The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-04-30
STATISTICS ABOUT
 BUSINESS CYCLES 0F LITTLE VALUE
Business Statisticians Simply Plot Reaction Of Human
 Nature Under Conditions
By WALTER B. BROWN (Editor New York Commercially Especial Dispatch to AEe-Herald.)

NEW YORK. April 29.-It is a cu- rious phychologica development that we should have become so over whelmed with our present prosperity that we are afraid to believe it is true. We fear that it cannot last and we are trying to prove to ourselves that it is unreal. Thus we hear con stantly various theories in regard to the business cycle. Harvard pro fessors are making an analytical study of it, as if it were a species of bacilli that must work out it's course regardless of time or conditions. Va rious other researchers are at work, some giving themselves the high sounding titles of statistical engl- neers.' They are plotting curves and making calculations and while they are unearthing masses of interesting information. they are nevertheless dealing with the past.
 They may pile up their statistics ,-as high as the Woolworth building and plot curves all around the equa- tor. but when all is said and done, they have simply plotted the reaction of human nature under given condi- tons Peaks and depressions will follow one another just as long as human ambition. or greed. or selfish ness. or whatever emotions actuate trade, remain unchanged. Necessary reuuire ments stimulate production
  time speculation overshoots the mark and there is q temporary accumula- . tion Whic'r has to be absorbed and during, the interval, new production lags.
 O Q Q
 New Factors Change situation.
 All this can follow with more or less regularity, provided underlying conditions are uniform. When new factt rs are introduced the whole sit uation changes. The principle re- mains the same but that is all
 Engineers are now endeaVorlng to show that we have reached the pea k and that We must go on to depres- sion. Perhaps we are at the peak, but if these statisticians will tell us what labor is goilg to do in the way of wage demands and strikes that will either increase the cost of pro- duction or limit its volume, if they will tell us how long the separations tangle is to contimle and what will be it's outcome. if they will tell us what Congress is going to do with the railroads. if they will tell us how the rest of the allied debts are to be settled, whether we are to have a bonus, whether taxes are to be re- duced, or d number of other things, which they describe as economic ac- cidents, their forecasts will be of some value.
 In the meantime, we know that un- der given conditions, imitation is likely to set in. and we are stead : fastly at work to prevent or at least to postpone recurrence Of these conditions.
 As to the actual credit situation, the weekly report of the federal re- serve system is encouraging. The reserve ratio is now at the highest level of the year. being v per cent, as against 75.5 per cent last week, while there is a falling off of about s1O.OOO,000 in the discounts If there is imitation, it must show up sooner or later in the rediscounts but It IS quite evident that thus far member banks are pretty well able to take care of credit requirements Wlthin their respective localities.