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When we take into account how many, in the so-called civilized nations, produce nothing, how many work at harmful trades, doomed to disappear, and lastly, how many are only useless middlemen, we see that in each nation the number of real producers could be doubled.
But it cannot be expected that individuals should, at their own risk, or rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture, and bear the burden of carrying it on, until the producers have been educated up to the level of those with whom the processes are traditional.
The propertiless and jobless were left to starve; to them no helping arm was outstretched, and if they complained, no quarter given. The State as an institution, while supported by the toil of the producers, was wholly a capitalist State with the capitalists in complete supremacy to fashion and use it as they chose.
In any case, there seems to be no probability of societies of producers being able to supplant the capitalistic concerns; we must turn elsewhere for the solution of our problems. Consumers' cooperation has been more widely successful. On this plan a number of people contribute the capital of a business in equal small amounts and share the profits in proportion to their purchases.
The pressing necessity of the wage-earner to sell his labor at once on any terms and of the small capitalist to dispose of his product was the means by which the great capitalists were able steadily to force down the rate of wages and the prices paid for their product to the first producers." "And was it only among the wage-earners and the small producers that this glut of men existed?"
"I think you will find it a very obvious one upon reflection," replied the doctor. "Under private capitalism, you see, there was no public or governmental system for organizing productive effort and distributing its results. There was no general and unfailing machinery for bringing producers and consumers together.
Commodities like bread, sugar, or privately owned motor-cars are sometimes called "consumers' goods" in contrast to "producers' goods," which comprise things such as raw materials, machinery, the services of typists and so forth, which are bought by business men for business purposes.
Underselling the native producers, she soon obtained a monopoly of this kind of trade, drove the native products out of the market, and imposed her own instead, much as the manufacturers of Manchester, Birmingham, and the Potteries impose their calicoes, their cutlery, and their earthenware on the savages of Africa and Polynesia.
It may be that as other countries, with the help of our capital and example, develop industries in which we have been pre-eminent, they may force us to supply them with services of which we are less proud to be the producers.
Besides directly attacking the production of raw materials and intermediates, the Germans used an indirect method which has been described as "full line forcing." They were the sole producers of certain specialities, such as alizarine colours, anthracene colours, and synthetic indigo.
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