THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 579 



of human nature under the new conditions. The machinery which thus 

 cheapens and increases product is, as a rule, most costly, and entails 

 a like burden of interest, insurance, and care, whether it is at work 

 or idle ; and the possessor of it, recognizing this fact, naturally desires 

 to convert outlay into income by utilizing it to the greatest extent 

 possible. Again, a man who has learned by experience that he can 

 dispose of a certain amount of product or service at a profit, naturally 

 reasons that a larger amount will give him, if not a proportionally 

 greater, at least a larger aggregate profit ; and as the conditions de- 

 termining demand are not only imperfectly known, but to a certain 

 extent incapable of exact determination, he discards the idea of any 

 risk, even if he for a moment entertains it, and pushes industrial 

 effort to its maximum. And as this process is general, and, as a rule, 

 involves a steady increase in the improved and constantly improving 

 instrumentalities of production and distribution, the period at length 

 arrives when the industrial and commercial world awakens to the 

 fact that there is a product disproportionate to any current remunera- 

 tive demand. In this way only is it possible to account for the cir- 

 cumstance that the supply of the great articles and instrumentalities 

 of the world's use and commerce has increased, during the last ten 

 or fifteen years, in a far greater ratio than the contemporaneous in- 

 crease in the world's population, or of its immediate consuming ca- 

 pacity. But although such is substantially a correct general exposi- 

 tion of the recent course of industrial events, and although all the 

 agencies concerned in reducing the time and labor necessary to effect 

 a given result in the world's work have undoubtedly acted to a cer- 

 tain extent and in all cases in unison, the diversity of method, under 

 which the supply in excess of remunerative demand, or the so-called 

 over-production has been specially effected, is not a little curious. 

 Thus, in the case of crude iron and steel, cotton fabrics and textiles 

 generally, coal, most articles of metal fabrication, ships, and the like, 

 the increase and cheapened supply have been brought about mainly 

 through improvements in the machinery and economy of production ; 

 while in the case of wheat, rice, and other cereals, wool, cotton-fibers, 

 meats, and petroleum, like results have been mainly occasioned by im- 

 provements in the machinery and economy of distribution. On the 

 other hand, in the case of copper, tin, nickel, silver, quicksilver, qui- 

 nine, and some important chemicals, over-production, in the sense as 

 above defined, has been almost entirely due to the discovery of new 

 and abundant natural sources of supply. It is also not to be over- 

 looked that other factors, which can not properly be included within 

 the sphere of the influence of recent discoveries and inventions, have 

 also powerfully contributed to bring about the so-called phenomenon 

 of over-production. The increase in the consumption of some com- 

 modities is entirely dependent upon the increase in the tastes and in- 

 telligence of the masses ; and it is undeniable that the culture of the 



