tioned Law, who was at that time the most courted and the
busiest man in France and therefore very hard to interview, in order
to induce him to dispose of some of the shares founded by him, for
which at that time all France was competing and which brought on the
Exchange six and eight times the nominal price at which Law had issued
them.

If you ask me again what the causes were which made possible this
development of manufacturing and the consequent wealth of the middle
class, I should have to exceed, if I tried to give them thorough
treatment, the time at my disposal. I can only enumerate for you the
most essential ones: The discovery of America and its tremendous
influence on production; the route to the East Indies around the Cape
of Good Hope, taking the place of the former land route by way of Suez
for all trade with the East Indies; the discovery of the magnetic
needle and the invention of the mariner's compass, and in consequence
greater safety and speed and lower insurance rates for all ocean
traffic; the waterways established in the interior of the countries,
the canals, also the good roads which made possible for the first time
a more remote market through the lessening of the transportation costs
of various commodities which formerly could not carry the raise in
price thus caused; greater security of property; well-established
courts of law; the invention of powder, and, in consequence of this
invention, the breaking down by the monarchy of the feudal military
power of the nobility; the dismissal of the mercenaries and mounted
retainers of the nobles on account of the destruction of their castles
and of their independent military power. For these retainers there was
now nothing left but to find work in the medieval workshops. All these
events gave impetus to the triumphal chariot of the middle class. All
these events, and many more which might be enumerated, combined to
produce this one effect. By the opening of wider markets and the
accompanying reduction of the costs of production and transportation,
there comes production for the world-market, and consequently the
necessity for cheap production which, in its turn, can be met only by
a constantly extending division of labor, i.e., by the more perfectly
developed division of the work into its simplest mechanical processes;
this in turn brings about a constantly increasing output.

We are on the ground here of action and reaction. Each of these
circumstanc