Relief in Seven Years of Stable Money 195 
worker which we find has actually occurred. They 
also account for the suddenness of this increase, and 
its rapid rate. The leap upward in productivity 
began even in the depression year 1921, and behind 
some of our six causes by two or three years. 
This was no more than to be expected. The un- 
paralleled advance in “tempo” of production and 
trade was synchronous with the other causes. The 
organized advance of scientific research and inven- 
tion and in management engineering grew out of the 
war; it began about 1918-1920, and was followed by 
the change in labor policy which became official 
when William Green succeeded the late Samuel Gom- 
pers as President of the American Federation of 
Labor in 1924. The bewildering multiplication of 
mergers began after the war, and increased with the 
advent of President Coolidge in 1923. National 
prohibition took effect in 1920, and the open market 
committee of the Federal Reserve Board began to 
function in 1922 in a way to stabilize the general 
level of wholesale prices. 
Here are six causes, each powerful in itself, and 
all beginning at or just before the great increase in 
the rate of productivity, and so of corporate earn- 
ings, which has been so marked during the present 
decade. The prime factor making for prosperity 
from 1922 to 1927, inclusive, is thus defined by the 
Report on Recent Economic Changes (page 862): 
“The old process of putting science into industry 
has been followed more intensively than before; it 
has been supplemented by tentative efforts to put