handicraft. Thanks to credit, capital has become a very elastic quantity. A brisk trade increases confidence, draws money out upon the street, shortens the time requisite for the turning over of capital and, accordingly, increases its effectiveness. But most important of all, capital has permanently at its disposal a large reserve army of workmen—the unemployed. The capitalist is thus able at any time to expand his establishment, to employ additional workmen, to increase his production rapidly and to profit to the utmost by every favorable opportunity.
It has been shown that under the rule of large production industrial capital steps ever more to the front and takes control of the whole capitalist mechanism. But within the circle of capitalist production itself special branches of industry take the lead, as for instance, the iron and spinning industries. The moment any of these receives a special impetus—be it through the opening of new markets in China, or the undertaking of extensive railroad lines—not only does it expand rapidly, but it imparts the impetus it has received to the whole industrial organism. Capitalists enlarge their establishments, start new ones, increase the consumption of raw and auxiliary materials and employ new hands; simultaneously with all this, rent, profit and wages go up. The demand for goods increases, all industries begin to feel the industrial prosperity. At such times it looks as if every undertaking must prosper; confidence becomes blind, credit grows boundless. Whoever has money seeks to turn it into capital to make it profitable. Industrial giddiness takes possession of all.
