228 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

duration of their component phases; they differ in industrial and geo-
graphical scope; they differ in intensity; they differ in the features which
attain prominence ; they differ in the quickness and the uniformity with
which they sweep from, one country to another. . . . [But] differences
among business cycles . . . afford no reason for doubting that these cycles
constitute a valid species of phenomena.'1

*A tendency toward alternations of prosperity and depression must have
considerable constancy and energy to stamp its pattern upon economic
history in a world where other factors of most unequal power are con-
stantly present. . . .* The quiet business forces working towards uniformity
of fortunes must be powerful indeed to impress a common pattern upon
the course of business cycles in many countries,'3

These findings reappear in a judicious surveyor's panoramic view:

'Each cycle, each period of prosperity or depression, has its special
features which are not present in any, or not in many, others. In a sense,
each cycle is an historical individual : each is embedded in a social-economic
structure of its own. Technological knowledge, methods of production,
degree of capital-intensity, number, quality, and age-distribution of the
population, habits and preferences of consumers, social institutions in the
widest sense including the legal framework of Society, practice in the
matter of interventions of the State and other public bodies in the economic
sphere, habits of payment, banking practices and so forth — all these fac-
tors change continuously and are not exactly the same in any two cases. . , .

'This . . . raises the question whether it is possible to make any general
statements at all as to the causes and conditions of cycles — in other words,
whether the same theory holds for the cycles in the first half of the nine-
teenth century and for those in the second quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury, for the cycles in the industrial countries of Western Europe and the
United States and for those in the agricultural countries of Eastern Europe
and overseas. . . .

'We believe . . . that a very general theory of the most important aspects
of the Cycle can be evolved, which will not on the one hand bo so formal
as to be useless for practical purposes, while, on the other hand, it will
have a very wide field of application, , . . The mere fact that each cycle is
an historical individual is not a sufficient argument against a general
theory. Are there two men who are in all respects alike ? Does this dis-
similarity in many respects destroy the possibility and practical usefulness
Df Anatomy, Physiology, etc. ? That each cycle is unique in many respects
does not prevent all cycles from being similar in other respects, over and
ibove those similarities which constitute the fundamental elements of the

In this summing up, certain salient features emerge. Three points are
)icked out by A. C. Pigou:5 'the first general characteristic of industrial
luctuations is their wide international range; the second, the rough simi-
arity among successive cycles; the third, the general concordance in
iming and direction between the wave movements of different occupa-
ions.' W. C. Mitchell's firsthand last word is that 'business history repeats

* Mitchell, W. C. : Business Cycles, the Problem and its Setting (New York 1930,
Tational Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.), pp. 334 and 383,

, ., . ,

Ibid,, p. 421. 3 Ibid,, p. 450.

Haberler, G, : Prosperity and Depression: A Theoretfoal Analysis of Cyclical Mov«

on 1 939, Macmillan), p. vii.

'.ents, 3rd ed. (Geneva 1941, League of Nations), pp. 875-6.
5 Pigou, A. C.: Industrial Fluctuations, and ed, (Lond