The Current Situation

Business prophets have spoken both optimistically and pessimistically at the year's opening, and as usual the future remains obscure to the average business man. Current business is good; none except the anthracite miners and a few others question that statement. The real interest in business relates to how long the present prosperity will last.

Here there are two quite opposite schools of thought. One group of business leaders is unable to forget that always in the history of U.S. business whatever went up had to come down again sooner or later, and that such periods of general prosperity as the present have always brought on a reaction in industry and trade. This conservative school is thus intent on finding out weak spots in U. S. business, and many of its members have thought the chief two are the construction industry and the stock market.

Another by no means inexperienced or uninformed group of business men is so impressed by the country's immense credit and money power that it is less inclined to predict a business slump in 1926. They point out that never in the history of the country has bank credit been so cheap, abundant and apparently sound at the crest--if it is one--of a business boom. In general they believe that our great banking resources are today a stabilizing factor that never existed before in anything like the same degree.