outes of transportation, would serve
to hasten or to retard, perhaps for a time quite to alter, what would
otherwise be the rhythm of the cycle. That there is nevertheless, a
noticeable degree of regularity in the recurrence of crises may be due
to the presence of one dominating factor.

Alternation of good and poor harvests has always seemed to be
favorable to business prosperity. In America since about 1865, farm
products have constituted the larger part of our exports, so that a
succession of large harvests has usually acted to stimulate exports
(one of the features of a period of prosperity), to give us a larger
credit balance in international trade, and to reduce the rate of
exchange. Large harvests of the staple agricultural crops in America
have been known to be closely related to the amount of rainfall in the
three most important growing months. Recently, it has been shown that
the rainfall of the Ohio Valley occurs in cycles of about eight years,
and in a larger cycle of thirty-three years. The cycle of yield per
acre of the nine principal crops is shown to correspond closely with
the cycle of pig iron production (one of the best single indices of
growing business) dated one to two years later.[14] As the cycles of
rainfall and of harvests are not coincident in different countries, it
will require further study to adjust to these observations the fact
of the world-wide extent of the great financial crises. But a better
understanding of objective conditions of this kind will give fuller
meaning to the psychological interpretation of crises.

Sec. 16. #Remedies for crises#. The financial crisis must be looked upon
as an economic disease which brings many evils in its train. The need
is not merely to mitigate the severity of the brief period of crisis,
but also to smooth out the curve of the business cycle so as to reduce
periodic unemployment, the lottery element in profits, and the number
of unmerited failures in business. Several measures may aid toward
this end. In the past the crisis has been more severe in America than
in Europe because of certain well-recognized defects which now have
been largely remedied in the Federal Reserve Act.[15] The provisions
whereby any one may get credit on good commercial assets should
make it impossible for a crisis to degenerate into a panic. This
legislation has provided springs to reduce the jolt of the change from
a higher to a lower level of prices.

Probably other imp