INTRODUCTION. The depressions with which the present generation is familiar belong to the age of invention and of organized industry. Whether these depressions are necessary concomitants of present industrial conditions may be a mooted question, but it is certain that they come with such conditions, and that many features of them must pass away when out of the present status of industrial forces there shall be evolved a grander industrial system, a system which must be as much grander than the present as the present is grander than that out of which it was evolved. Industrial depressions must not be confused with commercial crises and panics, notwithstanding the effects of one reach into the other; that is, a commercial and financial crisis may take place without immediately producing any industrial depression, although generally, if the effects of such commercial or financial crisis continue for any great length of time, the industries must be involved to a greater or less extent. The present industrial depression is the first of its kind as an entirety, as will appear from the facts to be stated. History is full of accounts of crises of various descriptions, resulting from various causes. Back of the age of rapid transportation, stagnation in any industrial sense might result from various natural causes, such as floods, famines, earthquakes, or from great political catastrophes, or from long and expensive and exhausting wars, but not through the causes which are potent in producing modern depressions; but the regularity and contemporaneity which characterize commercial, financial, and industrial disturbances belong to modern history, and are not seen in the past. Of old, stagnations, when occurring, lasted through long periods. The people might be suffering from depression of some form through a quarter, or a half, or a whole century, and then would come a generation of comparative prosperity. In modern times we have, in the place of the long reaches of the past, short, sharp, and frequent disturbances in the business world; but whether in the olden or in the modern times, the reality of the depressed periods was aggravated by apprehension, and it is therefore never quite safe to assume that contemporaneous accounts of depressed periods are accurate. The fears of men, the apprehension of direful results, the imagination, all these help to enlarge the reality and to cause the effects of a disturbance to be more widely felt. As instances in the past, it is necessary to refer to but two authorities. Rich 11 ard Hakluyt, in his "Discourse Concerning Western Planting," written in the year 1584 for the purpose of urging the settlement of this western world, after referring to the discoveries of the French, uses the following language: "But wee, for all the statutes that hitherto can be devised, and the sharpe execution of the same in poonishinge idle and lazye persons, for wante of sufficient occasion of honest employmente, cannot deliver our commonwealthe from multitudes of loyterers and idle vagabondes. Truthe it is, that throughe our longe peace and seldome sicknes (twoo singular blessinges of Almightie God), wee are growen more populous than ever heretofore; so that nowe there are of every arte and science so many, that they can hardly lyve one by another, nay rather they are readie to eate upp one another; yea many thousandes of idle persons are within this realme, which, havinge no way to be sett on worke, be either mutinous and seeke alteration in the state, or at leaste very burdensome to the commonwealthe, and often fall to pilferinge and thevinge and other lewdnes, whereby all the prisons of the lande are daily pestered and stuffed full of them, where either they pitifully pyne awaye, or els at lengthe are miserably hanged, even xxt at a clappe oute of some one jayle." The other writer to which reference is made is Sir William Petty, the author of the famous "Political Arithmetick, or a Discourse Concerning the Extent and Value of Lands, People, Buildings," etc., published in 1691. Sir William recapitulates the fears of many concerning the welfare of England, as follows: "That the Rents of Lands are generally fall'n; that therefore, and for many other Reasons, the whole Kingdom grows every Day poorer and poorer; that formerly it abounded with Gold, but now there is a great fcarcity both of Gold and Silver; that there is no Trade nor Employment for the People, and yet that the Land is under-peopled; that Taxes have been many and great; that Ireland and the Plantations in America and other Additions to the Crown, are a Burthen to England; that Scotland is of no Advantage; that Trade in general doth lamentably decay; that the Hollanders are at our heels, in the race of Naval Power; the French grow too fast upon both, and appear fo rich and potent, that it is but their Clemency that they do not devour their Neighbors; and finally, that the Church and State of England, are in the fame Danger with the Trade of England; with many other difmal Suggeftions, which I had rather ftifle than repeat." Sir William undertook to disabuse the public mind of the fears which he recites. These statements are interesting and valuable at the begin› ning of this report upon industrial depressions, for they teach us to beware of imaginary conditions, to seek leading and direct causes, to study contributory causes, to eliminate remote and incidental causes, to give true value to suggested remedies, and to avoid being led to false conclusions. Under the investigation undertaken by the Bureau the aim has been to group important facts, so far as possible in the time at its command, bearing upon modern industrial depressions. No necessity exists for studying any species of crises existing back of fifty years ago, because the regularity with which depressions and crises occur is apparent during that period, and because, too, the accompaniments of the depressions back of that did not involve the modern industrial conditions. No more important and no more vital question could have been selected for the first work of the Bureau of Labor, for the labor question, in a primary sense, stands for the contest between the two elements of production, labor and capital, relative to the share of the profits of production to be allotted to each. Any occurrence, whether of a commercial, financial, or industrial nature, resulting either in a decrease of profits to either labor or capital, or in causing serious fluctuation or inequality in the distribution of such profits, becomes in the largest sense one of the most important features of the labor question. So, while the present investigation was begun during the most serious period of the last industrial depression and closes with all the prospects of the early dawn of prosperity, the information gathered is of permanent value and importance. The first work, then, is to classify the crises and depressions of the past fifty years for the great producing countries of the world, and to determine how far such crises have been contemporaneous, how far like causes have produced like results, to determine the nature of the present industrial depression as compared with the crises occurring during the period under consideration, and then to take up the various leading and contributory causes of the present depression and to consider such agencies as may be invoked to modify the severity or shorten the duration of future depressions. The Bureau has addressed itself to this work without the conceit of expecting to evolve any economic law relative to the cause or causes of depressions, or to lay down in any dogmatic way any positive remedial solution of such depressions. |