Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/228

 wrong distribution of labor, erroneous judgment in enterprise, or miscalculations of force. These all have the same effect, viz., to waste and destroy capital. Such causes disturb, in a greater or less degree, the harmonious working of the system, which depends upon the regular and exact fulfillment of the expectations which have been based on coöperative effort throughout the whole industrial body. The disturbance may be slight and temporary, or it may be very serious. In the latter case it will be necessary to arrest the movement of the whole system and to proceed to a general liquidation, before starting again. Such was the case from 1837 to 1842, and such has been the case for the last five years. It is needless to add that this arrest and liquidation cannot be accomplished without distress and loss to great numbers of innocent persons, and great positive loss of capital, to say nothing of what might have been won during the same period but must be foregone.

The financial organization is the medium by which the various parts of the industrial and commercial organism are held in harmony. It is by the financial organization that capital is collected and distributed, that the friction of exchanges is reduced to a minimum, and that time is economized, through credit, between production and consumption. The financial system furnishes three indicators—prices, the rate of discount, and the foreign exchanges—through which we may read the operation of economic forces now that their magnitude makes it impossible to inspect them directly. Hence the great mischief of usury laws which tamper with the rate of discount, and of fluctuating currencies which falsify prices and the foreign exchanges. They destroy the value of the indicators, and have the same effect as tampering with the scales of a chemist or the steam-gauge of a locomotive.

In the matter of prices we have another difficulty to contend with, which is inevitable in the nature of things.