§ 16. Machinery has intensified the malady of under-consumption or over-saving, because it has increased the opportunities of conflict between the interests of individuals and those of the community. With the quickening of competition in machine industries the opportunities to individuals of making good their new "savings" by cancelling the old "savings" of others continually grow in number, and as an ever larger proportion of the total industry falls under the dominion of machinery, more and more of this dislocation is likely to arise; the struggles of weaker firms with old machinery to hold their own, the efforts of improved machinery to find a market for its expanded product, will continue to produce gluts more frequently, and the subsequent checks to productive activity, the collapse of businesses, the sudden displacement of large masses of labour, in a word, all the symptoms of the malady of "depression" will appear with increased virulence. It must be clearly recognised that the trouble is due to a genuine clash of individual interests in a competitive industrial society, where the frequent, large, and quite incalculable effects of improved machinery and methods of production give now to this, now to that group of competitors a temporary advantage in the struggle. It was formerly believed that this bracing competition, this free clash of individual interests, was able to strike out harmony, that the steady and intelligent pursuit by each of his own separate interest formed a sure basis of industrial order and induced the most effective and serviceable disposition of the productive powers of a community. It now appears that this is not the case, and that the failure cannot in the main be attributed to an imperfect understanding by individuals of the means by which their several interests may be best subserved, but is due to the power vested in individuals or groups of individuals to secure for themselves advantages arising from improved methods of production without regard for the vested interests of other individuals or of society as a whole. APPENDIX I. ARE GOODS IN THE POSSESSION OF CONSUMERS CAPITAL? The question whether food, clothing, etc., which are "capital" so long as they form part of the stock of a shopkeeper, are to be regarded as ceasing to be capital when they pass into the possession of consumers has seldom been definitely faced by English economists. Jevons was perhaps the first to clearly recognise the issues involved. He writes:--"I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital. This doctrine descends to us from the time of Adam Smith, and has generally received the undoubting assent of his followers. Adam Smith, although he denied the possessions of a consumer the name of capital, took care to enumerate them as part of the stock of the community." (_The Theory of Political Economy_, 2nd edit., p. 280.)