内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE LIQUIDATIONS OF 1873-76. WHAT are the characteristic marks of the great depression of trade during the last three or four years? It is now ascertained that such depressions are periodical. They recur at tolerably regular intervals, following in the wake of equally regular periods of great prosperity in trade, when everybody makes profits or seems to make them. The alternation has no doubt its roots in human nature, which lends itself to an ebb and flow, an action and reaction, in affairs. The depressions, like the periods of prosperity coming before them, have also many features in common. Just as the prosperity is shown by the prevalence of good credit, an active money market, and a high range of prices for both securities and commodities, so the depression is marked by a low range of prices, heavy failures, bad credit, and consequently a sluggish money market. But each depression has likewise its own special features and incidents. The crisis in which it begins, or which it produces, indicates some special development of trade at the time, or some special disease in it?the favourite business of a country changing from time to time, and a constant tendency existing to go to an extreme with the momentary fashion. We propose, then, to inquire what are these special features in the recent depression; this proceeding being likely, it is obvious, to be more instructive than a mere examination and record of those features which most depressions have in common. There is an additional reason for this course. An impression prevails that the present stagnation of trade chapter{Section 4is unprecedented in intensity and duration, and that it is likely to be permanent. A similar impression has often been found to prevail at such times, and it will be interesting to inquire ...