ss men that the
Lancashire trade has been congested with mills and machinery in this
way. As a result of an excessive desire to postpone consumption there
are considerable sums of money which cannot find a safe remunerative
investment. Here is the material for the company promoter. By means of
the specious falsehoods of prospectuses he draws this money together;
with him work a builder and an architect who desire the contract of
putting up the factory; the various firms interested in manufacturing
and supplying the machinery, the boiler-maker and fitters of various
kinds, the firm of solicitors whose services are requisite to place
the concern upon a sound legal footing, or to establish confidence,
take up shares. It is to the interest of all these and many other
classes of persons to bring into the field of production new forms of
capital, quite independently of the question whether the condition of
a trade or the consumption of the community have any need for them.

Sec. 14. These operations, which imply a conflict between the interests
of individuals and those of the community, pervade all modern
commerce, but are more prevalent in businesses where complex machinery
plays a prominent part, or where specious advertising gives the
outsider a larger chance of successful entry.

In each and all of these cases it is to the interest of the individual
to place new "savings" in new forms of capital in branches of industry
where sufficient capital already exists to assist in supplying the
current demand for consumptive goods. So far is it from being true
that the self-interest of individuals provides an economic check upon
over-supply, that it is possible that at each of the points of
production, A, B, C, D, E, and in all or the majority of industries at
the same time, there should be an excess of forms of capital as
compared with that which would suffice for the output, F. The
automatic growth of bubble companies and every species of rash or
fraudulent investment at times of depressed trade is proof that every
legitimate occupation for capital is closed, and that the current rate
of saving is beyond that which is industrially sound and requisite.
These bubble companies are simply tumours upon the industrial body
attesting the sluggish and unwholesome circulation; they are the
morbid endeavours of "saving" which is socially unnecessary, and ought
never to have taken place, to find investments. When one of these
"bubble" com