Investment has advanced both intensively and extensively in a series of great waves.

New machinery and processes have given undreamt of opportunities for enterprise in the older countries, and the physical frontier of investment has moved outward with the march of millions of immigrants to people the fertile wilderness.

Such factors disturb the equilibrium of prices both in time and space, give a powerful impulse toward higher values in the older lands, and stimulate the hopes of all investors.

When the balance between the capitalizations of various industries and between the incomes of the various periods proves to be false, the inevitable readjustment causes suffering and loss to many, but particularly in the inflated industries.

But, because of the mutual relations of men in business, few even of those who have kept freest from speculation can quite escape the evils.
Among the dynamic conditions in industry are changes in the general price level whether due to changes in the production of the standard money commodity (relative to population) or to changing methods of doing business.