XII THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 191 



as I have said, bad trade all over the country, both whole- 

 sale and retail, and in every department of industry, with 

 a few exceptions which I shall point out presently. What 

 is bad trade ? Bad trade simply means that there is a 

 deficiency of purchasers. Why is there a deficiency of pur- 

 chasers ? Simply because people who ought to be the 

 purchasers have not got the money to purchase with. It 

 is simply diminished consumption — universal diminished 

 consumption — and the only direct cause of universal 

 diminished consumption is poverty. Our purchasers, 

 both in foreign countries and at home, have been less 

 able to buy. There is not the slightest reason to be- 

 lieve that they have not been willing to buy, that they 

 did not want the goods, but it was sim.ply that they were 

 not able to purchase them. This implies that whole 

 communities are poorer than they were. The home trade 

 suffering as well as the foreign trade show that the great 

 body of our own people are poorer. I do not mean to 

 say that the entire country is not more wealthy — I 

 believe it is — but nevertheless the masses, who are always 

 the chief support of our home trade and our staple manu- 

 factures, are poorer. The same thing is clear of our 

 customers in the different countries of the world, the 

 greater part of those that purchase from us are also 

 poorer. Curiously enough, just in the very height of 

 this depression, there appeared some authoritative pam- 

 phlets by Mr. Giffen, Mr. Mulhall, and Professor Leoni 

 Levi, proving exactly the reverse, demonstrating, in their 

 opinion, that the people were never so well oft*, and that 

 they were far richer than they ever were before ; and we 

 were told to believe this when at the same time it was 

 universally admitted that their purchasing power had 

 diminished to such an extent as to cause this widespread 

 diminution of trade ! 



This then, I say, is a statement of the immediate cause 

 of the depression — universal impoverishment. Now we 

 must endeavour to ascertain what is the cause of this 

 universal impoverishment. To illustrate more clearly the 

 period when the depression began, and what was [its 

 nature, I have drawn out a diagram giving our imports 



