proportion of the amount is likely to be wanted in a given time, and knowing that, if one depositor happens to require more than the average, another will require less, is able to lend the remainder, that is, the far greater part, to producers and dealers: thereby adding the amount, not indeed to the capital in existence, [pg 327] but to that in employment, and making a corresponding addition to the aggregate production of the community.
While credit is thus indispensable for rendering the whole capital of the country productive, it is also a means by which the industrial talent of the country is turned to better account for purposes of production. Many a person who has either no capital of his own, or very little, but who has qualifications for business which are known and appreciated by some possessors of capital, is enabled to obtain either advances in money, or, more frequently, goods on credit, by which his industrial capacities are made instrumental to the increase