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WAR BORROWING

through 1911; lower than the rates in the three
years from 1912 through 1914 and higher again
than the rates of the two years 1915 and 1916.
The first of these intervals, 1908-1911 was a period
of business depression following the crisis of 1917;
the second, 1912-1914, although of mixed quality
was on the whole a period of business revival and
financial activity; the third, 1915-1916, was a period
of war convulsion and feverish adjustment to
wholly abnormal conditions.

The cost of commercial capital in the United
States during the period of our actual belligerency
has thus been greater than in the last preceding
period of business depression, less than in the last
preceding period of business activity, and greater
than in the highly exceptional years immediately
preceding the entry of the United States into the
war.

Just as the capital strain suffered by the business
world is evidenced by the relative altitude of the
prevailing money rates, so the recurrent jar and dis-
location to which the capital markets are exposed
appear in the frequency of variation of such rates
from a normal range. If the upper limit of the
normal range of the money rates in the United
States be taken as six per cent, the presence of dis-
location will roughly be evidenced by the frequency
with which the prevailing rates exceed this limit.
In the following table are shown for each year be-
ginning with 1908 the number of weeks within
which or some part of which the quoted rates of call
and time money rose above six per cent.: