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.

But suppose the coming and going of all the steamers were suddenly stopped by a blockade.  While it may be true that, in a country like the United States, no foreign trade is really necessary; while it may be true that the people of the United States would be just as happy, though not so rich, if they had no foreign trade—­yet the sudden stoppage of foreign trade would not bring about a condition such as would have existed if we had never had any foreign trade, but would bring about a chaotic condition which cannot fitly be described by a feebler word than “horrible.”  The whole machinery of every-day life would be disabled.  Hundreds of thousands of people would be thrown out of employment, and the whole momentum of the rapidly moving enormous mass of American daily life would receive a violent shock which would strain to its elastic limit every part of the entire machine.

It would take a large book to describe what would ensue from the sudden stoppage of the trade of the United States with countries over the sea.  Such a book would besides be largely imaginative; because in our history such a condition has never yet arisen.  Although wars have happened in the past in which there has been a blockade of our coast more or less complete, peace has been declared before the suffering produced had become very acute; and furthermore the conditions of furious trade which now exist have never existed before.  Disasters would ensue, apart from the actual loss of money, owing simply to the sudden change.  In a railroad-train standing still or moving at a uniform speed, the passengers are comfortable; but if that same train is suddenly brought to rest when going at a high speed, say by collision, the consequences are horrible in the extreme, and the horror is caused simply by the suddenness of the change.  The same is true all through nature and human nature.  Any sudden change in the velocity of any mass has its exact counterpart in any sudden change in the conditions of living of any man or woman, or any sudden change in the conditions under which any organization must carry on its business.  The difficulty is not with individuals only, or with the organizations themselves, and does not rest solely on the personal inability of people to accommodate themselves to the losing of certain conveniences or luxuries; but it is an inertia which resists even the strenuous efforts of individuals and organizations to meet new situations promptly, and to grapple effectively with new problems.