They were in its very basis, and must needs become more and more maleficent as the business fabric grew in size and complexity.

One of these causes was the lack of any common control of the different industries, and the consequent impossibility of their orderly and coordinate development.
It inevitably resulted from this lack that they were continually getting out of step with one another and out of relation with the demand.
"Of the latter there was no criterion such as organized distribution gives us, and the first notice that it had been exceeded in any group of industries was a crash of prices, bankruptcy of producers, stoppage of production, reduction of wages, or discharge of workmen.

This process was constantly going on in many industries, even in what were called good times, but a crisis took place only when the industries affected were extensive.

The markets then were glutted with goods, of which nobody wanted beyond a sufficiency at any price.

The wages and profits of those making the glutted classes of goods being reduced or wholly stopped, their purchasing power as consumers of other classes of goods, of which there were no natural glut, was taken away, and, as a consequence, goods of which there was no natural glut became artificially glutted, till their prices also were broken down, and their makers thrown out of work and deprived of income.