Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/515

Rh labor of which there might be too many made. We might conceive of an excess of needles, or of looms, or spinning-wheels, or locomotives, or steamboats. But these are exceptional cases. Of most of the articles that are made for direct consumption we may say, as a rule, that they can not be offered in absolute excess. The world is never likely to have too much cloth, or sugar, or coffee, or meat, or wheat, or even too many houses. A great many people in comfortable circumstances, to say nothing of those who are poor, would have many more carpets and paintings, would use more sugar, would take coffee more frequently, would eat more meat, and enjoy more costly food, and would live in better houses, if it were not for the expense and for the habits they have already formed under the restraint of the cost of living. There can not really be an excess of any of these articles. If the supply is at any time in excess of the demand, it is not because this is not capable of increase, but because the increase is restrained for the time by circumstances which will prove to be only transitory. Take the case of houses in Paris. They say there have been too many built. Too many, it is true, for the builders to sell immediately at a profit; but not too many for the population who are all the time complaining of being lodged in too close quarters, and would gladly exchange their two rooms for three, and their three for four or five, if they could afford it.

We sometimes say of children or young people that they have grown too much. The expression is inexact, for we do not mean that we should wish to see them smaller again; but we mean that they have grown up so quickly that their bodily functions and their carriage have not had time to adapt themselves to the new and unaccustomed size. The case is very similar with what we are accustomed to call crises of over-production. Taken in a general sense, this expression too is inexact. We must not conclude from its use that men should try to go back and produce less. It is only a "growing-pain," the result of a useful phenomenon being produced too abruptly, before there has been time to modify habits, establish new agencies, and adapt society to the new conditions, which operations have to take place gradually. Time and the course of events will furnish effectual remedies for the momentary inconvenience.

We must be on our guard against the empirics and charlatans who are continually besieging the public powers of suffering nations. First among these are the protectionists. "The world," they say, "is producing too much; we have to struggle against universal competition. We have the remedy in our hands. We must proscribe foreign goods and encourage our own." This kind of reasoning has lately come into new credit. Nothing can be more unreasonable. Protectionism is, in fact, largely responsible for the present crisis. Let us judge of its effects by a few examples. Among the articles that are most largely produced and have suffered the greatest decline in price