OVER-CONSUMPTION OR OVER-PRODUCTION ? 309 



products ; but it must be a marvelously extensive over-consumption 

 that impairs the means for restoring them that renders it impossible 

 for fixed capital machinery, furnaces, shafts to be set in productive 

 operation. 



Can Prof. Price give an instance where any civilized nation, unless 

 at war, or suffering from some great calamity, has impaired its capi- 

 tal by over-consumption ? Can he name a period when, at the end of 

 any year, with the exceptions mentioned, England has possessed less 

 wealth than at the beginning of that year ? When, in modern times, 

 have a people impaired their capital by over-consumption ? When 

 and where has extravagance brought a community to ruin ? Where 

 are the instances? What are the occasions? Who can produce the 

 statistics that will establish this theory ? Not but what there may be, 

 and often are, hurtful extravagance and speculative excesses ; but these 

 are usually special to a class. The great bocly of a people are rarely 

 consumers to the extent they are producers ; quietly, in a million of 

 minor ways, the wealth of a country increases even in times of de- 

 pression. We find current in the journals a paragraph which affirms 

 that last year the valuation of property in England, exclusive of Lon- 

 don, increased $14,335,000 too little, no doubt, but something differ- 

 ent from the destruction of more wealth than is produced. Very 

 rarely, indeed, if ever, has the capital of a country in normal periods 

 of peace been really impaired, however much distress an imperfect 

 distribution of labor and of profits may have caused. 



Let us say here that the ordinary idea of national extravagance 

 meaning excessive expenditure by the people, and not governmental 

 expenses is peculiarly erroneous ; an assertion we confidently make, 

 notwithstanding the fact that Prof. Price accepts the usual theory. 

 He declares that " a nation is only an aggregate of individuals," that 

 " analysis will always resolve the action of the single man, and the 

 combined cooperation of a host, etc., into the same constituent parts ;" 

 that is to say, over-spending and over-consumption are of the same 

 nature, whether exhibited by an individual or a community. 



Now, we think it can be shown that expenditure in the case of an 

 individual and expenditure in case of a large group of individuals 

 have certain very essential differences. When a community ex- 

 changes its goods for foreign luxuries to an extent to impair its pro- 

 ductive capital, or has invested in railways or similar enterprises so 

 as to reduce its working capital, it is in the position of an individual 

 who has lived beyond his income. But the difference between an in- 

 dividual and a community is, that the income of the former is abso- 

 lutely fixed, that of the other is wholly expansive. In truth, in an 

 immense number of things, a community is rich because it consumes^ 

 abundance being the product and consequence of extensive destruction. 



It is evident that the immense consumption of coal has made 

 coal cheap and abundant. It has rendered possible the employment 



