'"' ^^* I Bcriptions) fluctuates with the fluctuations of the ■.prevalent presumption as to the solvency and
, art,/ I earning-capacity of the concern and the good faith - , ^ iof its governing board.
.^. . When the modem captain of industry reorgan-
izes and consolidates a given range of industrial business concerns, therefore, and gives them a collective form and name as an up-to-date corporation, the completed operation presents, in syncopated form and within a negligible lapse of time, all that hitricate process of cumulative augmentar tion of business capital through the use of credit which otherwise may come gradually in the course of business competition. At the same time it involves a redistribution of the ownership of the property engaged in industry, such as otherwise occurs at a period of liquidation. The result is, of coiu-se, not the same at all points, but the equivalence between the two methods of expanding business capital and distributing the gains is close in some respects. The resemblances and the differences between the two processes, so far as relates to credit, are worth noticing. The trust-maker is in some respects a surrogate for a commercial crisis.
When credit extension is used competitively in the old-fashioned way for increasing the business of competing concerns, as spoken of above (pp. 94100, 109-114), tlie expansion of business capital