Now, precisely the same line of reasoning applies if for the individual A we take the country of the United States. If it tries to increase its factories, machinery, etc., in excess of its ability to pay, it can only do so by borrowing from other countries; and if it cannot pay the interest on such loans, the "savings," in the shape of fixed capital which it has endeavoured to secure for itself, remain the property of the other countries which have effected the real saving which they embody, assuming them to have a value. If the action of the United States be called over-consumption, it is balanced by an under-consumption of England, France, or other countries of the commercial community. Mr. Price sought to avoid this conclusion by saying nothing about the individual from whom the landowner or the country from which the United States borrowed in order to increase the fixed capital. But as the landowner and the United States, _ex hypothesi_, did not make their improvements out of their own savings, they made them out of somebody else's savings, and that conduct which is styled over-consumption in them is balanced by an equal quantity of under-consumption in some other party. If thus we look at the individual landowner or the single country of the United States, we might say, accepting Price's view of consumption, that he and it were guilty of over-consumption, and that this was the cause of the commercial crisis. But since this over-consumption is absolutely conditioned by a correspondent under-consumption of some other member of the industrial community, it is not possible to conclude with Professor Price that over-consumption can even for a time exist in the community as a whole, or that such a condition can be the explanation of a crisis commonly felt by all or most of the members of that community. What actually happened in the case of United States railways was that a number of people, either in America or in Europe, under-consumed or over-saved: their excessive saving could find no better form to take than American railways, which, _ex hypothesi_, were not wanted for use. A number of persons who might have made and consumed three hundred million pounds' worth more of corn, clothing, coals, etc., than they actually did consume, refused to do so, and instead of doing so made a number of railway lines, locomotives, etc., which no one could consume and which were not wanted to assist production. What occurred was a waste of saving power through an attempt to make an excessive number of forms of capital. Even if, some years later, many of these forms obtained a use and a value, none the less they represent an excess or waste of "saving" to an extent measured by the normal rate of interest over that period of time which elapsed before they fructified into use. In a word, what had happened was not over-consumption, but under-consumption.