CHAPTER III 



BUSINESS CYCLES IN FOREIGN 

 COUNTRIES 



IF the business conditions of the United States depend so 

 closely upon health, how about other countries? The data 

 for answering this question are scanty. It is easy to show 

 that in agricultural countries like Russia, India, and Spain, the 

 ebb and flow of business appear to be almost entirely determined 

 by the crops. It is quite possible that in those countries the same 

 conditions which cause poor crops are also the direct cause of ill 

 health, but as to that we cannot yet speak with certainty. What 

 we want to know, however, is how far conditions of health deter- 

 mine the course of business in countries where manufacturing and 

 commerce are highly developed. It will scarcely pay to consider 

 small countries like Belgium and Switzerland, for their prosperity 

 and adversity are largely d^endent on those of their large 

 neighbors. Austria and Italy, like Russia, are too purely agri- 

 cultural to answer our purpose. Moreover, for all three of these 

 countries it is difficult to obtain homogeneous statistics covering 

 a sufficiently long period. 



This limits our investigation to France, England, and Ger- 

 many. In France, however, the conditions of business are radi- 

 cally different from those of the United States. In the first 

 place, in spite of her manufactures most parts of France are self- 

 supporting. There is no large section like the North Atlantic 

 States where manufacturing industries completely overshadow 

 agriculture. Hence the foundations of prosperity are more stable 

 in France than in this country. In the next place, the manu- 



