mechanical industries. Broadly, it is such industry as lies under the dominion of the machine, in that it is involved in that comprehensive quasi-mechanical process of modern industrial life that has been discussed in an earlier chapter. This implication of each industry in a comprehensive system, or this articulation with other branches of industry, is of such a nature as to place each industrial concern in dependence on one or more other branches of industry, from which it draws its materials, appliances, etc., and to which it disposes of its output ; and these relations of dependence and articulation form an endless sequence. That is to say, the inter industrial relations into which any branch of industry necessarily enters do not run to a final term in any
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direction ; within the process of industry at laxge there is no memher that stands in the relation of an initial term to any sequence of proceBses. The ramification of imliistrial dependence is without limits. The method of these relations of one concern to another, or of one branch of industry to another, is that of bargaining, contracts of pui^
I chase and sale. It is a pecuniary relation, in the last resort a price relation, and the balance of this
' ayatem of interstitial relations is a mice balance.
(3) These interstitial pecuniary relations, between the several concerns or branches of industry that make up the comprehensive industrial system at large, involve credit relations of greater or lees duration. The bargaining, by means of which industry is managed and the interstitial relations adjusted, takes the form of contracts for future performance. All industrial concerns of appreciable size are constantly involved in such contracts, which are, on an average, of considerable magnitude and