The Necessity is a Wider Consumption.

The real want is a wider range of consumption among the whole people everywhere, so as to open large markets, by the most active interchange of their diversified labor. Great broad channels of consumption are needed in which to pour exhaustless streams of production until all the people are supplied with the necessities and comforts of life.

Millions fully employed increase largely their purchasing ability, and in order to supply the moderate consumption of these, there is created wider and more stable markets than is furnished by the most wasteful extravagance of the few rich. Assume our 45,000,000 of population are comprised in nine million families, whose weekly earnings are each increased ten dollars. Here is annually four thousand five hundred millions of dollars of increased power to purchase the enlarged products of industry!

If man will continue to improve labor-saving machinery, he must find a way to dispose of its increased production, by a larger general consumption, or else stagnation and distress will be more and more frequent.