time in his shape of drainage. If he can continue to pay interest and
gradually "save" to pay off the capital, he will do so; if not, as in
the case supposed, B, the mortgagee, will foreclose and legally enter
upon his savings in the shape of "drainage" which he really owned all
along. But even if A in this case were rightly accused of
over-consumption, this over-consumption must be considered as balanced
by the under-consumption of B, so that as regards the community of
which A and B are both members there is no over-consumption.

Now, precisely the same line of reasoning applies if for the
individual A we take the country of the United States. If it tries to
increase its factories, machinery, etc., in excess of its ability to
pay, it can only do so by borrowing from other countries; and if it
cannot pay the interest on such loans, the "savings," in the shape of
fixed capital which it has endeavoured to secure for itself, remain
the property of the other countries which have effected the real
saving which they embody, assuming them to have a value. If the action
of the United States be called over-consumption, it is balanced by an
under-consumption of England, France, or other countries of the
commercial community. Mr. Price sought to avoid this conclusion by
saying nothing about the individual from whom the landowner or the
country from which the United States borrowed in order to increase the
fixed capital. But as the landowner and the United States, _ex
hypothesi_, did not make their improvements out of their own savings,
they made them out of somebody else's savings, and that conduct which
is styled over-consumption in them is balanced by an equal quantity of
under-consumption in some other party. If thus we look at the
individual landowner or the single country of the United States, we
might say, accepting Price's view of consumption, that he and it were
guilty of over-consumption, and that this was the cause of the
commercial crisis. But since this over-consumption is absolutely
conditioned by a correspondent under-consumption of some other member
of the industrial community, it is not possible to conclude with
Professor Price that over-consumption can even for a time exist in the
community as a whole, or that such a condition can be the explanation
of a crisis commonly felt by all or most of the members of that
community.

What actually happened in the case of United States railways was that
a number of people