THE CROP CYCLE AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE 311
as well as in wave-lengths, between certain series of these alleged crop-
yield cycles and the contemporary series of 'Kitchin' cycles and 'Juglar*
cycles in the economic history of an industrialized Western World had
evoked the conjecture that the observed coincidence between these isor-
rhythmic series of diverse orders might be, not a meaningless freak of
Chance, but an indication that the crop series and the business series
stood to one another in the relation of cause and effect.

If this conjecture had been confirmed by convincing evidence and by
cogent reasoning, we should have had to add the Crop Cycle to the Year
Cycle and the Day Cycle in compiling our list of instances of 'laws of
Nature', current in Non-Human Nature, which had led or forced Man-
kind to dance to their tune; and no doubt the crop cycle too had exer-
cised an at times tyrannical dominion over the lives of predominantly
agricultural societies; but, among professional students of the business
cycles current in a predominantly industrial Westernizing World, there
was, at the time of writing, a preponderance of opinion, clear enough to
be manifest even to the layman's eye, against accepting the suggestion that
the currency of business cycles could be explained as an effect of a cur-
rency of crop cycles that was itself presumably an effect of periodic
fluctuations in those meteorological conditions on which the weal or woe
of cereal crops depended. In this judgement, W. C. Mitchell, T. S.
Ashton,1 R. G. Hawtrey,2 J. A. Schumpeter,3 and G. Haberler concur.
Haberler points out that there is a wide disagreement among different
exponents of the theory that business cycles are to be traced to agricul-
tural causes,4 and gives it as his own opinion that

'There can be no "agricultural theory" of the cycle in the sense of an
alternative to, say, the monetary theory or the over-investment theory,
any more than there can be an "invention theory" or an "earthquake
theory". ... It is conceivable that a good harvest may exercise now a
stimulating and now a depressing influence according to the phase of the
cycle and the portions of the Earth's surface and the World>s population
affected. Nor must it be readily assumed that a good wheat crop and a
good cotton crop have the same kind of effects.5

Mitchell points out that

'Even the writers who regard changes in crop yields as the cause of
business fluctuations . . . recognise that these fluctuations manifest them-
selves chiefly in commercial dealings, rnanufacturing activity, transporta-
tion, and financial operations/6

At least two of the same authorities also agree in rejecting suggestions

most obvious approaches to agreement between Beveridge and Brunt fall near 3$, 5, 8,
9^, and 35 years.*

1 In a personal letter to the present writer, dated the 2nd December, 1949.

2 Hawtrey, R. G.: 'The Monetary Theory of the Trade Cycle and Its Statistical Test',
in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xli (Cambridge, Mass. 1927, Harvard Univer-

3 Schumpeter, j. A,: Business Cycles (New York 1939, McGraw-Hill, 2 vols.), vol. i,
pp. 177—8.

+ See Haberler, G.: Prosperity and Depression, srd ed. (Geneva 1941, League of
Nations), pp. 152 and 154. s Ibid., pp. 163 and 164.

* Mitchell, W. C.; Business Cycles, the Problem and its Setting (New York 1937 (new
impression 1930), Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.), p. 87.