THE USE OF LOAM CREDIT
the extent to which the liquidation is carried through.'
The precise measure and proportion in which the industrial property of the business community passes into the hands of the creditors in a period of liquidation can,of course, not be speci&ed ; it depends on the degree of shrinkage in values, as well as on the degree of thoroughness with which the liquidation is carried out, and perhaps on other still less ascertainable causes, among which is the degree of closeness of organization of the business community. It is, however, through the shrinkage of market values of the output and the industrial plant that the transfer of ownership to the creditor class takes place. In case no shrinkage of values took place, no such general transfer of ownership to the creditors as a class would become evident.
In point of fact, the shrinkage commonly supei> venes, in the course of modern business, when a general liquidation comes ; although it is conceivable that the period of acute liquidation and its attendant shrinkage of values need not supervene. Such would probably be the case in the absence of competitive investment in industrial material on a large scale. Secondary effects, such as perturbations of the rate of interest, insolvency, forced sales, and the like, need scarcely be taken up here, although
All tboae who, at a period of liquidati foods or of claimB to fixed Bums of mone; are in the poaitioB of ctedltora.
&, are botders of floent , for the preient pnrpoM,