THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES. 31 



value at home, the country which lives chiefly on these 

 bargains suffers. Low profits for the innkeepers of 

 the Alps mean narrowed circumstances in large parts 

 of Switzerland ; and low profits for the Lancashire and 

 Scotch manufacturers, and the wholesale exporters, 

 mean narrowed circumstances in Great Britain. The 

 cause is the same in both cases. 



For many decades past we had not seen such a 

 cheapness of wheat and manufactured goods as we saw 

 lately, and yet the country was suffering from a crisis. 

 People said, of course, that the cause of the crisis was 

 over-production. But over-production is a word utterly 

 devoid of sense if it does not mean that those who are 

 in need of all kinds of produce have not the means for 

 buying them with their low wages. Nobody would 

 dare to affirm that there is too much furniture in the 

 crippled cottages, too many bedsteads and bedclothes 

 in the workmen's dwellings, too many lamps burning 

 in the huts, and too much cloth on the shoulders, not 

 only of those who used to sleep (in 1886) in Trafalgar 

 Square between two newspapers, but even in those 

 households where a silk hat makes a part of the Sunday 

 dress. And nobody will dare to affirm that there is too 

 much food in the homes of those agricultural labourers 

 who earn twelve shillings a week, or of those women 

 who earn from fivepence to sixpence a day in the cloth- 

 ing trade and other small industries which swarm in the 

 outskirts of all great cities. Over-production means 

 merely and simply a want of purchasing powers amidst 

 the workers. And the same want of purchasing powers 

 of the workers was felt everywhere on the Continent 

 during the years 1885-87. 



After the bad years were over a sudden revival of 

 international trade took place ; and, as the British 

 exports rose in four years (1886 to 1890) by nearly 24 

 per cent, it began to be said that there was no reason 

 for being alarmed by foreign competition ; that the 



