OVER-CONSUMPTION OR OVER-PRODUCTION ? 315 



do this tlian in the heat of competition overstock the market, and 

 then be forced to stop the works altogether, throwing all the miners 

 out of employment. We should say that combination is just what is 

 needed so that the supply of material may be kept nearly on a par 

 with the demand, and the mines uniformly worked at a sustained 

 rate from one season to another. Spasmodic production is a dread- 

 ful evil. It is unfortunate for the consumer because it makes prices 

 uneven, and it inflicts cruel injury upon laborers and operatives, and 

 through them upon the whole community. 



Here, then, is the evil. Speculation inflames it ; currency inflation 

 stimulates it ; but undilFused, unregulated, and unrestrained produc- 

 tion throws the whole complex machinery of trade out of order; it 

 stirs the whole energies of the people into producing at one pei'iod, 

 and arrests energies at another ; in suddenly stopping production, it 

 reduces consumption, and hence renders recovery the very labor 

 indeed of Sisyphus. The only remedy we can discover is the wise 

 cooperation of producers, the determination to put the production of 

 goods in careful and just relation to the means possessed by the 

 community for exchanging for them. 



We hear recently a great deal of the example of France, and 

 Prof. Price is among those who point admiringly to her in this crisis. 

 Now, as every one knows, the savings of people in England, Ger- 

 many, and America, are deposited in banks, whence they are loaned and 

 become utilized as capital; in France the peasants hoard their sav- 

 ings in old stockings and secret corners. To withdraw from either of 

 the former countries so large an amount as that of the indemnity jDaid 

 Germany would greatly disturb trade ; but the peasants, patriotically 

 unearthing their hoardings of secret gold in exchange for govern- 

 ment bonds, enabled the state, to the surprise of all, to pay her 

 heavy penalty without distress or financial disturbance. But this 

 was an exceptional position. We are scarcely to argue therefrom that 

 hoarding is the true principle ; that a nation is better off" because its 

 work-people hide their savings, withdrawing them from public use, 

 rather than placing them in banks where they may become active 

 capital. Prof. Price attributes the successful payment by France of 

 the German indemnity to " the practice of one of the very greatest of 

 economical virtues she had saved." N"ow it was solely due to the 

 manner in which her savinjxs had been held. The fact seems to have 

 dazzled everybody. The example of the French peasant is now held 

 up on all sides that he lives the narrowest and most restricted of 

 lives; that his excessive economical spirit not only limits his comforts, 

 but keeps him ignorant, superstitious, dull, spiritless, hopeless (the 

 tragedy of the French peasant-life is only too well told in the pict- 

 ures of Millet) ; that he has neither intellectual life nor any grace of 

 art or refined civilization these facts are nothing to the economist ; 

 the peasant has drudged and hoarded ; he has refused himself and 



