Note 418 — Chapter I · : SISMONDI AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL

Elsewhere he remarks: “The petty merchants, the small manufacturers, disappear, and a great entrepreneur replaces hundreds of them whose total wealth was never equal to his. Taken altogether, however, they consumed more than he does. His costly luxury gives much less encouragement to industry than the honest ease of the hundred homes which it has replaced.” (Ibid., p. 327). The theory is more than doubtful. What we want to know is whether the demand will remain the same in amount, not whether there will be no change in its character—a contingency that need not result in a general crisis, but simply in a passing inconvenience.