Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/323

Rh 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 capital 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 body 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 depression. We find current in the journals a paragraph which affirms that last year the valuation of property in England, exclusive of London, increased $14,335,000—too little, no doubt, but something different 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 coöperation 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 exchanges its goods for foreign luxuries to an extent to impair its productive 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 individual and a community is, that the income of the former is absolutely 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