_net_ total of sales of goods will necessarily be keenly missed. The payment of all the national debt in a prosperous year would be easier and more pleasant. If it had no compensations this reduction would crush the life out of us. At least it is a burden to bear. Economies upon customary spending in a single household matter but little, but economies in millions of households—less buying of customary comforts—are a large matter. They are not merely a consequence of hard times; they make the times hard. And we are so bound together that the enforced economies in the families of workmen act on the whole purchasing line with mathematical certainty. It is a good thing, a beneficence of natural order, that there are compensations. We see these natural offsets most easily by looking back at the case of the farmer. He has to sell his food in a cheaper market, and wants to buy also in a cheaper market. He has made food cheaper for the workman, and he wants the goods made by the workman at less cost. He wants the same amount of cloth, sugar, salt, tools, etc., for the same number of bushels of wheat. It is the cloth, tools, etc., that he wants as a farmer. As a debtor, indeed, he wants the same number of dollars; and this is _his_ real pinch. He is in debt, and has to pay in the fall of grain a twenty per cent. premium on what he owes. As a producer, he would, however, suffer no harm if all other prices fell as much as the price of grain. If, then, by the corresponding and simultaneous reduction of the price of food and of wages, the ten per cent. less money would buy the same things to eat and wear—if the reduction were equalized all round—nobody would suffer. The farmer’s grain would buy as much as before; the workman’s wages would buy as much. Goods of all kinds would be so much cheaper in money terms, but just as valuable in barter terms. The reduction would be only in the figures and not in the facts of trade. The footings of the ledgers would be smaller, but the ledgers of comfort would show an undiminished balance in favor of happiness.