100 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
invention and scientific research, industrial manage- 
ment, in labor’s cobperative policy, in the economies 
accompanying mergers, in the gains of prohibition, 
and in seven years of a stable price level and steadied 
purchasing power of the dollar. In all these respects 
the experts constituting the Committee on Recent 
Economic Changes appointed by Herbert Hoover 
have reported a speeding-up of production and ex- 
change beyond any period of similar length. The 
conclusions of this committee have not been seriously 
challenged in any quarter. They have given rise, 
however, to extravagant claims which their findings 
do not warrant, to the effect that a “new era” dif- 
fering radically from the long upward swing of 
progress that has characterized the industrial revo- 
lution is in progress. 
For those who sponsor these extravagant claims 
it is well to point out that, in the words of the Hoover 
Committee, the “distinctive character of the years 
from 1922 to 1929 owes less to fundamental change 
than to intensified activity.” But the fruits of jn. 
tensified activity are real. In a business sense they 
fructify in earnings, and in the increased expectation 
of earnings, which is discounted in a manner to in- 
crease the price level of common stocks. The chap- 
ters devoted to the elements of this intensified 
activity should enable the reader to gauge more ac- 
curatelv the future situation of the stock market than 
any contemplation of the damage wrought by the 
panic and its immediate causes would permit.