Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/56

 as there falls headlong into it a crowd of small manufacturers and small proprietors, who thenceforth have nothing better to do than to stretch out their arms by the side of those of the laborers. And thus the forest of arms outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser and the arms themselves grow ever leaner,

That the small manufacturer cannot survive in a contest whose first condition is production on a continually increasing scale—that is, for which the first prerequisite is to be a large and not a small manufacturer—is self-evident.

That the interest on capital declines in the same proportion as the amount of capital increases and extends, and that therefore the small capitalist can no longer live on his interest, but must join the ranks of the workers and increase the number of the proletariat—all this requires no further exemplification.

Finally, in the proportion in which the capitalists are compelled by the causes here sketched to exploit on an ever increasing scale yet more gigantic means of production, and with that object to set in motion all the mainsprings of credit, in the same proportion is there an increase of those earthquakes during which the business world can only secure its own existence by the sacrifice of a portion of its wealth, its products, and even its power of production to the gods of Hades—in a word, in the same proportion do crises increase. They become at once more