to 6,524
million dollars, as against 2,790 million in 1880, an increase of 136
per cent. The value of the industrial products rose during that period
from 5,369 million dollars to 9,370 million, or 75 per cent. in round
figures, while the population increased only 25 per cent.[168] The
United States has reached a point of development where it must export a
large mass of products in order to be able to continue producing in
sufficient quantities. Instead of importing articles of industry from
Europe, these will henceforth be exported in large volumes, thereby
upsetting commercial relations everywhere. What pass has been reached
there is indicated by the mammoth struggles between Capital and Labor,
by the distress of the masses that has lasted years, and by the colossal
increase of bankruptcy during the last crisis. In 1879, 1880 and 1881
the sum absorbed in bankruptcies ran up to 82 million dollars in round
figures; in 1890 the amount was 190 million dollars, and in 1891 it rose
to 331 million dollars. An instance will illustrate the gigantic measure
of the concentration of capital in that country. In 1870, there were in
the United States 2,819 woolen mills, in which 96 million dollars were
invested as capital; in 1890 the number of these mills had sunk to
1,312, but the capital invested had risen to 136 million. In 1870, on an
average, $34,000 sufficed to establish a woolen mill; in 1890, not less
than $102,000 was requisite. The increased demands upon capital forces
the building of stock corporations, which, in turn, promote the
concentration still more. Where the powers of a single capitalist do not
suffice, several of them join; they appoint technical overseers, who are
well paid, and they pocket, in the form of dividends, the profits which
the workingmen must raise. The restlessness of industry reaches its
classic form in the stock corporation, which demonstrates how useless
the person of the capitalist has become as a leader of industry.

Seeing that this process of development and concentration is proceeding
equally in all leading countries, the inevitable results of the anarchic
method of production is "over-production," the stoppage of trade, the
crisis.

Accordingly, the crisis is a consequence of the absence of any means
whatever whereby at any time the actual demand for certain goods can be
gauged and controlled. There is no power in bourgeois society able to
regulate production as a whole; the customers ar