was
only local and trifling. Is there any other proof needed than that
the improvement in business set in at the very time when the political
situation was growing worse, when the political horizon was growing
darker, and when at every moment a stroke of lightning was expected out
of the Elysee--in the middle of October? The French bourgeois, whose
"skill, knowledge, mental influence and intellectual resources," reach
no further than his nose, could, moreover, during the whole period of
the Industrial Exposition in London, have struck with his nose the
cause of his own business misery. At the same time that, in France, the
factories were being closed, commercial failures broke out in England.
While the industrial panic reached its height during April and May in
France, in England the commercial panic reached its height in April and
May. The same as the French, the English woolen industries suffered,
and, as the French, so did the English silk manufacture. Though the
English cotton factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with
the same old profit of 1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that
in France, the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a commercial
one; that while in France the factories stood still, they spread
themselves in England, but under less favorable circumstances than
they had done the years just previous; that, in France, the export, in
England, the import trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause,
which, as a matter of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the bounds
of the French political horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850
were years of the greatest material prosperity, and of an overproduction
that did not manifest itself until 1851. This was especially promoted at
the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Exposition; and,
as special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the cotton
crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton crop
than was expected: first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in short, the
oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw silk in France had
been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen goods had
received such an increment since 1849, that the production of wool could
not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly
out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly,
we have here in the raw material of three staple articles a
three