this disadvantage. Any two shopkeepers, in insufficient employment, who
agreed to deal at each other's shops so long as they could there
purchase articles of as good a quality as elsewhere, and at as low a
price, would render the nation a service. It may be said that they must
previously have dealt, to the same amount, with some other dealers; but
this is erroneous, since they could only have obtained the means of
purchasing by being previously enabled to sell. By their compact, each
would gain a customer, who would call his capital into fuller employment;
each therefore would obtain an increased produce; and they would thus be
enabled to become better customers to each other than they could be to
third parties.

It is obvious that every dealer who has not business sufficient fully to
employ his capital (which is the case with all dealers when they commence
business, and with many to the end of their lives), is in this
predicament simply for want of some one with whom to exchange his
commodities; and as there are such persons to about the same degree
probably in all trades, it is evident that if these persons sought one
another out, they have their remedy in their own hands, and by each
other's assistance might bring their capital into more full employment.

We are now qualified to define the exact nature of the benefit which a
producer or dealer derives from the acquisition of a new customer. It is
as follows:--

1. If any part of his own capital was locked up in the form of unsold
goods, producing (for a longer period or a shorter) nothing at all;
a portion of this is called into greater activity, and becomes more
constantly productive. But to this we must add some further advantages.