The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-10-18
CRISIS IS BEHIND US, SAYS W. P. 6. HARDING
Federal Reserve Board Gov ernor Declares Price Fall Has Been Checked.

New York Oct. 1S-W. P. G. Hard ing, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. in the current issue of system, gives an account of the policy of the board during the period of defation and answers the question, tHow l Know Business Has Turned the Cor ner.''
 "Optimism has it's uses, and so has pessimism' declares Governor Hard ing. "The trouble is that they are mostly employed at the wrong times. A few pessimists would have been useful during the closing months of 1919. Now they are in the nature of a nuisance; we need. instead. con- structive optinists, for the tide of business has turned. There is no doubt about that fact. Business will not again dip as low as it has dipped, but neither will it go as high as it went before. But that is not the point: The point is that the crisis has passed without most people knowing when it passed.
 Actual prosperity was never as great as it seemed to be-much of it was iIlusory. The actual depression has not at any time been as low as it seemed to be. Both conditions have been emotional1y magnified. And the present is no time for the pessimist. Neither is it the time for the shouting optimist. But it is time for the con structive hard-working optimist.
 we have still an evening-up pro- cess to go through with. Things that are too LOW must e1IneE T1Se lO lHS level of those things that are higher or those things that are too high must come down to a lower Glevel, or per haps there will be an intermediate level. Statistics show that we are nearing that lever.
 ''It is quite impossible for any one to say just what the new price level will be, and it is idle to compare prices with those before the war or with any other period and to say that conditions are better because prices are above or below that previous level. Neither need we look for a sign as from Heaven that conditions have improved.
 d Ut would be dramatic and satisfy ing to have some definite, detailed facts which would translate into the words better business I have no doubt that many men in business, since they have heard lately so much about the cycles of business, crave information of this authoritative kind. They forget that the exact facts will not be known for .years-perhaps they will never be known. Public sentiment, which so greatly controls the movements of business, follows the facts, but it does not follow even
 "AlI history shows that periods of prosperity and depression come in cycles, the rotation being about as follows: CD Prosperity, (2) liquida- tion, (3) stagnation and (4) revival. At the present time the process of liquidation is well advanced and the end of stagnation and the beginning of the period of revival seem now to | depend upon certain things which are susceptible of accomplishment in the | near future, among which may be enumerated the financial rehabilitation of our great transportation systems | and the determination of the policy ot | the Government with respect to reve- nues and the tariff.
 | ''When the period of revival does definitely in n hn fnIlnxuod Inv a new era of prosperity, let us re- | member that the greater the wave o1 prosperity and the more unrestrained | the expansion and the speculation ac. companying it, the sharper will be the l depression that will follow. If, how.
 ever, the lessons of the last two years
 are remembered, the next period o1 prosperity will be of longer duration
 than any we have had before and the subsequent reaction will be far less | severe"