194 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



recently published by Messrs. Pears never said a word 

 about the depression having lasted ten or twelve years, 

 but treated it as if it had commenced within the last 

 three or four years. 



True Causes of the Depression. 



Now that we have got at what are, I think, the main 

 facts, let us consider how we ought to set about to find 

 what are the true causes. First, then, a cause to be worth 

 anything must be a demonstrable cause of poverty in 

 some large body of the people. Another essential point 

 is, that it must have begun to act, or at all events must 

 have acted with increased intensity, about the period 

 when the depression commenced. Another point is, that 

 it must have affected not ourselves alone, but several of 

 the great manufacturing countries of the world. Now 

 unless any alleged cause will answer to at least two out 

 of these three tests, I do not consider that we ought to 

 admit it to be a true cause ; and you will find, I think, 

 that none of those eight suggested causes which I sum- 

 marised at the beginning of my lecture will at all answer 

 to these conditions. After much consideration as to 

 what are the real causes which answer to these conditions, 

 and which are of sufficient importance and extent to 

 account for the whole phenomenon, I have arrived at the 

 conclusion that they are four in number. The first is, the 

 excessive amount of foreign loans that were made during 

 the period of prosperity ; then there is the enormous 

 increase of war expenditure by all the countries of Europe 

 that also occurred about the same period ; another cause 

 is, the vast increase of late years (of which I shall give 

 you proof) of speculation as a means of living, and the 

 consequent increase of millionaires in this country ; and 

 the last, and one of the most important of all the causes, 

 may be summarised in one of the results of our vicious 

 land-system — the depopulation of the rural districts and 

 the over-population of the towns. 



