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 additional--that is, in times when credit is good productive power is more efficient, and in times when credit is bad productive power is less efficient.