THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 499 



labor of which there might be too many made. We might conceive 

 of an excess of needles, or of looms, or spinning-wheels, or locomo- 

 tives, or steamboats. But these are exceptional cases. Of most of 

 the articles that are made for direct consumption we may say, as a 

 rule, that they can not be offered in absolute excess. The world is 

 never likely to have too much cloth, or sugar, or coffee, or meat, or 

 wheat, or even too many houses. A great many people in comfort- 

 able circumstances, to say nothing of those who are poor, would have 

 many more carpets and paintings, would use more sugar, would take 

 coffee more frequently, would eat more meat, and enjoy more costly 

 food, and would live in better houses, if it were not for the expense 

 and for the habits they have already formed under the restraint of 

 the cost of living. There can not really be an excess of any of these 

 articles. If the supply is at any time in excess of the demand, it is 

 not because this is not capable of increase, but because the increase 

 is restrained for the time by circumstances which will prove to be 

 only transitory. Take the case of houses in Paris. They say there 

 have been too many built. Too many, it is true, for the builders to 

 sell immediately at a profit ; but not too many for the population who 

 are all the time complaining of being lodged in too close quarters, and 

 would gladly exchange their two rooms for three, and their three for 

 four or five, if they could afford it. 



We sometimes say of children or young people that they have 

 grown too much. The expression is inexact, for we do not mean that 

 we should wish to see them smaller again ; but we mean that they 

 have grown up so quickly that their bodily functions and their car- 

 riage have not had time to adapt themselves to the new and unaccus- 

 tomed size. The case is very similar with what we are accustomed to 

 call crises of over-production. Taken in a general sense, this expres- 

 sion too is inexact. We must not conclude from its use that men 

 should try to go back and produce less. It is only a " growing-pain," 

 the result of a useful phenomenon being produced too abruptly, before 

 there has been time to modify habits, establish new agencies, and 

 adapt society to the new conditions, which operations have to take 

 place gradually. Time and the course of events will furnish effectual 

 remedies for the momentary inconvenience. 



We must be on our guard against the empirics and charlatans who 

 are continually besieging the public powers of suffering nations. 

 First among these are the protectionists. " The world," they say, " is 

 producing too much ; we have to struggle against universal competition. 

 We have the remedy in our hands. We must proscribe foreign 

 goods and encourage our own." This kind of reasoning has lately 

 come into new credit. Nothing can be more unreasonable. Protec- 

 tionism is, in fact, largely responsible for the present crisis. Let us 

 judge of its effects by a few examples. Among the articles that are 

 most largely produced and have suffered the greatest decline in price 



