Venus, Panic-Monger

Men have long speculated on the influence of cosmic bodies over the tides of human affairs. Within the last cen-tury a few really scientific minds have begun to observe certain regularities both in astronomy and economics. We are familiar with the course of the "Business Cycle," as described by Prof. Wesley Clair Mitchell and others, through inflation, crisis, depression, recovery. Its major catastrophes show a somewhat irregular recurrence, but if we analyze wholesale prices, both of manufactured goods and raw materials, we find a fairly regular cycle of about eight years between peaks. It is all argued with incomparable logic in Generating Economic Cycles-by Dr. Henry Ludwell Moors, Research Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, one of the foremost higher statisticians of the world.

"Generating cycles" are cycles which originate in non-economic causes, such as weather. "Derived cycles" are the fluctuations in prices and prosperity which follow them. The farms supply 81.2% of all raw materials used in manufactures. Six major crops-corn, wheat, oats, hay, cotton, potatoes (70.8% of all farm products)-show the 8-year cycle. So do coal and iron (13.4% of raw materials are mined), lagging slightly behind the generating cycle of crop production. Maximum and minimum rainfall definitely occurs in a periodicity of eight years, both in Europe and America. All these concurrent cycles have been observed and verified over periods ranging from 40 to 160 years by a host of unimpeachable witnesses. There is no longer any possible doubt of their intimate causative connection.

What, then, is this cosmic jinn that starts the machine?

Schiaparelli, in 1890, and Percival Lowell, at the Flagstaff Observatory from 1896 to 1909, reached the conclusion from a study of the markings on the planet Venus that the period of rotation of Venus on her axis is the same as her revolution around the sun. Slipher confirmed this by spectroscopic analysis. Now if Venus turns on her axis once while she is revolving once around Old Sol, it is obvious that the same face of the planet is always turned toward him. In other words, one side has been baked by the sun's heat for countless aeons, while the other is chilled by everlasting night. Indraughts of tremendous power in the Venusian atmosphere must rush from the cold to the hot side, creating a partial vacuum in the center of the illuminated hemisphere, with vast meteorological and electrical disturbances. At intervals of a year and three-fifths Venus and the earth are in conjunction, the orbit of Venus being located about one-third of the distance between that of the earth and the sun. At every fifth conjunction, or approximately eight years apart, there is a transit of Venus, i.e., Venus, the earth and the sun are in the same straight line. The planes of the orbits are at a slight angle to each other, and there are eccentricities in the planets' motions, but not sufficient to disturb the regularity of the 8-year transits.

The researches of the new school of physics, beginning with Crookes, have shown that electrically charged rays (alpha, beta or gamma) are deflected by electric or magnetic fields, and produce ionization of gases through which they pass, i.e., electrons are dislocated from their atoms, and the resulting particles, called ions, become carriers of electrical currents. These gaseous ions may also become nuclei for the condensation of water vapor, just as dust particles help to form clouds and precipitate rain. It is, of course, possible that Venus affects terrestrial weather directly by magnetic or electrostatic influences. But it is more likely that it interferes with the solar radiations on their way to the earth. The sun is constantly bombarding our globe with negative or cathode rays. At the period of the 8-year transits of Venus, these rays pass through the disturbed atmosphere of Venus, are deflected, ionized, and when they strike the earth's atmosphere, produce an increased rainfall, which in turn stimulates greater crops, a fall in prices, and an economic depression.

This very sketchy outline of Moore's theory needs amplification to be convincing, but the body of evidence he has built up is impressive. And he is not alone in his ideas. Many first-rate economists, as Sauerbeck, Poynting, Aftalion, Bresciani-Turroni, Hollander, Mitchell; astronomers and astrophysicists, such as Turner, Schuster, C. T. R. Wilson, Birkeland, Nodon, Stratton, Huggins, Bauer, Douglass, W. W. Campbell; weather sharps such as Bigelow, Clough, Henry, have arrived at very similar conclusions, or have corroborated various steps in the grand generalization. We are forced to believe that there is good evidence for the linking together of planetary phenomena and economic cycles.

*GENERATING ECONOMIC CYCLES-H. L Moore-Macmillan. ($2.50.)