Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1924-12-20
Reserve Bank Asked to Accept Calcium Notes
Herbert Hoover Discusses Business
BOOn1S and Business DeDreSSiOnS
Commercial History a Success
sion of Alternate Slumps and
Booms, Says Cabinet Mem
Der.
BY CHARLES P. STEWART
NEA Service Writer

Boom and slump! Slump and boom!
Boom and slump!
'That," says Secretary of CoEA-
merce Herbert C. Hoover, "is the
business cycle.
Business history, broadly, is a
constant succession of alternating,
ilregularly separated booms and
slump$.
"Why the boom and why the
slump? Well, what's the business
incentive? Profit or the expectation
of profit.
"When business mems eXpecta
tions of profit are bright the cycle
swings upward. AS their eXpecta-
tions grow brighter the curve rises
higher yet Finally the expectations
become too brilliant to be realized.
"a boo mis- on. Anxious to take
full advantage of it, business men
generally extend and cverexterd
themselves. The demand for credit
increases to finance TINS expansion
and for speculation.
Prevent Excessive Blooms
Transportation facilities are over
burdened. Deliveries are delayed.
There is an apparent mot real,
shortage of goods. Merchants
duplicate their orders. hoping, by
ordering too much, TO get enough.
lsPresentl9 credit ncars its limit.
Business me nrealize ,lt-as.. theN4.find.
bank accommodations harder to get.
PUBLIC confidence is shaken. Can
collation. sof orders follow.
Merchants, pressed for money,
are forced to iquidate their stocks.
Prices fall. Goods will not sell for
what they cost. Many business
men, already overexterded, cannot
take their losses and gay what they
owe.
"a period of depression, with
bankruptcies and unemployment,
has come. At length the curve is
at its lowest.
"Only strong, sound businesses
are left. Being strong and sound,
they begin to find opportunities for
profit again. The curve begins to
rise.
IN preventing excessive booms
we shall also prevent disastrous
slumps. By no means that we know
ca nwe smooth out tie curve com
pletely There will be ups and
downs, but if the upward swings can
be kept from rising to high, the
downward swings will net sink too
low.
Voluntary Restraint
1T is, the duty of agencies like
the Department of Commerce to
keep the business public informed
concerning actual cond:tions-uot
what appears ON the surface but the
real, underlying truth
''But the government can't tell in
dividual business men What to do.
In full knowledge of the facts, they
must reach their decisions for item
selves. Individual voluntary re-
straint is the preventive of unpeces-
sarily violent commercial fldotua-
tons. Win this work, though?
"The country voluntarily ration
ed itself during the war Many said
it couldn't be done tEen-that it
was ridiculous to expect any public
to restrain itself voluntarily. Yet
the American public did.
1.-The business public restrained it
self in the spring of 1923, thus con-
trolling at the start what might
have been disastrous boom.
at can be done.
"There are various palliatives--
public construction, unemployment
reserve funds, governmental sur
port of banks-which can be enl-
ploye dto goo defect during periods
of acute depression, but the better
method is prevention of such pc
RODS in advance"