ABSTRACT
T HE full significance of the changes in the various branchesof economic life is apparent only if by some means theircombined influence on the whole national economy can be estimated and if it is possible to judge how that influence was exerted. In recent years much attention has been given to matters of this kind and a good deal has been done to define and delimit the main economic trends and fluctuations in the nineteenth century. Several investigators have agreed that there appear to have been long trend periods of about fifty years, in one half of which economic activity was marked by rising prices, more rapidly expanding production and trade, and general prosperity, and in the other half by falling prices, slower expansion, and greater difficulty in maintaining general prosperity.! In the late nineteenth century a downward trend of this kind, by no means peculiar to Britain, is commonly taken to have begun about 1873, though some people would date its onset from the end of the American Civil War. S Some time in the late 'nineties the trend appears to have been reversed and the ensuing upswing lasted until the First World War.
