Note 217-2 — Chapter I

If all the rich were suddenly to become misers, live on bread and water, and go about in the coarsest clothing, etc., it would not be long before all commodities, the circulating medium excepted, would feel the want of a proper market—all, including even the most necessary means of subsistence, because a multitude of former consumers, having no employment, would be obliged to discontinue their demand. Over-production would be greater yet if a great and general improvement in the industrial arts or in the art of agriculture had gone before. Compare, Lauderdale Inquiry, 88. This author calls attention to the fact that a market in which the middle class prevails must put branches of production in operation very different from those put in operation where there are only a few over-rich people, and numberless utterly poor ones: England, the United States—the East Indies, and France before the Revolution. (Ch. 5, especially p. 358.)