^ HEALTH AND BUSINESS 41 



a million dollars in bank deposits or of a hundred thousand in 

 immigration was as important as a change of ten million or four 

 hundred thousand now. We have shoved our curves backward 

 only in accordance with the known facts as to the delay that 

 inevitably occurs between the making of a decision or the birth of 

 an idea and the fruition of the decision and the idea. First, the 

 idea must be carefully examined; then other men must be inter- 

 ested in it ; next, ways of financing it must be found ; then orders 

 have to be placed ; next, machines must be made, factories must be 

 enlarged; and finally, after new goods are being made, there is a 

 certain lapse of time before they have much effect upon prices, 

 bank deposits, and immigration. How important such delays are 

 was brought home to the United States in the Great War. We 

 made a great decision in April, 1917. A year later the aeroplanes, 

 ships, and other indispensable articles which that decision involved 

 were only beginning to be ready. Yet that was a case in which 

 urgent haste was demanded and in which, in spite of mistakes, the 

 most strenuous efforts were made to produce such haste. Not- 

 withstanding the complaints of the critics, private enterprise 

 could not possibly have accomplished so much in so short a time 

 and under so many difficulties. No private concern, for example, 

 can hasten production by demanding the right of way on rail- 

 roads. Thus the shoving back of our curves is the only reasonable 

 thing to do. If they were moved in the other direction or by any 

 amount not in accordance with reason, they would not fit the 

 curve of health. The business conditions of the country thus act 

 exactly as if they were the result of the preceding conditions of 

 health. 



The truth of this last statement is emphasized by comparing 

 the curve of prosperity with the curve of crops. If any economic 

 factor has a dominating effect upon American prosperity, it is 

 surely the crops. Yet look at curve K in Figure 4. It represents 

 the average yield per acre of the nine chief crops which make up 

 more than 95 per cent of the products of our soij. The figures 



