is, under the modern industrial system at least, no overproduction in the sense of a production ho large as to overtax the working capacity of the industrial appliances and processea employed, nor so large, even, as to overtax tlie normal powers of the force of workmen or require them to work overtime and holidays. Quite the contrary. That sort of thing happens only in brisk times, when there is no overproduction. Seriously to recite such platitudes as these may seem like a trifling with the patience of the printer, or it may be taken for a light-headed excess of " wisaenschaftUcher Methode"; but these two formulations appear to cover all the conceivable ways in which overproduction may occur, so long as the term is construed from the point of view of the meclianical facts of
,the case. Seen from this side a period of depression
'is a period of underproduction; mills run on half time or none, and the supply of goods that finds
,ita way into the hands of consumers is sensibly
I scant for the demands of comfort.
The difficulty is, of course, a pecuniary one, and the phrase is used by business men in that pecuniary sense in which it has an immediate bearing on business. "Excessive competition" is an alternative phrase. There is an excess of goods, or of the means of producing them, above what is expedient on pecuniary grounds, — above what there is an effective demand for at prices that will repay