It is commonly said by English writers upon economics that the state of over-production, the redundancy of capital and labour, though found in one or two or several trades at the same time, cannot be of general application. If too much capital and labour is engaged in one industry there is, they argue, too little in another, there cannot be at the same time a general state of over-production. Now if by general over-production is meant not that every single industry is supplied with an excess of capital, but that there exists a net over-supply, taking into account the plethora in some trades and the deficiency in others, this assertion of English economists is not in accordance with ascertained facts or with the authority of economists outside of England. § 3. If a depression of trade signified a misapplication of capital and labour, so that too much was applied in some industries, too little in others, there would be a rise of prices in as many cases as there was a fall of prices, and the admitted symptom of depression, the simultaneous fall of price in all or nearly all the staple industries, would not occur. The most careful students of the phenomena of depressed trade agree in describing the condition as one of general or net excess of the forms of capital. They are also agreed in regarding the enormous growth of modern machinery as the embodiment of a general excess of producing power over that required to maintain current consumption. Lord Playfair, writing on this subject in 1888, says, "It matters not whether the countries were devastated by war or remained in the enjoyment of peace; whether they were isolated by barriers of Protection or conducted these industries under Free Trade; whether they abounded in the raw materials of industry or had to import them from other lands; under all these varying conditions the machine-using countries of the world have felt the fifteen years of depression in the same way, though with varying degrees of intensity." His conclusion is "that the improvements of machinery used in production have increased the supply of commodities beyond the immediate demands of the world."[146] In support of this position he adduces the authority of continental writers such as Dr. A. von Studnitz, Piermez, Jules Duckerts, Laveleye, Trasenster, Annecke, and Engel. In the United States, Carroll Wright, David Wells, and Atkinson are foremost in upholding this to be the explanation of depression of trade. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour at Washington, is emphatic in his assertion of the fact. "So far as the factories and the operatives of the countries concerned are to be taken into consideration (England, the United States, France, Belgium, Germany), there does exist a positive and emphatic over-production, and this over-production could not exist without the introduction of power-machinery at a rate greater than the consuming power of the nations involved, and of those dependent upon them, demand; in other