prices advanced all round; the recklessness of a prosperous time bubbled over; and this subsidiary over-consumption immensely enlarged the waste of the national capital set in motion by the expenditure on the railways themselves. Onward still pressed the gale; foreign nations were carried away by its force. They poured their goods into America, so over-powering was the attraction of high prices. They supplied materials for the railways, and luxuries for their constructors. Their own prices rose in turn; their business burst into unwonted activity; profits and wages were enlarged; and the vicious cycle repeated itself in many countries of Europe. Over-consumption advanced with greater strides; the tide of prosperity rose ever higher; and the destruction of wealth marched at greater speed."[172] Now, in the first place, our analysis of saving and the confinement of the term consumption to direct embodiments of utility and convenience forbid us to acknowledge that the action of the United States or the analogy of the improving landowner is a case of over-consumption at all. If the landowner borrowed money on his estates in order to live in luxury for a season beyond his income, or similarly, if a State raised loans in order to consume powder and shot, the term over-consumption rightly applies. But where the landowner borrows so much money to improve his land that he is unable to hold out till the improvements bear fruit, and must sell his land to pay the interest, he is not rightly accused of over-consumption. His reduced consumption later on while practising retrenchment is simply a process of "saving" which, when complete, is to take the place of an amount of "saving" previously made by some one else and borrowed by him. What happened was simply this. A, wishing to drain his land, had not "saved" enough to do it; B has saved, and A, borrowing his "saving," holds it for a time in his shape of drainage. If he can continue to pay interest and gradually "save" to pay off the capital, he will do so; if not, as in the case supposed, B, the mortgagee, will foreclose and legally enter upon his savings in the shape of "drainage" which he really owned all along. But even if A in this case were rightly accused of over-consumption, this over-consumption must be considered as balanced by the under-consumption of B, so that as regards the community of which A and B are both members there is no over-consumption.