The settlement of soils under load is caused by a phenomenon called consolidation, whose mechanism is known to be in many cases identical with the process of squeezing water out of an elastic porous medium. The mathematical physical consequences of this viewpoint are established in the present paper. The number of physical constants necessary to determine the properties of the soil is derived along with the general equations for the prediction of settlements and stresses in three‐dimensional problems. Simple applications are treated as examples. The operational calculus is shown to be a powerful method of solution of consolidation problems.