Drought and Business Depression. 
Are We to Have Seven Fat Years ? 
Part I. 
The Summer of 1907 was my first full Summer in 
this part of the country after a sojourn of a few years 
in California. During that Summer there was a drought 
of six weeks without a shower and very little rain the 
rest of the season. Almost everyone I met remarked 
that he could not remember so dry a Summer as that. 
At about the time of my return from California a 
relative of mine (president of a chain of 10 or 12 
banks) said that it is a more or less generally accepted 
fact that history has been repeating itself, and that 
the world has been having seven years of prosperity and 
seven of adversity alternately. I understand, in fact I 
have a dim recollection, that there was a general panic 
in this , country in 1893. 
In 1900, after the Span- 
ish-American war was 
settled, business began to 
boom, and surely boomed 
until the panic of 1907. 
Everyone began talking 
prosperity in 1914, and, 
although the awful war 
of Europe has distorted 
conditions, the majority, 
I believe, feel that there 
is a gradual improve¬ 
ment. 
Now let’s put facts, as 
far as we have them, to¬ 
gether; the Summer of 
1907 and the following 
up to and including that 
of 1913 (seven years) 
were all dry to my posi¬ 
tive recollection; the 
Summer of 1914 was, and 
surely this is wet. We 
had seven years (1893- 
99) of undoubted adver¬ 
sity followed by seven of 
equally certain prosper¬ 
ity and again seven of 
hard times. 
Now the question, 
what do the records of the 
Weather Bureau show 
the rainfall of these suc¬ 
cessive periods to be? 
Do they tend to substan¬ 
tiate this theory? If they 
do, aren’t we pretty safe 
in expecting the next five 
Summers to be wet? I 
would like to see this 
subject discussed, not 
with counter theories, but 
with facts. 
GEORGE i. 
Nassau Co., N. Y. 
ONDITIONS IN¬ 
VOLVED. — While 
favorable or unfavor¬ 
able weather conditions 
affecting the crops in¬ 
fluence the prosperity of 
the country, a good 
many things besides de¬ 
ficient rainfall in the 
growing season need to 
be considered in connec¬ 
tion with the questions 
raised by Mr. Boynton. 
Other elements of the 
weather all taken to¬ 
gether have been un¬ 
favorable perhaps as 
EFFECTS OF DROUGHT.—Nevertheless, taking 
the United States as a whole, drought is undoubted¬ 
ly the most serious of the unfavorable aspects of 
the weather. It occurs in considerable severity 
nearly every year in some section of the country or 
other, leaving out of consideration the arid regions 
where all seasons are dry. It can never be fore¬ 
seen, and its effects can be offset only through irri¬ 
gation, which is too expensive to be justified except 
it is necessary in all seasons. Frosts and floods, on 
the contrary, are more limited in extent and can 
usually be foreseen and prepared for. Not only does 
drought reduce the yield of the crops; It also ex¬ 
cannot be accurately measured; the weight of evi¬ 
dence established from past records may be changed 
with the accumulation of new data in years to come. 
CYCLES OF RAINFALL.— Cycle: A complete 
course of operation of some kind returning into it¬ 
self and restoring-the original state; circle; round; 
(Webster’s New Int’l Dictionary, p. 557). Accord¬ 
ing to this definition it is inaccurate to speak of a 
.“cycle” of rainfall, because records show that the 
annual rainfall does not conform to the conditions 
of a true cycle. There is, however, some slight sug¬ 
gestion of the occurrence of wet and dry years of 
rainfall in periodic series. The term, cycle, has, 
therefore, come into a 
limited use, as applied 
to rainfall phenomena. 
In its broadest sense, it 
means a definite term of 
years during a part of 
which the rainfall seems 
to increase and then to 
diminish for an equal, 
or nearly equal, number 
of years, until it reach¬ 
es the condition it had 
in the beginning. Hence, 
a cycle of rainfall: a 
period of varyi n g 
length, the first part of 
which is wet and the 
second part dry, or the 
sequence may be re¬ 
versed. This definition, 
however, does not imply 
that the wet part of the 
cycle is continuously 
wet, or that the dry 
part is continuously 
dry. Wet years and dry 
years are intermixed, 
apparently indifferent to 
any physical law; and, 
accordingly, one or more 
dry years may be in¬ 
terspersed in the wet 
part of the cycle, and 
vice versa. In general 
we may say that the 
sum of the excesses in 
wet years will exceed 
the sum of the deficien¬ 
cies in the dry years; 
or, more precisely, that 
wet years will be in the 
majority in the wet 
part of the cycle and 
the dry years in the dry 
pa rt. Nevertheless, a 
discussion of the above 
letter will be very un¬ 
satisfactory if it does 
not include a statement 
of the main facts re¬ 
often as drought has occurred. Very often exces¬ 
sive rains constitute the prominent feature of a sea¬ 
son’s weather, and cause serious losses over large 
parts of the country, as happened in many States 
in July and August of this year. Untimely frosts, 
and severe Winters like those of 1904 and 1912, 
river floods resulting from the Winter precipitation, 
fill have caused immense losses, sometimes in years 
quite favorable in other respects. In the Winter 
wheat region, even moderate Winters frequently 
cause great losses owing to the want of adequate 
ercises a depressing influence on business in other 
important ways, as by necessitating the closing of 
manufacturing establishments, through failure of 
water power, and the marketing of live stock in 
poor condition because of the lack of water. How¬ 
ever, it is very difficult to estimate' me effect of 
drought in its relation to business depression, and 
the problem may never be completely solved for a 
number of reasons; many droughts are not of nation¬ 
al significance, their effect being counterbalanced 
by the prevalence of favorable weather in other 
garding the cycles of wet and dry years or seasons 
as they have occurred in this country. The litera¬ 
ture of the subject of cycles of precipitation is 
very extensive, and students of the question have 
exercised much ingenuity in their search for per¬ 
iods of recurrent phenomena. 
VARIATION PERIODS.—In meteorological text¬ 
books it is commonly pointed out that slight varia¬ 
tions have been detected for certain places in peri¬ 
ods of nearly 11 years, corresponding to the sun¬ 
spot cycle, but such variations have not yet been 
snow cover. 
sections; the influence of causes other than drought 
proved to be general, uniform, and persistent. The 
