business purposes, a difference of degree, in both of the respects named, between Ibis (ill-deSoed) group of induHtrial processes on the one hand, and the contrasted group occupied with the production of consumption goods on the other band. The "productive-goods industries" show the modem industrial and business traits in an accentuated form and force, and they arc, by consequence, in a strategelically primary position in the busiitFSB situation.
Cf., e.g., A. Splethnff, Jahrbuch /. OeieUgebung Venoaltuiisf u. VolklVlirUc^<^ft,vo.XXVl. Il6ii2. "VorbemerkuiiBeiiEueinerThBorie
business profits is now afforded, not by commercial traffic in the stricter sense, but by the industries engaged in producing goods and services for the market. And the close-knit, far-reaching articula* tion of the industrial processes in a balanced system, in which the interstitial adjustments are made and kept in terms of price, enables price disturbances to be transmitted throughout the industrial community with such celerity and effect that a wave of depression or exaltation passes over the whole community and touches every class employed in industry within a few weeks. And somewhat in the same measure as the several modem industrial peoples are bound together by the business ties of the world market, do these peoples also share in common any wave of prosperity or depression which may initially fall upon any one member of this business community of nations. Exceptions from this rule, of course, ara such periods of prosperity or depression as result from local (material) accidents of the seasons and the like, — accidents that may inflict upon one community hardships which through the mediation of prices are transmuted into gain for the other communities that are not touched by the calamitous act of God to which the disturbance is due.