Now the desire of the people of a country to extend their trade beyond the seas seems in some ways not always a conscious desire, not a deliberate intent, but to be an effort of self-protection, or largely an effort of expansion; for getting room or employment. As the people of a country become civilized, labor-saving devices multiply; and where one man by means of a machine can do the work of a hundred, ninety-nine men may be thrown out of employment; out of a hundred men who till the soil, only one man may be selected and ninety-nine men have to seek other employment. Where shall it be gotten? Evidently it must be gotten in some employment which may be called "artificial," such as working in a shop of some kind, or doing some manufacturing work. But so long as a people live unto themselves only, each nation can practically make and use all the machinery needed within its borders, and still not employ all the idle hands; and when the population becomes dense, employment must be sought in making goods to sell beyond the sea. The return comes back, sometimes in money, sometimes in the products of the soil and the mine and the manufactures of foreign lands. In this way every nation becomes like a great business firm. It exports (that is, sells,) certain things, and it imports (that is, buys,) certain things; and if it sells more than it buys it is making money; if it buys more than it sells it is spending money. This is usually expressed by saying that the "balance of trade" is in its favor or against it. In a country like the United States, or any other great nation, the amount of exporting and importing, of buying and selling almost every conceivable article under the sun, is carried on in the millions and millions of dollars; and so perfect has the organization for doing this business become in every great country, that the products of the most distant countries can be bought in almost every village; and any important event in any country produces a perceptible effect wherever the mail and telegraph go. The organization for effecting this in every country is so excellent and so wonderful, that it is like a machine. In fact, it is a machine, and with all the faults of a machine. Now one of the faults of a machine, a fault which increases in importance with the complexity of the machine, is the enormous disturbance which may be produced by a cause seemingly trivial. That such is the case with the machine which the commerce of every great nation comprises, every-day experience confirms. So long as the steamers come and go with scheduled regularity, so long will the money come in at the proper intervals and be distributed through the various channels; so long will the people live the lives to which they are habituated; so long will order reign.