124 Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause 



surely not an exaggeration to say that the congruence of 

 the two rhythmical movements of crop yield and general 

 prices is so close as to justify the inference that the one 

 series is the cause of the other. Every important 

 rhythmical feature of the yield curve is reproduced in 

 the price curve : the long cycle which in both curves dips 

 below the horizontal between 1880 and 1900, and the 

 smaller superposed cycles that move upon the large 

 ground-swell. The one apparent exception occurs in 

 the price movement between 1887 and 1891 in which 

 the price curve does not keep close to the yield curve. 

 But this is not a real exception. For, in the first place, 

 the price curve is convex between these limits, that 

 is to say, it shows a tendency to conform to the yield 

 curve; and, in the second place, since in the price 

 curve a lag of four years has been eliminated, the date 

 at which the disturbance occurs is really four years 

 later than would appear from the dates on the chart. 

 That would place the disturbance at about 1893, which 

 was the year of the panic with extraordinary condi- 

 tions in the state of the currency and the money mar- 

 ket. 



Considering the high correlation between the two 

 series of cycles and the harmony of their congruence 

 with the theory of economic cycles embodied in this 

 Essay, we conclude that the cycles of the yield per 

 acre of the crops cause the cycles of general prices and 

 that the law of the cycles of crops is the law of the cycles 

 of general prices. 



