e spread over too vast
an area; then also, their purchasing power, upon which depends their
power of consumption, is affected by a number of causes, beyond the
control of the individual producer. Moreover, along with each individual
producer, are a number of others, whose productive powers and actual
yield also are unknown to him. Each strives, with all the means at his
command--cheap prices, advertisements, long credit, drummers, also
secret and crafty detraction of the quality of the goods of his
competitor, the last of which is a measure that flourishes particularly
at critical moments--to drive all other competitors from the field.
Production is wholly left to accident and to the judgment of
individuals. Accident often is more unfavorable than otherwise. Every
capitalist must produce a certain quantity of goods, in order that he
may exist; he is, however, driven to increase his output, partly because
his increase of revenues depends upon that, partly also because upon
that depend his prospects of being able to overcome his competitors, and
keep the field all to himself. For a while, the output is safe; the
circumstance tends to expansion and increased production. But prosperous
times do not tempt one capitalist alone; they tempt them all. Thus
production rises far above demand, and suddenly the market is found
overstocked. Sales stop; prices fall; and production is curtailed. The
curtailment of production in any one branch implies a diminished demand
for workingmen, the lowering of wages and a retrenchment of consumption
in the ranks of labor. A further stoppage of production and business in
other departments is the necessary consequence. Small producers of all
sorts--trademen, saloonkeepers, bakers, butchers, etc.,--whose
customers are chiefly workingmen, lose the profitable sale of their
goods and likewise land in distress.

The way in which such a crisis works appears from a census on the
unemployed which the Social Democratic Party of Hamburg undertook on
February 14, 1894. Of 53,756 workingmen who were interrogated, and of
whom 34,647 were married, with an aggregate family dependence of
138,851, there were 18,422 who, during the last year, had been idle a
total of 191,013 weeks; 5,084 persons had been idle from 1 to 5 weeks;
8,741 from 6 to 10 weeks; 1,446 from 11 to 15 weeks; 984 from 16 to 20
weeks; 2,167 more than 20 weeks. These are workingmen, who wished to
work, but who, in this best of all possible world