Cycles. Edward R. Dewey
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continue giving goods away in much the same fashion. Or unless a new trend is to be established, one we cannot now calculate.
Fig. 4. U. S. Merchandise Imports, 1830-1945
Data decennial 1830-1910; annual 1910-1945. Data are adjusted for the purchasing power of the dollar, 1926 = 100. A trend is shown, projected tentatively to 1960. Ratio scale.
Devices like the Bretton Woods Economic agreement, or Treasury grants made as political “loans” to foreign nations, may tend for temporary periods to mask this truism — much as the working of the Federal Reserve Act tends to conceal from the general public the fact that we print dollars to meet government deficits. But our chart says forthrightly, in statistical language, that on the basis of the long-established trend, and in terms of foreign trade handled at a real profit, we should not be too optimistic in looking for such trade to be increased over the prewar volume.
In other words, the pattern here shows what we have seen in other charts: We are approaching an upper limit of action, within the frame of our economy as it has long existed. If we now continue giving our goods away as in World War II — either as goods or in the form of uncollectible loans exchangeable for our goods — then of course we might presumably maintain any chosen volume of exports. But that method of exporting, if used in peacetime trade over any long period of time, will itself be a kind of revolution. All our chart can tell us is that, failing a revolution of some sort, the pattern as established will presumably prevail.
Merchandise imports, similarly charted for rate of growth in compensated dollars, tell us much the same story. Here, as in exports, (barring the period of World War II) the peak was reached in the decade that followed 1920. There seems no evidence to suggest that in our time, or in the frame of our economy as we know it, the peak of the twenties will ever be importantly exceeded. Certainly in a world where economic facilities outside the United States have been so extensively wrecked, and where the United States itself has an unprecedented volume of production facilities of its own, we hardly need a chart to tell us that levels of useful imports in the future will certainly not exceed, for any considerable period, those already established in the past. Not, that is, within the frame of familiar economic relationships.
Probably no industry so accurately mirrors progress in our industrialized economy — and, in turn, is mirrored in that progress — as does our iron and steel industry. Iron and steel are truly basic products in the machine age that has been with us for the last century and a quarter. They are tools in almost every “civilized” activity. That is why iron and steel production reflects both the physical and the psychological drives of a nation like the United States.
Fortunately for statistical purposes, the records for iron and steel production go back further, and are more nearly exact, than those for most of the other great American industries. By using pig iron production before 1913, and measuring steel output by steel ingot production after that date, we can trace the history of the industry’s activity back almost to its beginning.
Fig. 5. U. S. Iron and Steel Production
Shown in gross tons of 2240 lbs. each. Pig iron production 1830-1913 (decennial 1830-1850, annual 1854-1913). Steel ingot production 1914-1945. A trend is shown, projected tentatively to 1960. Ratio scale.
The steel industry has been an old industry since 1914. Note the curve showing its growth, in Fig. 5. The relapse it had around 1914 was normal in extent, as compared to all previous depressions that followed peaks in activity. But the next depression that came along, following World War I, carried steel production to lower levels than were reached in the 1914 relapse. The depression of the early thirties carried it to still lower levels. Such a series of sinking spells, each more serious than the last, would indicate in a human organism a slowly declining vitality. In the steel industry we may see, over a long period, a slowly declining rate of profit, and a rapid decline in the rate of growth, until as of 1939 that rate for the underlying growth trend was probably near zero.
The peak in steel production that occurred during World War II may be ignored, for purposes of significance in a creative and solvent economy. That fantastic peak did not represent creative construction to serve the purpose of man as an economic creature, but rather represented an explosion like that of aerial bombs which destroy themselves when they reach their target.
Steel production in whatever peace we enjoy hereafter promises ultimately to return to somewhere around the trend levels already established in the long history of the steel industry; it may even sink temporarily well below these levels — once it has supplied whatever pent-up needs consumers feel as they emerge from the war years, and assuming we avoid both armament races and gifts of free steel to other nations. Failing the introduction of a new series of economic or social forces in our national life — forces that would overturn its old patterns of economic growth — an average annual production of approximately 40 million gross tons is the mean about which future fluctuations will probably oscillate. (A gross ton is 2240 pounds; in terms of net tons of 2000 pounds the figure would be 45 millions.)
Many of our other great industries have also reached their maturity. Note, in Fig. 6, the chart for the growth of steam railroads (miles of road operated). The maximum was reached between 1910 and 1914; since then there has been an actual decline. The railroad industry as such will have no more real expansion under economic conditions as we know them. Just as significant as the maturity reached in mileage operated is the fact that the tons of freight originated have actually shown a decline on the per capita of population basis, even during the years of World War II.
Fig. 6. Steam Railways
Miles of road operated (first track) in continental United States, 1830-1940. Decennial data. A trend is shown, projected tentatively to 1960. Ratio scale.
Much was made of the unprecedented volume of freight traffic carried by the railroads in the recent wartime period, and of the record of freight-miles built up. Such figures largely reflect long hauls and the fact that the usual unit of measurement is the ton-mile. But by 1943, when our war effort was in full swing, total tonnage originated was still only about 9 per cent more than it had been in 1929. On the per capita basis it was actually less, because the population had increased. General Leonard P. Ayres of the Cleveland Trust Company, one of the country’s foremost statisticians, could only call it “astonishing” that our railroads in 1943 actually originated less freight per capita of the population than they did in most of the years from 1911 through 1929, and far less than in the war years of 1917-1918.
Fig. 7. U. S. Shipbuilding, 1830-1945
For 1894-1939 the gross tonnage is shown of merchant vessels launched (100 tons or over). Prior to 1894 the chart shows tonnage of vessels built, adjusted to conform to the average tonnage launched from 1894-1907 and set back one year. From 1939-1945 the gross tonnage is shown of merchant vessels built (1000 tons or over).
Two trends are indicated, the present one projected to 1960. Ratio scale.
The shipbuilding industry, which reached fantastic peaks of construction under the war impact, will doubtless go right back to the levels it came from (see Fig. 7). Even continued subsidies to operators can hardly save it from such deflation; these existed, thanks to the Merchant Marine Act, long before the war began. There is nothing in the long-time growth pattern of the shipping industry to suggest that continued subsidies, of whatever probable volume, will change the pattern to any appreciable degree. World War I raised shipbuilding twentyfold — from about 200,000 to about 4 million gross tons a year. Thereafter the trend prevailing since around 1907, when a decline had set in, was resumed. This peacetime trend will probably be resumed once more as the axis around which yearly shipbuilding volume will fluctuate.