In all this money is but an instrument.

The same thing would happen equally well in a trade of barter, if a state of barter on a very large scale were not practically impossible, on account of the time and trouble which it would necessarily require.

As has been explained, the fundamental cause is that under a system in which everyone is dependent on the labour of everyone else, the loss of one spreads and multiplies through all, and spreads and multiplies the faster the higher the previous perfection of the system of divided labour, and the more nice and effectual the mode of interchange.

And the entire effect of a depression in any single large trade requires a considerable time before it can be produced.
It has to be propagated, and to be returned through a variety of industries, before it is complete.

Short depressions, in consequence, have scarcely any discernible consequences; they are over before we think of their effects.