aser for a year after, then
all which a capital of that value can enable men to produce during a
year, is clear gain--gain to the dealer, or producer, and to the
labourers whom he will employ, and thus (if no one sustains any
corresponding loss) gain to the nation. The aggregate produce of the
country for the succeeding year is, therefore, increased; not by the
mere exchange, but by calling into activity a portion of the national
capital, which, had it not been for the exchange, would have remained
for some time longer unemployed.

Thus there are actually at all times producers and dealers, of all, or
nearly all classes, whose capital is lying partially idle, because they
have not found the means of fulfilling the condition which the division
of labour renders indispensable to the full employment of capital,--viz.,
that of exchanging their products with each other. If these persons
could find one another out, they could mutually relieve each other from
this disadvantage. Any two shopkeepers, in insufficient employment, who
agreed to deal at each other's shops so long as they could there
purchase articles of as good a quality as elsewhere, and at as low a
price, would render the nation a service. It may be said that they must
previously have dealt, to the same amount, with some other dealers; but
this is erroneous, since they could only have obtained the means of
purchasing by being previously enabled to sell. By their compact, each
would gain a customer, who would call his capital into fuller employment;
each therefore would obtain an increased produce; and they would thus be
enabled to become better customers to each other than they could be to
third parties.

It is obvious that every dealer who has not business sufficient fully to
employ his capital (which is the case with all dealers when they commence
business, and with many to the end of their lives), is in this
predicament simply for want of some one with whom to exchange his
commodities; and as there are such persons to about the same degree
probably in all trades, it is evident that if these persons sought one
another out, they have their remedy in their own hands, and by each
other's assistance might bring their capital into more full employment.

We are now qualified to define the exact nature of the benefit which a
producer or dealer derives from the acquisition of a new customer. It is
as follows:--

1. If any part of his own capital was locked up in the