To face these sudden blows which seem to come out of the void, men must have their reserves of character and mentality well in hand.  The first reserve is that of intellect.

Never let mere pride or obstinacy stand in the way of bowing to the storm.  Firmness of character should on these terrible occasions be turned inside out, and be formed into a plasticity of intellect which finds at once its inspiration and its courage in the adoption of novel expedients.  The courage of the heart will let no expedient of the ingenuity be left untried.  But both ingenuity and courage will find their real source in a health which has not yet exhausted the resources of the body.  Firmness which is not obstinacy, health which is not the fad of the valetudinarian, adaptability which is not weakness, enterprise which is not rashness—­these are the qualities which will preserve men in those evil days when the “blast of the terrible one is against the wall.”

X

DEPRESSION

Depression is not a word which sounds cheerfully in the ears of men of affairs.  But the actuality is not as bad as the term.  It differs in every respect from Panic.  It is not a sudden and furious gust breaking on a peaceful situation, irrational both in its onset and in its passing away, but something which can be foreseen, and ought to be foreseen, by any prudent voyager on the waters of business.  The wise mariner will furl his sails before the winds blow too strong.

Nor is depression in itself a disaster.  It is merely the wholesome corrective which Nature applies to the swollen periods of the world’s affairs.  As with trade and commerce, so with the individual.

The high-spirited man pays for his hours of elation and optimism, when every prospect seems to be open to him and the sunshine of life a thing which will last for ever, by corresponding states of reaction and gloom, when the whole universe seems to be involved in a conspiracy against his welfare.  The process is a salutary if not a pleasant one—­and has been applied remorsely ever since Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.

So it is with the volume of the world’s business.  However well men may try to balance the trend of affairs so as to produce a normal relation between the output and the needs of humanity, the natural laws do not cease to operate in a rhythmic alternation between the high prices which stimulate production and the glut of goods which overtakes the demand of the market and breaks the price.

But this change in the sequence from boom to depression is not an unmixed evil.  Prosperity spells extravagance in production.  While the good times endure, there is no sufficient incentive either to economy or to invention.  A concern which is selling goods at a high profit as fast as it can make them will not trouble to manage its affairs on strict economic lines.  It is when the pinch begins to be felt that men will investigate with relentless zeal their whole method of production, will welcome every procedure which reduces cost, and seek for every new invention which promises an economy.  Depression is the purge of business.  The lean years abolish the adipose deposit of prosperity.  The athlete is once more trained down fine for the battle.