LAWS OF NATURE IN ECONOMIC AFFAIRS 227

the recorded cycles are members of the same family, but among them there
are no twins.'1

The same finding was reported by a student of the general economic
history of Great Britain during the years A.D. 1790-1914:

'A reading of the evidence, statistical and qualitative, on the movements
within the British economy in modern times, taken year by year, month
by month, or week by week, leaves two enduring impressions. First, one
is impressed with the uniqueness and variety of the story of economic life.
The combinations of forces within the moving economy are, like those in
political life, in an important sense always new and fresh. No year is quite
like another year;2 and after a time one gets to know them like old friends.
. . . Second, one is impressed with the solid reality of the cyclical pattern
which steadily recurs, in Britain and then—gradually widening—through-
out the World,3 from the end of the American Revolution to the outbreak
of the First World War. No two cycles, of course, are quite the same; and
one can trace, as well, certain long-period changes in the character of
cycles. But it is evident that the whole evolution of Modern Society in the
West occurred in a rhythmic pattern, which had consequences for social
and political, as well as for economic, events.'+

This finding that the spectacle of likeness-in-difference is no peculiar
feature of British nineteenth-century economic history, but is discernible
in contemporary Western economic history as a whole, is endorsed by
an impressive consensus of authoritative opinions. For instance, the
authors of an essay in measuring business cycles find that

'Two conclusions emerge from this analysis. In the first place our tests,
so far as they go, bear out the concept of business cycles as units of roughly
concurrent fluctuations in many activities.5 In the second place they
demonstrate that, although cyclical measures of individual series usually
vary greatly from one cycle to the next, there is a pronounced tendency
towards repetition in the relations among the movements of different
activities in successive business cycles. Our analysis of hundreds of time
series is sufficiently advanced to give us full confidence in these conclusions.
Later monographs will demonstrate . . . that business-c$cle phenomena
are far more regular than many historical-minded students believe/6

'Strictly speaking, every business cycle is a unique historical episode.
. . . Business cycles differ in their duration as wholes and in the relative

1 Pigou, A. C.: Industrial Fluctuations, 2nd ed. (London 1929, Macmillan), pp. 12-13.

z 'Each one [instance in any series of instances of a phenomenon: 'fluctuations, crises,
booms, depressions'] is a historic individual and never like any other, either in the way
it comes about or in the picture it presents' (Schumpeter, op. cit., vol. ir p. 34).—A.J.T.

3 According to Pigou, op. cit., p. n, industrial fluctuations became oecumenical in
their range from about A.D. 1873 onwards. 'Bare as they are and short their span, the
annals reveal a secular trend towards territorial expansion of business relations and a
concomitant trend towards economic unity*, and this both within the United States and
in the World at large, according to Mitchell, ibid., p, 446. Cp. p. 456.—A.J.T.

* Rostow, W. W.: British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 1948, Clarendon
Press), pp. 31-32.

s 'The swings of the different industries are not independent-----They are concordant

in direction. We may fairly speak of common swings of expansion and contraction in the
main body of industries taken separately, and not merely in the aggregate or average of
industries. But . . . the amplitudes of the swings in different occupations are very far
from concordant; some are much larger than others' (Pigou, A. C.: Industrial Fluctua-
tions, 2nd ed. (London 1929, Macmillan), p. 13).—AJ.T.

6 Bums, A. F., and Mitchell, W. C.: Measuring Business Cycles (New York 1946,
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.), pp. 488-91.