To the early workers in our field the pressing problem was to
account for the dramatic events which they called "commercial crises."
Not only did they confine themselves mainly to this single phase of
business fluctuations; also they confined themselves mainly to ex-
cogitating explanations. The occurrence of crises was known to
everyone. What need was there of elaborate factual investigations?
And why need one explain prosperity?

This approach led to a discussion which centered in the validity
of rival doctrines, rather than in the characteristics of business fluctua-
tions. The participants debated with each other on the basis of
common knowledge, reënforeed by occasional citations of evidence.
Even in using evidence, their aims were oftener dialectical than
positive. A second consequence was that the discussion tended to
drift away from the main body of economic theory and to become a
"specialty." For when crises are taken out of their setting in a con-
tinuous process of change, they appear to be "abnormal" phenomena.
As such they lie on the edge, rather than in the center, of the theo-
retician's domain. In discussions of what were taken to be the lead-
ing problems of economics, changes in business activity were among
the matters hidden from sight under the blanket assumption, "other
things remaining the same." While chapters on the cause of crises
appeared in some of the standard treatises which applied economic
principles to practical issues, the topic had no place in "pure theory."
Most of the contributions were monographs, and many of the writers
had but slender knowledge of economics. As late as 1898, Böhm-
Bawerk thought it necessary to argue that a theory of crises "should
always form the last, or next-to-the-last, chapter in a system of eco-

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