Ordinary people in rural and urban areas of Haiti had what appeared to be a very good sense of the tangible difference between productive and nonproductive uses of available resources, and of the considerable importance of emphasizing the former relative to the latter for purposes of maximizing earnings and survival. This kind of capitalist consciousness was an important property of the urban economy because it meant that at any given moment the vicissitudes of life and business, such as capturing a fleeting opportunity or defending against misfortune, could cause large numbers of people to actively search for capital as a means of producing either gain or protection. However, in order for the market to have been as active as it was in 1976, to have permitted almost 80 percent of families to borrow within the preceding six months, the price of credit had to be relatively low.