goods be equal to twenty dollars, and let it be assumed that each has correctly estimated the needs of the other. The wine-merchant sells his wine to the gold-digger, and with the twenty dollars he receives for it purchases the cloth in the hands of the weaver; and, lastly, the weaver invests the proceeds of his cloth in the purchase of the sack of meal. Each will go home satisfied.
Next year these four meet again, each calculating upon the same demand for his goods as before. Let it be assumed that the gold-digger does not despise the merchant's wine, but that the wine-merchant either has no need of the cloth, or requires the money to pay a debt, and prefers wearing a torn shirt to purchasing new material. In that case the wine-merchant keeps in his pocket the twenty dollars and goes home. In vain does the weaver wait for a customer, and for the same reason that he waits, the miller is also disappointed. The weaver's family may be hungry, he may crave the flour in the miller's hands, but he has produced cloth for which there is no demand, and for the same reason that the cloth has become superfluous, the flour also is rendered "superfluous." Neither the weaver nor the miller has any money, neither can purchase what he wants; what they have produced now appears as excessive production. Furthemore, the same is the case with all other goods which have been produced for their use and which they stand in need of; to carry the illustration a little further, the table produced by the joiner and needed by the miller is "overproduced."
The essential features of an industrial crisis
