178 BOOM OF 1919 AND SUBSEQUENT DEPRESSION 
(5) Heavy importations due largely to the supplying of 
orders long overdue. 
(6) The drop in metal prices. 
(7) The difficulties of regulating industrial costs to the 
changing price-level. 
(8) The decrease in production towards which the poor 
season of 1919-20 largely contributed. 
(9) The psychological reaction from the boom period. 
The analysis of previous Australian crises has prepared us to 
detect the connexion, mainly of a very direct nature, with the 
great underlying cause of capital shortage. For reasons which 
need not be examined here the creation of fresh capital supplies 
receives a check; and Britain, as the great market for inter- 
national loans, immediately sets the marvellously sensitive 
organization of the money market to the task of rationing the 
available supplies. Upon Australia, accustomed for the greater 
part to receive her applications for capital without question, 
such a stoppage of supplies has an immediate and peculiar 
significance which is reflected in the deflation, changing price- 
levels, and restriction of domestic credit lying behind the causes 
of the crisis outlined by Copland. 
Further analysis of the relation between borrowing and 
business is deferred to the succeeding chapters; but before 
passing on to an examination of the balance of indebtedness 
and the effects of the return to gold some further facts in the 
domestic situation call for notice. During the years now under 
discussion the great amount of foreign capital invested in 
Australia, taken together with the normal increase from com- 
munity savings, resulted in a much greater relative increase in 
the total stock of capital than in the supply of either labour or 
land for the purposes of production. The population of Australia 
between 1913 and 1928 increased from 4-8 to 6:3 millions, a 
total increase over the period of 31 per cent. According to the 
estimates here collected the stock of capital as measured by 
the estimated increases from various sources grew from £380 
to £660 millions in the same period. Even for the very con- 
servative allowances we have made for capital imported, this 
represents an increase of 73 per cent.; or, if we adopt the 
standard of the 1913 wholesale price-level, a rise of 45 per cent. 
These figures for capital increase can be checked from another