labour are expended are much more important than those of all
others, because they act much more quickly upon a larger mass of
purchasers. On principle, if there was a perfect division of labour,
every industry would have to be perfectly prosperous in order that
any one might be so. So far, therefore, from its being at all
natural that trade should develop constantly, steadily, and equably,
it is plain, without going farther, from theory as well as from
experience, that there are inevitably periods of rapid dilatation,
and as inevitably periods of contraction and of stagnation.

Nor is this the only changeable element in modern industrial
societies. Credit--the disposition of one man to trust another--is
singularly varying. In England, after a great calamity, everybody is
suspicious of everybody; as soon as that calamity is forgotten,
everybody again confides in everybody. On the Continent there has
been a stiff controversy as to whether credit should or should not
be called capital:' in England, even the little attention once paid
to abstract economics is now diverted, and no one cares in the least
for refined questions of this kind: the material practical point is
that, in M. Chevalier's language, credit is 'additive,' or
additionalthat is, in times when credit is good productive power is
more efficient, and in times when credit is bad productive power is
less efficient. And the state of credit is thus influential, because
of the two principles which have just been explained. In a good
state of credit, goods lie on hand a much less time than when credit
is bad; sales are quicker; intermediate dealers borrow easily to
augment their trade, and so more and more goods are more quickly and
more easily transmitted from the producer to the consumer.

These two variable causes are causes of real prosperity. They