Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1913-10-09
PROF. MITCHELL NOW
 SUGGESTS SOME CURES
Special to the Yuma Daily Examiner)

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal, Oct. s.
 Must the United States continue to have business crises? How may pan ics be prevented? Is the control of credit tending toward monoply? Gan the rise n the cost of living be check ed?
 These are some of the burning prob lens dealt with by Wesley Clair Mitchell in his new book on Business Cycles,' just published by the Univer- sity of California. This bulky vol ume, of over 500 pages, was written while the author was at Berkeley as professor of Finance.
 The recurrent crises are an un- avoidable feature of modern world business is Professor Mitchell's con- cIusion In time of great prosperity costs of doing business becomes un- duly high; the resulting reduction of profits reduces valuations based on prospective profits; in conseqeunce, and also because of the accommodating tension of the investment and money markets, credit allowances are restric- ted and a period sets in of liquidation of the huge credits prosperity has pl- ed up. Professor Mitchell points out a number of other factors which cause prosperity to beget more prosperity, until doubt and hesitation set in, which themselves then breed greater Idistrust and difficulty. So periods of graet prosperity are inevitably fol- lowed, sooner of later, by a period of depression. But, he declares, the gov ernment itself should help the general public to share some of the financial magnates opportunity to forsee com- ing changes in the money weather. Crises must no longer be allowed to degenerate into parties.
 Panics are unnecessary, says Prof essor Mitchell. England, France, and Germany suffer no such disastrous panics as afflict the Uinted States.
 
 ing system he declares the precaution against panics most needed and easi- est to accomplish. AS another bal ance wheel to steady the business mechanism he suggests that the gov ernment and the railways plan ahead for their great capital expenditures, in such a way as to make their heaviest outlay on contracts in slack years, thus helpng the general business situation, lessening the evils of un- and at the same time profiting by the fact that construction and purchase of equipment are cheap CT in dull times.
 Business cycles can be made less violent in their extremes, he says, if some plan can be worked out of "stab- ilizing the dollar" as proposed by Professor Irving Fisher of Yale. He es four times as much gold every year as it did twenty years ago. The rap- idly increasing use of bank checks has also served as an imitation of currency. Tn 1907 the average cost of thirty staple foods was higher by a fourth than ten years before. Wages in typi- cal manufacturing industries had risen at about the same rate. The dollar is shrinking in purchasing power. Some means of steadying it's relation to the general mass of commodities and services is highly desirable.
 The favored few, says Professor are in better position to foresee periods of prosperity or cris- is than are the generality of mankind. He urges, therefore, increase of so- 3ial control over economic activity by "democratizing the knowledge of current conditions already possessed by few" He says there is an in- ;reaing standardization of power to grant or withhold credits. What title is known" he says, "of the in- hat this power has not yet been ex- ercise with the ruthless efficiency of which it is susceptible. But "the con- inual fluctuations of the price of level Ire ever demonstrating that dollars are shifting units, out of whose fluctua- ions profits may be made. It is therefore quite possible that finan- ,iers may exploit their opportunities or aggravating crises when greater
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