LAWS OF NATURE IN ECONOMIC AFFAIRS 229

itself, but always with a difference*, which does not, however, make the
search for uniformities either impracticable or useless.1 Considering the
paucity of the data at the inquirers* disposal so far, it was not surprising to
find that some of the four or five different kinds of cycles which different
investigators had claimed to have discovered should have been less
widely accepted than others as being proven historical realities, or that
there should have been still undecided controversies over many points
concerning even those kinds of cycles that had won recognition by a
general consensus of authoritative scholars; the remarkable and signifi-
cant features in the history of a still adolescent Modern Western economic
science had been the boldness with which a band of intellectual pioneers
had made use of the still scanty data at their disposal for hazarding
generalizations, and the extent of the fundamental agreement underlying
their superficial domestic quarrels. The attitude prevalent among econo-
mists mid-way through the twentieth century is made clear in the follow-
ing passage of a letter, dated the 2nd December, 1949, from Professor
T. S. Ashton to the writer of this Study in answer to inquiries on these
points:

'There is no doubt whatsoever of the existence of what may reasonably
be called a trade or business cycle in the nineteenth century: all are agreed
on that. It is equally clear that the booms and slumps occurred at the
same time, or almost the same time, in all industrialised countries and in
the less developed areas connected with these by trade. The only dispute
is as to the periodicity.'

Of the four or five kinds of cycles in view, the best established at the
time of writing seemed to be one with a wave-length of something be-
tween ii and 7 years2 or something between 10 and 7 years ;3 of 9-4 years
reckoning from peak to peak (between the dates A.D. 1792 and A.D. 1913),
and 9 years reckoning from trough to trough (between the dates A.D.
1788 and A.D. 1914), in a series discernible in the economic history of
Great Britain;4 and of 9-2 years on the average.5

A cycle with a wave-length of about four years on the average had been
descried, by at least one observer, alternating with the nine-year cycle
in Great Britain during the first phase of her Industrial Age; but, in this
observer's view, these four-years cycles 'tend virtually to disappear from
the array of trade cycles [in the history of Great Britain] after 1860%
except for a special case in A.D . 1907 ;6 and he accounts for this progressive
submergence of four-years cycles by nine-years cycles in Great Britain

1 See Mitchell, W. C.: Business Cycles and their Causes, being a new edition of the
author's Business Cycles, Part III (Berkeley, Cal. 1941, University of California Press),
pp. ix-xi. 2 See Hawtrey, op. cit., p. 476.

3 Professor T. S. Ashton in a personal letter of the 2nd December, 1949, to the writer
of this Study. In this letter, Professor Ashton draws attention to 'clearly marked booms
in England in 1818, 1825,1836, 1845, 1856, 1866,1873. 1882,1889/90, 1899/1900,1906,
1913, and so on'. According to Mitchell, Business Cycles, The Problem and its Setting,
p. 334, 'the memorable cycles which culminated in 1882, in 1893, in 1907, in 1917 and

Crises Commerciales et de leur Retottr Pgriodique en France, en Angleterre, et aux Stats- Unis
(ist ed.: Paris 1862, Guillaumin; 2nd ed.: Paris 1889, Guillaumin).
6 Rostow, op. cit., pp. 38-39.