ermanent investment involved immense debts at home and
abroad, _with all the profits yet in the future_. The fact that imports
increased at the rate of nearly $100,000,000 a year in 1871 and 1872
indicates the extent of expenditures. The Franco-Prussian war had also
wasted great energies.

The hard times in America, shown especially in the price of farms, about
1888 were immediately preceded by enormous investments in unsatisfactory
farming lands and unneeded town sites, as well as in railroad building.
Forty-nine million acres of land were sold by the government, and more
than 12,000 miles of railway were built. Enormous expenditures were also
made for school-houses, court-houses, and other public buildings by sale
of bonds. The actual crisis was perhaps delayed and a new speculation
fostered by large payments on the public debt. Again, there was expansion
of credit and large investment in railroad and city building in
anticipation of future growth, during which the small savings of
multitudes had been gathered up through the guaranty loan companies of the
West. Upon the top of this came the expenditures of 1892 and 1893 on the
great World's Exposition. The expenditure of savings in attendance upon
the exposition curtailed the abilities of hundreds of thousands of
families. So the panic of 1893 was in no respect an exception to the rule.
No sufficient data are at hand for showing exactly how great has been the
expenditure in unproductive enterprises, but a reference to Chart No. IV,
p. 83, giving the development of railroad building in this country, will
show how this form of enterprise in every case outran the increase in
population immediately preceding the hard times.

It is evident to any student of the question that extra large consumption
of floating capital has immediately preceded every period of supposed
over-production. The chief over-production has always been in the
machinery of production and trade, including the costly settlement of new
land. The immediate dismissal of labor employed in such enterprises brings
greatest suffering, because such laborers are always least forehanded and
are in large numbers homeless. Such laborers also most readily become
competitors for any kind of a job, and so affect current wages of those
still retaining their places. This emphasizes the unequal distribution of
wealth, and leads multitudes to call for a redistribution, by fair means
or foul. This increases the distrust of