It is often said that the French capitalism has neglected its colonial empire before 1914. According to Jean Bouvier, the French colonies before the first world war stayed at the stage of trade economy (economic de traite), that is, the most elemental and the cheapest way of exploitation. Therefore, the investments in infrastructure were limited in those colonies. But was it true in the case of Algeria? From 1860's, the French capitalist government started to build railways in Algeria. After the failure of tentative of English capital introduction at the beginning of 1860s, it was the French P. L. M. company that began to costruct railways. The other four companies such as, Franco-Algerienne, Bone-Guelma, Est-Algerien, Ouest-Algerien joined only after 1874. The interest of the companies' capitals was garanteed by the French government. Between 1874 and 1892, the principal networks were constructed, and after 1893 the railway investment suddenly declined. It was partly the direct consequence of the brake given by the French government appalled by the augmentation of government-garanteed interests. After 1907, the railway investment became more active again because Algerian railways were nationalized one after another and they were controled by the Algerian local government under the supervision of metropolitan government. The French business circles who were interested in Algerian railway construction are relatively easy to define. The railway contractors, the Company of Franco-Algerienne and the Company of Batignolles, wanted to find their works in Algeria after having finished their works in France. Also were there the Bank of Paris et des Pays-Bas, the Credit Algerien and other finance companies who exploited the system of government-garanteed railway securities. After all, the railway construction in Algeria gave not negligible support to French capitalism when it had suffered the great depression from 1870's to 1890's.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Great Depression in the United States of America from the viewpoint of the financial crisis. As is generally known, the economic crisis of 1929 spread out on an international scale, and after that there was the very long depression in the 1930 s. In this paper, I examined the process from the following views. First of all, this economic crisis was brought on at the highest stage of capitalism. For that reason, the development of this crisis was brought under the conditions of the economic structure over which monopoly capital had control. Secondly, I considered how this crisis was influenced by the structural characteristics of American capitalism which had the industrial development in the North and the underdeveloped agriculture in the South. And the following decisions were led by these views. (1) The essence of the financial crisis, which meant that the production based on the credit was broken up by the dullness of sale, was in existence during the Great Depression in the United States of America. (2) And the crisis is classified into two types. These are the financial crisis caused by the conflicts of monopoly capital accumulation and reproduction (type A) and the one caused by the conflicts of small capital accumulation and reproduction (type B). The stock market crash (1929), the decline of bond prices (1931-32) and the banking crisis (1933) come under the former. The failures of small businesses and the suspensions of small banks through the Great Depression come under the latter. In other words, the financial crisis (type A) was fundamentally caused by the overproduction of heavy industries, and appeared as the financial disturbances around the securities exchanges. The financial crisis (type B) was fundamentally caused by the overproduction of light industries, and appeared as the financial disturbances around the money markets which were subordinate to the finance capitals. Such developments were the important characteristics of the financial crisis (1929-33) in the United States of America.

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The purpose of this article is to analyze the conditions of the replacement of fixed capital under the normal course of extended reproduction. In extended reproduction under the constant rate of growth, the depreciation (D) exceeds the replacement (R). Here the condition of the replacement of fixed capital is that the additional investment in fixed capital is equal to the difference of (D-R) in the whole economy. Then the questions we must solve are as follows : (1) how does the additional investment become possible without restricting the replacement of each fixed capital, (2) does the total value of fixed capital grow larger by the reconversion of the depreciation fund into the additional inventment in fixed capital? In the first place we point out that in extended reproduction the age structure of fixed capital is multiple in the whole economy and also in an individual firm. The multiple age structure of fixed capital in an individual firm makes a certain part of its depreciation fund liberalized. The reconversion of this liberalized fund into the additional investment in fixed capital is the condition that makes the additional investment in fixed capital possible. The second thing to be noted is that the additional investment of (D-R) appears as a kind of new investment in fixed capital from the standpoint of the reproduction process of the aggregate social capital. In this respect, this investment and the accumulation of fixed capital are equally new investments in fixed capital. The difference between them is that by the former the total value of fixed capital doesn't grow any larger but by the latter it does grow.

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