The periodicity of commercial crises, and its physical explanation

Abstract

The depression of trade, which has now lasted for some four or five years, with gradually increasing intensity, has naturally attracted considerable attention. All kinds of reasons have been offered to explain its origin?wars, foreign competition, luxurious living, the greed of capitalists, the errors of trades unions, and the like. No accidental cause, however, is sufficient to explain so widespread and recurrent a state of trade. The present depression is no new and exceptional phenomenon; it is, as I shall show, only one instance added to a long series of events of the same kind, occurring with remarkable regularity at intervals of about ten years. The cause can only be found in some great and wide-spread meteorological influence recurring at like periods.