on the whole, grown less pronounced and less frequent, whereas periods of depression or " hard times " have grown more frequent and "prolonged, if not more pronounced. It might even be a tenable generalization, though perhaps unnecessarily broad, to say that for a couple of decades past the normal condition of 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.
What current economic theory has to say on the common welfare is more frequently found under the caption of crisis and depression than in any other one connection. And the theory of crisis and depression has, as is well known, been one of the less happy passages in the economists' 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