industrial business has been a mild but chronic state of depression, and that any marked departure from commonplace dull times has attracted attention as a particular case calling for a particular explanation. The causes which have given rise to any one of the more pronounced intervals of prosperity during the past two decades are commonly not very difficult to trace ; but it would be a bootless quest to go out in search of special causes to which to trace back each of the several periods of dull times that Eiccount for the greater portion of the past quarter of a century. Under the more fully developed business system as it has stood during the close of the century dull times are, in a way, the course of nature ; whereas brisk times are an exceptional invention of man or a rare bounty of Providence.
Lo que la teoría económica actual tiene que decir sobre el bienestar común se encuentra con mayor frecuencia bajo el epígrafe de crisis y depresión que en cualquier otro contexto. Y la teoría de las crisis y las depresiones ha sido, como es bien sabido, uno de los capítulos menos afortunados en el reper-
THE THEORY OF MODERN WELFARE 185
tory of doctrines. It has been customary to approach the problem from the side of the industrial phenomena involved — the mechanical facts of production and consumption ; rather than from the side of business enterprise — the phenomena of price, earnings, and capitalization.
This untoward accident of a false start is probably accountable for the fact that no tenable theory of these phenomena has yet been offered. The solutions attempted have commonly proceeded by an analysis of industrial life apart from business enterprise ; that is to say, they have sought to explain the occurrence of crises under that old-fashioned " natural economy " or "money economy" under which crises did not normally occur.'