Section XCVI.. Rapidity of Circulation.

Rapidity Of Circulation.

With an advance in a people’s public economy, we find an increased rapidity of circulation connected, both as cause and effect. Every improvement, every thing which shortens the process of production, must facilitate and accelerate the circulation of commodities. And so, the perfecting of the means of transport of commodities, of the media of exchange and of credit, an increase in the number of middlemen who make it their business to purchase in order to sell again. On the other hand, the more rapid the circulation of wealth, the more can it promote production. The more rapidly, for instance, the manufacturer of cloth exchanges his wares for money, the more rapidly may he employ the money in the purchase of new tools and the hiring of new labor; and the sooner may he appear in the market with new cloth. It is here precisely as it is in agriculture, which is more productive where the seed returns several times in a year (several crops(576)) to the hand of the peasant than it is where this happens only once. The nearer the members of the commercial organism are to one another, the more rapid is circulation wont to be. Hence, it is more rapid in industry than in agriculture; in retail trade than in wholesale; in large cities than in the country; among a dense population than among a sparse population.

The regularity of circulation increases with economic culture. Its concentration at large terminal points, its interruption by bad seasons of the year, belong to the lower stages of the political economy of a people; although bad harvests, floods, wars, revolutions etc. may, at any time, lead to a sluggishness or to an arrest of circulation.