MR. BANKER: Mr. Merchant, you have given a splendid illustration of the result of accommodation paper, but you have proved far more than you set out to demonstrate. You have not only shown the ruin wrought by the $100,000 of accommodation paper, but also the extreme danger accompanying accommodation paper, when the proceeds go into a real estate investment or improvement; especially an irrigation enterprise that usually requires a long time to reach results. The same is true with regard to railroad investments, town lots, or any kind of real estate investments. Your friend put into that grocery store from first to last $200,000 worth of groceries and clothing, and the laborers who did the work ate up the groceries and wore out the clothing. MR. MERCHANT: That is just what they did, for he simply gave them credit at the store for their wages, and they were charged for what they bought, and at the end of two years, the $200,000 worth of groceries and clothing were consumed and converted into that dam and ditch. He used to say he was ruined by the dam ditch. MR. BANKER: Now you have proved another thing by your illustration and that is this. When the $200,000 worth of food and clothing represented by two years' work of 100 men were converted into a real estate improvement, instead of into consumable commodities, the necessities of life, you have, so to speak, destroyed that much commercial capital, by converting or changing it into fixed capital. This is true because your friend could not begin and build another dam, for he had no money with which to do it. MR. MERCHANT: But, Mr. Banker, he could sell his bonds. MR. BANKER: If he could, yes, but you just said he could not, and that he turned everything over to the bankers and that they carried the bonds for ten years. Now suppose that a flood should have come and taken out his dam and destroyed his irrigation ditch, it would then be perfectly clear to all of us, would it not, that $200,000 worth of food and clothing had gone down the stream and had been forever lost; completely wiped out, just as completely as if the goods had been consumed by fire. MR. MERCHANT: That is perfectly plain, but suppose that he could have sold the bonds, he would have gotten his money back, would he not?