During this recent period, and with increasing persistency, chronic depreasion has been the rule rather than the exception in business. Seasons of easy times, " ordinary prosperity," during this period are pretty uniformly traceable to specific causes extraneous to the process of industrial business proper. In one case, the early nineties, it seems to have been a peculiar crop situation, and in the most notable case of a speculative inflation, the one now (1904) apparently drawing to a close, it was the Spanish-American War, coupled with the expenditures for stores, munitions, and services incident to placing the country on a war footing, that lifted the depreasion and brouglit prosperity to the business community. If the outside stimulus from which the present prosperity takes its impulse be continued at an adequate pitch, the season of prosperity may he prolonged; otherwise there seems little reason to expect any other outcome than a more or less abrupt and searching liquidation.
Cuál sea el nivel adecuado del estímulo propiciatorio de la prosperidad no es, por supuesto, fácil de precisar, pero probablemente sea seguro afirmar que, para mantener la temporada de prosperidad durante un número considerable de años, el estímulo tendría que incrementarse gradualmente. Es decir, en otras palabras, la absorción de bienes y servicios por parte de gastos extraindustriales —gastos que, desde el punto de vista de la industria, son puro desperdicio— tendría que continuar en un volumen creciente. Si el gasto despilfarrador disminuye, el resultado lógico debería ser una perturbación considerable de los negocios y la industria, seguida de una depresión; si el despilfarro en guerra, colonización, inversión provincial y similares llega a un cese abrupto, la consecuencia lógica, a falta de otros factores contrarrestantes, debería ser una crisis de cierta gravedad.
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