Where, as is common in times of trade depression, unemployment of labour is attended by unemployment of capital, this joint excess of the two requisites of production is only to be explained by the low standard of consumption of the community.

Since the working- classes form a vast majority of the community, and their standard of consumption is low compared with that of the upper classes, it is to a progressive standard of comfort among the workers that we must look for a guarantee of increasing employment.

It may be urged that the luxurious expenditure of the rich provides as much employment as the more necessary expenditure of the poor.

But, setting aside all considerations of the inutility or noxious character of luxury, there is one vital difference between the employment afforded in the two cases.

The demand for luxuries is essentially capricious and irregular, and this irregularity must always be reflected in the employment of the trades which supply them.