ABSTRACT
It is a! ways impossible for the capitali~ts of any country to maintain permanently an equilibrium between the amount expended on works of permanent utility, but of slow return in the shape of profi t, and the extent of the funds which should be used to carry on business of more immediate practical usefulness. But when a. mania for some new form of undertaking seizes upon the investing public, then the savings of the community are too often utterly thrown away upon hopeless enterprises or squandered in constructing works for which there is no rea.! need at the time. This was certainly the case in regard to the era of railway construction. The railway system was "rushed " by speculators and promoters, as th<l gold-fields were afterwards rushed by the workers. It was a time of furious competition for fresh enterprises. Incompatible schemes jostled one another for precedence. Concession-hunting, regar·dless of the t·eal value of the enterprise for which the Act 'vas to be obtained, was everyw hero th<l order of the day. People who could ill afford to lose joined in the chase, scraping together every farthing they could rake up, not for the sake of carrying out a useful undertaking, but for the sake of the premium which they hoped to obtain on their shares from someone else. The
