Generating Cycles of Products and Prices 15 



suggested that if the rhythm as a whole could be traced 

 to a single cause, the foundation would be laid for long- 

 range forecasting and would, perhaps, lead to the con- 

 trol of economic changes in the interest of the social 

 good. 



The buoyant, expectant hope which stimulated the 

 early searchers for a single, persistent cause of cycles is 

 shared by few recent investigators. On the contrary, 

 there is flat denial of the existence of any marked regu- 

 larity or periodicity in the phenomena; attempts at 

 explanation by means of a few causes are regarded as 

 obsolete ; and while recognition is made of the existence 

 of the cycle with its separate phases, there is, in many 

 cases, a reversion to the method of alleging isolated, 

 separate explanations for each critical point in the 

 several phases. The present inquiry takes up the 

 abandoned search for a single explanation of the entire 

 rhythm and its constituent parts. 



Two accomplished investigators, Professor Aftalion,^ 

 and Professor Bresciani-Turroni, - have pointed out that 

 the average length of cycles, since 1857, has been in the 

 neighborhood of eight years. That fact is sufficient 

 reason for asking why cycles are, on the average, about 

 eight years in length, and whether this loose periodicity 

 may not have as its origin a periodically recurring 

 cause. Professor Mitchell, in his masterly Business 

 Cycles, has given another fact of critical significance, 

 namely, the supreme importance in each phase of the 

 cycle of the volume and prices of raw materials. In 



' Albert Aftalion, Lcs Crises periodiques de sur production, vol. i, p. v, 

 vol. ii, pp. 32, 33, and passim. 



^ Costantino Bresciani-Turroni, Le Variazioni cicliche del prezzi, p. 57. 



