30 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



in swelling the tonnage of the railroads and the exports of do- 

 mestic produce to tremendous volume, and so reanimated general 

 business temporarily; but in the following autumn (1892) the 

 crops shrank back to their former proportions. The harvests of 

 wheat and corn and cotton all registered a decline ; and, with the 

 impetus of agricultural success removed, the country's business 

 entered rapidly upon the downward course which culminated in 

 the memorable crisis of 1893. All three of these periods of revul- 

 sion were preceded by, if not altogether caused by, crop shortage. 

 Looking back over the sweep of economic events in the United 

 States during the past four decades, while one must admit that 

 the influence of the crops has not always been the predominant 

 factor in business, one can readily perceive their usual and very 

 extended significance. The relation between agricultural success 

 or failure and the prosperity or decline of general business has 

 not, to be sure, proved as close and inevitable as Jevons and 

 certain other students of crises have been inclined to believe. 

 Crises have not ensued invariably and immediately upon every 

 crop failure, nor have eras of upbuilding followed with clocklike 

 regularity after every bountiful harvest. Yet one cannot review 

 the past forty years without observing that the beginnings of 

 every movement toward business prosperity and the turning-points 

 toward every business decline (movements which frequently, it 

 will be remarked, have antedated the actual outbreak of crises by 

 several years) were closely connected with the outturn of the 

 crops. In other words, the presumptive relationship, for the ex- 

 istence of which we found abundant reason earlier in the paper, 

 we find to be a matter of experience and historical fact. 



