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278 other it becomes more difficult to keep it when made. The candle of national wealth is being burnt at both ends, and the effects are felt by every class of the community. Particular industries or classes may, as Mr Bright contends, have been as bad before, but no one will say there has ever been within historical memory a depression at once so severe and so widespread as the present. Not a single section of the community is exempt from it; and though happily the working class has been so far less affected in proportion than any other, it may be only a matter of a few months when depression shall pass into far-reaching destitution. The hard gripe of genteel poverty is already keenly felt in homes which still offer a fair and smiling face to the world; and where a few years ago the serenity of opulence reigned, anxiety and care are now eating into the daily life.

We have two distinct factors to take note of in the existing depression – destruction of capital on the one hand, and suicidal competition on the other. This is the first occasion on which their combined influence has been strongly felt. In the crisis of 1857 there was a temporary loss of trading profits, but comparatively little destruction of existing wealth. In 1866 there was destruction of wealth through bad speculation, but almost no loss of trading profits. Trade then was in the heyday of its prosperity. In 1873 the aggregate loss of capital through bad investments must have been enormous, but trade was still profitable, and wealth continued to accumulate. The losses of that crisis would have been wiped out in a few years had the earning powers of the community continued unimpaired. But the pressure of foreign competition which is now sapping the vitals of our commerce had already begun. It has gone on intensifying from year to year, and the recuperative power of the country weakens in proportion. Losses which might have done little harm ten years ago are serious now, for they cannot be so readily retrieved. In attempting to redeem them, we are only more likely to get plunged into deeper trouble. Every investor or speculator who is fighting against the current knows that fact only too well in his private experience; and in the aggregate it must be no less true of the community.

It is a double problem that has to be grappled with on behalf of the nation – how to earn money, and how to avoid losing it when earned. Though in theory these may be quite distinct questions, they have come to be very much mixed up in practice. Every joint-stock investor is nowadays more or less of a trader, and most traders, if not investors themselves, are affected by the fluctuations of the investment markets. A default on the bonds of some little known railway in the Far West may have an easily traceable effect on the whole circle of our commerce. It cuts off so much of the income of every British holder of the bonds, and if they are forced to sell, it cuts still more cruelly into their capital. They have to retrench, which means that they have less to spend among their tradesmen. The tradesmen in turn have to retrench, and have less to spend with the wholesale dealers. The wholesale dealers can take less from the manufacturers; and if the process were carried to a serious length, the manufacturers would have less to spend in wages among their workpeople.

Suppose, next, that the whole-