n control of the different industries, and the
consequent impossibility of their orderly and coordinate development.
It inevitably resulted from this lack that they were continually
getting out of step with one another and out of relation with the
demand.

"Of the latter there was no criterion such as organized distribution
gives us, and the first notice that it had been exceeded in any group
of industries was a crash of prices, bankruptcy of producers, stoppage
of production, reduction of wages, or discharge of workmen. This
process was constantly going on in many industries, even in what were
called good times, but a crisis took place only when the industries
affected were extensive. The markets then were glutted with goods, of
which nobody wanted beyond a sufficiency at any price. The wages and
profits of those making the glutted classes of goods being reduced or
wholly stopped, their purchasing power as consumers of other classes of
goods, of which there were no natural glut, was taken away, and, as a
consequence, goods of which there was no natural glut became
artificially glutted, till their prices also were broken down, and
their makers thrown out of work and deprived of income. The crisis was
by this time fairly under way, and nothing could check it till a
nation's ransom had been wasted.

"A cause, also inherent in your system, which often produced and always
terribly aggravated crises, was the machinery of money and credit.
Money was essential when production was in many private hands, and
buying and selling was necessary to secure what one wanted. It was,
however, open to the obvious objection of substituting for food,
clothing, and other things a merely conventional representative of
them. The confusion of mind which this favored, between goods and their
representative, led the way to the credit system and its prodigious
illusions. Already accustomed to accept money for commodities, the
people next accepted promises for money, and ceased to look at all
behind the representative for the thing represented. Money was a sign
of real commodities, but credit was but the sign of a sign. There was a
natural limit to gold and silver, that is, money proper, but none to
credit, and the result was that the volume of credit, that is, the
promises of money, ceased to bear any ascertainable proportion to the
money, still less to the commodities, actually in existence. Under such
a system, frequent and periodical crises w