, or  (named from the Ute or Utah tribe of Indians). A Western State of the United States, called by the Mormon settlers Deseret, a word taken from the Book of Mormon and signifying ‘Industry.’ It lies between latitudes 37° and 42° north, and longitudes 109° 4′ and 114° 4′ west, and is bounded on the north by Idaho and Wyoming, on the east by Colorado, on the south by Arizona, and on the west by Nevada. Its shape is that of a rectangle 345 miles long from north to south, and 270 miles wide. The rectangle is indented in the northeast by a corner of Wyoming, but all the boundaries of the State are formed by lines of latitude and longitude. The State has an area of 84,970 square miles, including 2780 square miles of water. It ranks eighth in size among the States.

. Utah is divided into two parts by the Wasatch Range, which enters it near the middle of the northern boundary and runs southward, gradually curving toward the southwestern corner. The range forms the eastern boundary of the Great Basin, to which the western part of the State belongs. The Wasatch is a lofty and rigged mountain mass broken by deep and picturesque gorges, and reaching at several points an elevation of over 12,000 feet. It sends out a number of spurs to the east, and along the northeastern boundary runs a cross range known as the Uintah Mountains, the loftiest range in the State, with four peaks over 13,000 feet high, among which is Gilbert Peak, the highest point in Utah, with an altitude of 13,687 feet. The eastern half of the State is a plateau with an average elevation of 6000 to 8000 feet. It is broken by a number of isolated mountain groups, such as the Henry, Abajo, and La Sal Mountains, from 11,000 to over 13,000 feet in altitude, and cut by the deep cañons of the Colorado and its branches. Western Utah consists of the level basin-floor lying at a nearly uniform altitude of 5000 feet, from which a number of short, parallel, north and south ranges rise from 2000 to 3000 feet above the intervening valleys.  . Eastern Utah is drained wholly by the Colorado and its main headstream, the Green River. They receive from the slopes of the Wasatch and Uintah Ranges a large number of small streams, but these soon unite into a few branches which, together with the main river, flow in deep cañons far below the plateau floor. The extreme northwestern corner of the State sends its waters to the Snake River, but the entire remaining portion belongs to two of the closed drainage systems of the Great Basin, that of Sevier Lake, which receives the Sevier River, and that of the Great Salt Lake. The latter, the most prominent natural feature in the State, lies in its northwestern portion, and has a length of 80 miles and a width of from 18 to 48 miles. It receives from the south the outflow of Utah Lake through the Jordan River, and from the north that of Bear Lake through the Bear River.

. The climate is of the continental type, with sudden changes and great extremes in summer and winter, although the 