A second cycle, aligned with the saeculum but operating independently, was proposed in the last chapter. This second cycle would create the periodic troubled times which serve as social moments. From this starting material the generational constellation then creates the saeculum. In The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe discuss how the Crisis turning is catalyzed by "a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood".³⁹ This shift in mood allows society to accomplish things it couldn't do before (i.e. during the Unraveling), resulting in "a regeneracy--a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life". This catalyst event can arise in any turning, but only results in a Crisis turning when society is in the proper mood, that is when generations are in the proper constellation:³⁸

Strauss and Howe's sparks serve the same purpose as the troubled times in the previous chapter. We saw in section 2 that periods of unrest are associated with social moment turnings. The idea was that unrest reflected the social moment, that is, unrest was caused by the social moment. Suppose this is not the case? Suppose periodic unrest is caused by the hypothetical 54-year cycle? In this case, unrest (or more accurately, the "social distress" that causes unrest) would supply the social moment raw material used by the generational constellation to create the saeculum.

One possible candidate for this second cycle is the Kondratiev or K-cycle. The K-cycle is a ca. 54-year economic cycle first characterized by the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev. Working in the mid-1920's, Kondratiev noted a tendency for commodity prices, interest rates and other economic variables to rise and fall in a cycle roughly fifty years long. The period of a rising trend is the K-cycle upwave; the period of a falling trend is the downwave. From a low around 1790, prices rose to a peak in the 1810's and fell to a trough in the 1840's. The cycle repeated two more times with peaks in the early 1870's and around 1920 and a trough in the 1890's. After 1920 prices and interest rates had begun to fall and Kondratiev predicted they would fall further, resulting in a great depression, which did happen.

A number of researchers have studied this cycle since Kondratiev's time. Some have extended the cycle back before 1790, while others believe (as did Kondratiev) that the cycle began with the 1790 trough. Figure 11 shows a plot of British prices from the 12th century to the 1920's when Kondratiev made his observations. The cycles Kondratiev saw are clearly visible in the figure. What looks like a similar cycle appears in the 14th century and perhaps faintly in the 17th and 18th centuries. Those researchers (including this author) who make the claim that the cycle existed before 1790 have to make use of more sophisticated analysis than mere inspection to see the cycle.

Figure 11. British prices 1162-1925

Joshua Goldstein, in his book Long Cycles, summarizes the consensus of 33 K-cycle researchers in his base cycle dating scheme, which is shown in Table 11. Evidence supporting the idea that the K-cycle is the cycle causing social moments would be a correlation between the timing of social moment turnings and the K-cycle. Table 11 compares the end dates of social moment turnings to K-cycle turning points. The difference between the Kondratiev turning points and the turnings are given in terms of years and K-cycle lengths. If there were no correlation between the two cycles, then the differences between corresponding turning points should vary between zero (perfectly aligning) and one-half cycle (perfectly in opposition) with an average value of 0.25 cycle. Differences should be less than 0.25 cycle half the time and greater than 0.25 half the time. Table 11 shows that in 8 of the 13 comparisons the difference is less than 0.25 cycle. The probability of this occurring is like flipping 13 coins and having 8 or more of them come up heads, which has a probability of 29%. We can say that the statistical significance of alignment between the Kondratiev cycle and the saeculum (based on this analysis) is 71%. This level of significance is less than the 95% level usually considered as evidence of significance. Although intriguing, we cannot at this point say that a significant relationship exists between the K-cycle and the saeculum.

Table 11. Comparison of K-cycle with saeculum timing

*Differences less than 0.25 cycle are given in boldface

Another way to proceed would be to develop a hypothesis about what might cause social distress and then look to see if there is evidence that this mechanism exists. One source of periodic social distress might be food shortages caused by periodic population pressure on food supply. For a static or very slowly changing agricultural technology, output will be a function of the quantity and quality of the available farmland. When there is surplus arable land, the better land will be under cultivation and agricultural productivity per person will be high, giving a large supply of agricultural goods relative to demand. Agricultural prices are low under these conditions. If the population rises faster than new farmland can be cleared or already cleared lands improved, farming productivity will fall, resulting in a decrease in supply relative to demand. Prices of agricultural products rise. As population growth continues, the margin of surplus production in good years over deficits in bad years falls, increasing the severity or frequency of famines, which shows up as high prices relative to normal levels. It is reasonable to expect that birth rate would fall during times of famine and high prices. Assuming food demand to be correlated with the population of physical adults, the rate of demand growth should experience a decline some time after a decline in birth rate. Declining demand relative to supply should increase the margin of surplus production and reduce the severity of famines, leading to a pickup in birth rate. Food prices should be lower on average during these times.

What I am describing is a lagged negative feedback control loop. It is analogous to a thermostat and is easier to understand in terms of this analogy. A thermostat measures temperature with respect to a control setting. When the room temperature rises above the set point, the thermostat sends a signal to the furnace controller to turn off the furnace. When the temperature falls below the set point a signal is sent to turn the furnace back on. When the signals are promptly acted upon the system works well to maintain the desired room temperature.

Now suppose the furnace controller had a built-in delay of an hour before it can respond to any signal. In this case, when a rising temperature reaches the set point the furnace remains on for an hour afterward, driving the temperature much higher. Once the furnace turns off the temperature begins to fall, eventually reaching the set point, at which time the thermostat sends a signal to turn the furnace back on. The controller delay means the furnace is turned on an hour later, during which time the temperature falls well below the set point. The result of this response lag is a temperature that cycles between too hot and too cold. This result is general. Introduction of a delayed response into a negative feedback control loop will produce oscillations.

The population cycle is like the thermostat example with the adult population taking the role of the temperature, the average population sustainable by the food supply taking the role of the set point and birth rate taking the role of the signal. The role of the controller lag is taken by the delay between a change in birth rate and its effect on the adult population. That is, the time needed for a baby to grow into a physical adult in terms of calorie consumption. In the same way as the room temperature, the population will cycle between too high in relation to food supply (frequent famine/high price/high distress/social moments) and too low (surplus food/low price/low distress/nonsocial moments). A mathematical description of this model is presented in Appendix D. It shows that cycles of 50-60 years (about two generations) are obtained with plausible values of lag (12-15 years). This cycle would be the Kondratiev cycle.

If this hypothesis is correct we should be able to identify Kondratiev cycles of 'high" and "low" prices that correlate with social moments and non-social moments, respectively. The population mechanism only operates when the potential for population pressure on food supplies exists. This will usually be the case during times of long term population growth permitted by the settlement of new lands. This was the case for England in Medieval times. Figure 12 shows a plot of an English price index for 1162-1500. This price index was obtained by concatenating the Phelps Brown & Hopkins³⁹ seven-century price index of "consumables" in South England with an index I constructed based on English livestock and grain prices over the 1162-1325 period provided by D.L. Farmer.^40-43 A heavy black line runs through the price plot. This line is the price trend. Its construction is described in Appendix C. It can be thought of as the "normal price" at any time.

Figure 12. English price index and price relative to trend as function of turning*

*Letters stand for turning types: C = Crisis; H = High; A = Awakening and U = Unraveling

Equation 17 defines a quantity I call price distress which measures how high prices are relative to their normal (trend) values:

17. Price distress = Price / Trend - (Price / Trend )_MIN

Here (Price / Trend )_MIN refers to the lowest value of this ratio over the period of interest. Figure 12 shows price distress calculated from equation 17 plotted as a column chart for the period 1162-1500. Turnings are marked in the figure and average values of price distress calculated for each turning and presented in the figure. Social moment turnings are labeled in red. The social moment turnings up to and including the Plague Crisis (1348-1378) show an average distress level of 0.43 compared to 0.26 for the nonsocial moment turnings. This difference is statistically significant at over 99.99%. After the Plague Crisis social moment turnings still show marginally higher price distress than non-social moments, but the relation isn't statistically significant.

The long term upwards trend in prices from the late 12th century to the beginning of the 14th century in Figure 12 is called the Medieval price revolution. It occurred simultaneously with population growth, which peaked in the early 14^th century when price did.^44-45 During the price revolution, when population was growing, a highly significant correlation between price distress and turnings was seen, which can be taken as strong evidence in favor of the population mechanism as the source for social distress in the creation of the Medieval saeculum. This population-driven distress then served as the social moment generator described in the previous chapter.

In time, all the good land was in use and marginal lands were brought under cultivation. Eventually just about every bit of land was in use and average agricultural productivity had reached a level barely sufficient to support the burgeoning population. The Medieval price revolution came to an ugly end with the Great Famine of 1315-1317. Heavy rains led to a bad harvest in 1315. In 1316 they happened again and Europe experienced the worst famine in its history.⁴⁶ The historian David Fischer describes the horror:⁴⁷

After the Famine, which is estimated to have killed 10% of the population, price pressure was relieved and prices fell. Thirty years after the Famine the Black Death carried off a third of Europe, and population stress on food supplies dissipated. Population began to rebound after the plague, but plague recurrences checked this advance and eventually drove population to even lower levels by the end of the 14^th century. Periodic outbreaks of disease kept population well below early 14^th century levels throughout the 15^th century. With population control managed by the Malthusian "positive check" of disease rather than famine, the population model for the Kondratiev cycle was no longer operative. This explains why no correlation was seen between price distress and turnings after the Plague Crisis.

The Plague Crisis saw rising prices that continued until 1370 (a K-cycle upwave). This price rise occurred after population had been decimated, clearly, the population mechanism was not responsible. Plague mortality had wiped out the reserve of unemployed labor that had existed before the Black Death, creating a labor shortage that drove up wages. Suppression of population growth by recurrent plague kept labor limited with respect to land, maintaining higher wages. Rising wages created demand that heretofore had not existed, resulting in rising prices in the 1350's and 1360's. Thus, the upwave after the Plague was not associated with declines in real wages as had upwaves before the Plague. When the upwave ended in 1370, the normal downwave gains in real wages started from a higher base, resulting in real wages higher than had ever been seen in the pre-Plague era (see Figure 13).

Rising real wages for labor means an increasing share of output went to workers, leaving a shrinking share for employers. Since the latter comprised the elite of society it is not surprising that they tried to stop this development by legislation like the 1351 Statute of Laborers that called for re-establishment of pre-plague wage levels, and by levying taxes on labor. Measures like the former were ignored, while the latter was stoutly resisted, as attested by a series of uprisings of the working class. In 1358, the Jacquerie, a widespread revolt of French peasants, or "Jacques" as they were derisively called, swept through France. In 1378 it was the Ciompi, the Florentine industrial working class that took up the cry "viva il popolo" against their oppressors. In 1381 it was the weavers of Ghent and Wat Tyler's Peasant's Revolt in England, which struck terror among the English gentry. The next year saw Rouen aflame with the Harelle, a revolt of Norman drapers. And in that same year, Paris burst out with the Maillotin, a riot of ordinary Parisians given its name by the mallets they wielded.

Thus, we have an era of high prices that corresponds to the Plague Crisis and a period of rising real wages over 1370-1390 that corresponds to the 1369-1390 period of high unrest (Table 7). Since the population model does not act when population pressure doesn't exist, the high prices after the Black Death should not generate social distress. On the other hand, a shrinking economic pie for society's elites can be thought of as distress (when society's rulers are unhappy, everyone is unhappy) and it certainly generated a lot of unrest. When one considers that the Reactive generation born during the Avignon Awakening (b1302-1325) did not begin to occupy senior leadership positions until the mid-1350's, it makes more sense that the Crisis should be dated somewhat later, perhaps 1355-1385, which captures just about all of the post-plague era of distress. After all, it is not natural disasters themselves that create turnings, but the response of society to disaster (as mediated though the generation constellation) that creates turnings.

Figure 13. Changes in Real Wages and Prices in South England 1300-1750

Post-plague social distress appears to reflect the shifting economic fortunes of landowner versus worker. Early in the fifteenth century nominal wages rose again, further advancing the already high level of real wages (Figure 13). This period also showed unrest such as the Cabochiens revolt. In 1413, a mob of Parisian butchers, skinners and tanners under their leader Caboche reprised the Maillotin, but with even bloodier results. The 1400-1445 period of rising real wages contains both the 1409-1432 period of unrest and the 1406-1435 Hussite Awakening.

For the rest of the 15th century, real wages remained at historically high levels. It was a period of good times for ordinary folk. Good times for the laboring class meant harder times for the business/landowner class. Growing business in one place often meant decline somewhere else. Starting in the mid-fourteenth century England had started to produce wool cloth in addition to wool (see Figure 17 in section 5). This growth in the English textile industry occurred at the expense of the old Flemish industry. The urban-based Flemish industry suffered from higher costs relative to the rural English industrialists who were able to exploit cheap water power to run their mills.

The fifteenth century also saw much jockeying for position amongst the English gentry. Entrepreneurs like Sir John Falstoff, whose estates had access to cheap water power, got rich in the textile business while other landowners continued to be squeezed between high wages and low agricultural prices. Distress amongst the gentry was manifest by the decline in the numbers of important noble houses and in endemic warfare such as the War of the Roses, which constituted a secular crisis. The Reactive generation created in the early 15^th century Awakening came to power in the mid-15^th century, bringing about a "final solution" to the problems of the gentry. The Wars of the Roses, with their heavy casualties among the nobility, greatly weakened the feudal power of the noble paving the way for a strong, centralized monarchy established by the Civic archetype Henry Tudor at the end of the War of the Roses Crisis.⁴⁸

The last half of the 15th century saw no change in real wages associated with the Crisis turning that could serve as a catalyst for inducing a social moment. That change had occurred during the previous Awakening and had generated social distress then. The form of "Kondratiev distress" transmitted by changes in real wages was not operative in producing the timing of the War of the Roses Crisis. Goldstein records the years 1460-1483 as a K-cycle upwave (Table 11), which aligns well with the War of the Roses Crisis dates of 1459-1487. Examination of the price data in Figure 13 does not support the idea that a sustained price rise characteristic of a K-cycle upwave occurred during the 1460-1483 period. This upwave date is based on rising trade volumes (another K-cycle indicator) and not prices. In England both wool and textile production volume reached multi-decade lows around 1460, marking a Kondratiev trough (see Figure 17). From this low textile production volume doubled over the next two decades. This boom would be expected to create winners and losers amongst the gentry, depending on whether or not their estates had textile mills. Just as Kondratiev distress in the form of rising real wages could produce conflict between classes, distress in the form of rising textile output could produce conflict within classes. The War of the Roses is just such an intra-class conflict and supports the idea that the differential impact of trade booms can serve as another form of Kondratiev distress.

Shortly after 1500, population and price began once again to rise in what is called the sixteenth century price revolution. One might expect the population model to once again become active and produce periodic famines and social moments. The former did happen, but not the latter. The correlation between social moments and price distress seen in Figure 12 is not observed in the 16^th century. For example, price distress was high over the 1541-1569 period. A well known historical famine occurred then:⁴⁹

Queen Mary's famine is associated with a major price spike (Figure 13) but is not associated with either a period of high unrest (1515-47) or the Reformation Awakening (1517-1542). Another major famine, the Great Dearth, is associated with another price spike in the 1590's:⁵⁰

This famine fell within the 1586-1603 period of high unrest, but not within the Armada Crisis (1569-1594). Periodic famine created by the population model does not seem to be the source of 16^th century Kondratiev distress leading to social moments.

A major decline in real wages in England occurred during the four decades after 1510, when the price revolution began (Figure 13). The drop in real wages reflected the failure of nominal wages to rise with prices, which was caused by population growth (increasing labor force). This had the reverse effect as the increase in real wages in the late 14^th and fifteenth centuries. This time distress fell upon the lower classes, while the upper classes fared well. The ranks of the English nobility, depleted after the Wars of the Roses, were repopulated with economic elites. The 16^th century decline in living standards was not limited to England, it was also noted at the time in France, as described by Braudel:⁵¹

The 1510-50 decline brought real wages to levels similar to those of the early fourteenth century (Figure 13), when overpopulation and food scarcity had brought the bulk of the European population to bare subsistence living standards. This decline was roughly contemporaneous with the Reformation Awakening (1517-1542) and its associated period of unrest (1515-1547). It is likely that the sharp decline in living standards noted by the Breton peasant provided the distress needed to spark the Reformation Awakening. The Kondratiev downwave following the famine years of the mid-1550's brought some recovery in real wages and distress diminished (Figure 13).

A second decline in real wages occurred over 1580-1600. This decline is closely associated with the 1586-1604 period of unrest, but less so with the Armada Crisis (1569-1594). The correspondence between the period of unrest and the period of declining real wages strongly suggests that declining wages were a source of distress. It seems that it was not the sole factor in creating the Armada crisis, however. The situation for the Armada Crisis is similar to that for the Plague Crisis. The empirical unrest data and the (hypothesized) Kondratiev distress responsible for it closely correspond to each other, but lag the turning dates by more than a decade.

In the case of the Plague Crisis, I discounted the turning dates, and considered that the turning actually occurred around when the unrest did and so conformed to the model. I did this for two reasons. First, McGuinness did not look for generations directly, he identified his turnings from a consideration of events. If new event-based evidence that implies a later date for the Plague crisis is more persuasive than the event-based evidence used to make the initial turning date assessment, it should be valid to change the turning dates. Secondly, McGuinness's 1305-1415 saeculum is unusually "lopsided". The half-saeculum before 1348 is only 43 years long, atypically short, while the half after 1348 is 67 years long, which is atypically long. It seems that McGuinness quite naturally considered the Plague as a crisis trigger and so dated the start of the crisis in 1348, even though the eldest members of the Reactive generation were only in their mid-forties at the time, far short of age A_L (54 years). There was no response to the Plague itself, the response (and unrest) was to the effects of the Plague in its aftermath. Because what makes a Crisis is the response to events (as opposed to the events themselves) it is reasonable to assume that the correct dating for the Plague crisis is somewhat later.

In contrast, the dates Strauss and Howe give are based on actual generations they identified from biographical information. Therefore, adjusting turning dates solely on events is making a claim that Strauss and Howe made an error assigning generations without providing any biographical evidence to support that claim. Furthermore, when the Armada Crisis began in 1569, the eldest members of the Reactive generation were their mid fifties, completely in line with A_L = 54 years. For this reason, one might well consider the Armada crisis as failure of the model. On the other hand, a strong argument for later dates for this crisis can be made. The War of the Armada itself ran from 1585 to 1604. The structural changes that are a hallmark of the secular crisis didn't emerge until after 1594. For example, the Dutch began to challenge the Portuguese in Asia until 1595 and the first Dutch conquest of a Portuguese trading outpost occurred in 1605. The establishment of East India companies by the English and Dutch did not occur until 1600 and 1602, respectively. England made attempts at colonization of the New World in the 1580's, but didn't succeed until 1607. In light of these observations, a somewhat later date for the Armada crisis such as 1575-1600 or even 1580-1605 might be more in line with events. For the purpose of this study, I will consider the Armada Crisis as both a nonconforming and conforming point.

The response by Reactive leaders and Civic rising adults to the troubles of the late sixteenth century was quite different from that of Adaptive and Idealists to the troubles earlier in the century. The cause of both sets of troubles was the same, widespread impoverishment caused by Kondratiev upwaves during the sixteenth century price revolution. The response in the late 16^th century was to channel the energy of would-be troublemakers into activities that enhanced state power. For example, ambitious men who might otherwise have become criminals or rebels were authorized to commit acts of piracy against the Spanish as privateers. In the Netherlands it was rebellion against imperial Spain, followed by the systematic capture of the Portuguese trading empire and the founding of the Dutch East India company that consumed the energy of ambitious Dutchmen. In England, these energies were channeled into support of the Dutch revolt by attacking Spanish trade and other measures, attempting to colonize North America, and establishing an English East India company. All these helped England emerge as a Great Power. It is this pragmatic response of Reactive generation leaders to the late 16^th century social distress that made the era a secular crisis. Compare this response to that of Idealist archetype Henry VIII to the distress of the Reformation Awakening. He founded a new religious sect independent of Rome so he could obtain a divorce! It is inner-directed responses like this that make the early 16^th century time of distress a spiritual awakening

By the early 17^th century, real wages had fallen to levels not seen since the Great Famine. Ordinary people endured bare subsistence living standards even during years of good harvests. The Crisis turning and the period of unrest had ended, yet times were still very bad. On top of the miserable times, the political authorities began the mass insanity known as the Thirty Years War in 1618. Large-scale war added its own form of distress and Europe heaved with unrest as a result. The Parliamentary generation (b 1567-1587) began to occupy the top positions in society in the late 1610's. The result of the confluence of war distress and the generational constellation was the Puritan Awakening (1621-49).

What makes this war a form of Kondratiev distress is a new relation between the K-cycle and war, in which big wars tended to occur during Kondratiew upwaves. During Kondratiev upwaves, all types of prices, not only food prices, tended to rise. Rising prices should stimulate commodity output and falling prices discourage it. Increased output of taxable commodities during inflationary times meant increased tax revenues for the taxing authority. Rulers found it easier to repay debts during times of high or rising prices, making it easier to finance wars in inflationary times. K-cycle upwaves became boom times for trade and the warfare it supported. Rising economic activity called for increases in money supply. Funding wars resulted in increases in sovereign debt. Prices rose reflecting increasing population pressure according to the population model, but also because of rising money supply and debt (monetary stimulation). The first of these upwave wars was the Thirty Years War, which was unlike anything that had come before. By the end of the war (and the Awakening turning) a religious dictatorship had taken control of the English government. This government lasted a decade after which the monarchy was restored. Elsewhere the political situation remained much the same, as is so often the case with Awakenings, nothing of permanence had been accomplished by thirty years of struggle.

After the Puritan Awakening real wages rose and never again fell to the levels they had been. Neither famine nor declining real wage levels were factors in producing distress anymore. In their place a new distress mechanism arose; material deprivation due to unemployment caused by economic depression. We can infer economic conditions from price information, which can be verified in some cases by looking at trade and production statistics, and later, national product accounts. Periods of falling prices following upwave war booms discouraged production, resulting in falling tax revenues. War finance was harder, making Kondratiev downwaves times of relative peace, during which rulers paid down debts raised for previous wars. The reduction in borrowing as well as reduced population pressure created a deflationary environment not conducive to prosperity. Thus, after the development of the war-linked K-cycle, one might expect a new form of Kondratiev distress to appear: economic hardship caused by postwar downwave depression. In this case, social moments would come to be aligned with Kondratiev downwaves instead of upwaves.

Figure 14. Cycles in price distress 1650-1950 showing Kondratiev peaks and troughs

Figure 14 shows a plot of price relative to trend (price distress). If the above discussion is valid, periods when price distress is falling (downwaves) should correspond to periods when trade volumes are falling. Thus the 1711-1744, 1772-1789 and 1814-1844 price downwaves should see declines in trade and other indicators of economic output. Figure 15 shows British trade volumes for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Declines are seen from the 1720's to about 1750, from about 1770 to about 1790 and after around 1807. These periods roughly correspond to the price downwaves.

Figure 15. British Trade volumes 1700-1825

Table 12 shows these results and another measure of economic decline obtained from my book The Kondratiev Cycle.⁵² The two measures of economic decline are averaged together to produce a composite period of economic distress that corresponds well to periods of price decline. Periods of economic distress and price decline compare well to 3 out of 4 social moment turnings between 1650 and 1860 (Table 12), supporting the idea of economic distress associated with falling prices (Kondratiev downwaves) serves as the catalyst for the saeculum. After 1860 it is clear that although Kondratiev distress and unrest still aligned, neither aligned with the Civil War Crisis. As mentioned before, a major change in the saeculum occurred around the time of the Civil War that Strauss and Howe call the Civil War anomaly. Generation length shortens abruptly at this time and a Civic generation is missing form the 19th century saeculum. It is not surprising that the Kondratiev distress model fails after 1860.

Table 12. Price/economic distress compared to social moments and unrest periods

It is not difficult to understand why the shift from famine-linked distress (around K-peaks) to real-wage-linked upwave distress and then to economic-generated downwave distress occurred. Improvements in transportation infrastructure reduced the severity of localized famines because food could be moved from regions of surplus to famine areas more easily than in Medieval times. Periods of high prices reflecting dearth (such as those in the 16^th century) became less stressful times because the severity of famine was reduced. A new form of distress emerged, associated with falling living standards resulting from the impact of inflation (price upwaves) on fixed money wages. A similar sort of distress, caused by the impact of rising real wages on employers had been involved in the 15^th century saeculum.

As the correlation between war, prosperity and Kondratiev upwaves arose in the 17^th century, the growing trade and rising debt that accompanied rising prices created employment and inflationary prosperity. Figure 13 shows how the Kondratiev price peaks of the 16^th century reflected famines while those afterward reflected war. Upwave prosperity brought rising wages along with rising prices, curtailing the real-wage form of distress. Periods of inflation (Kondratiev upwaves) became less stressful, while falling prices (downwaves) became more so. Upwave shifted to downwave usually because excessive debt levels made continuation of wars and debt-driven prosperity unsustainable. The need to repay debt acquired during the good times further depressed economic activity during downwaves. Business sought new opportunities that led to future new economies while workers struggled to find jobs. In short, downwaves became times of distress for employers and employed alike.

The social dynamics of the Kondratiev cycle changed. Before the 15^th century distress reflected food shortages caused by the population feedback mechanism. Social moments and periods of high unrest were correlated with the period around Kondratiev price peaks. During the late 15^th through early 17^th century, distress reflected adverse changes in living standards caused by upwave price inflation, differential effects of upwave trade booms or the horrors of upwave wars. Social moments and periods of high unrest were correlated with Kondratiev upwaves. After the mid-17^th century, when unrest became correlated with economic distress, social moment turnings came to be aligned with Kondratiev downwaves. Note that throughout the late 12^th to early 19^th century, distress was correlated with some aspect of the Kondratiev cycle. It was this 50-60 year cycle that helped maintain the timing of the saeculum at L = 27 years.

As described earlier, the Armada crisis constitutes a partial exception to the rule. Another exception is the Glorious Revolution Crisis (1675-1704). Because social moment turnings before this Crisis were associated with upwaves and those after this Crisis were associated with downwaves, it was not possible for it to be aligned with either. If the Glorious Revolution had been a downwave phenomenon, it would have run close to the 1650-1689 downwave and so be adjacent to the Puritan Awakening (1621-1649). If it were aligned with the upwave, it would have run around the 1689-1720 period and so be adjacent to the Great Awakening (1727-1746). Since social moment turnings cannot be adjacent either set of events would constitute a model failure. At it happens, the Glorious Revolution was almost exactly split in half between the 1650-1689 downwave and the 1689-1720 upwave. As there is no form of Kondratiev distress associated with the period around K-troughs, the Glorious Revolution Crisis must be considered as a failure of the Kondratiev distress model.

The post-1770 downwave period of economic distress is a particularly good example of how unrest generated by economic distress is channeled into social moments. By 1770 the three important foreign trades to the North American English colonists (tobacco, slaves and rum) had peaked--tobacco nearly twenty years earlier (Figure 15). Colonists were irritable. Malcontents like Samuel Adams had formed subversive organizations like the Sons of Liberty in 1765 that opposed modest taxes levied to pay for the recently concluded French and Indian War. In response to protests against the Townshend Acts of 1767, Britain sent troops to Boston. Military pay was poor and soldiers often took civilian jobs to supplement their meager pay. Typical British wages and standards of living were well below American norms, so these soldiers were willing to work for less than American labor, much as illegal immigrants today. Unlike modern illegal immigrants, British soldiers were in America under the aegis of the government and also received a subsidy (their military pay) that permitted them to compete even more effectively against natives. The anger this caused in a time of economic weakness is easy to understand. That this anger boiled over into violence in the "Boston massacre" of 1770 was inevitable. After the altercation, British troops were withdrawn and the mood calmed.

At this point Kondratiev-derived economic conditions had created the potential for trouble, but effective action by the authorities had averted it. Yet three years later, Sam Adams's radical group staged the "Boston Tea Party", which quickly led to bloodshed and the Declaration of Independence. The tax on tea to which Adam's group was so hotly opposed was quite small, and all the rest of the Townshend Acts were repealed after the Boston Massacre. Colonial fire-eaters could not be appeased by anything the authorities could do short of complete capitulation. Why were American colonists willing to risk war for such a small provocation in 1773? The reason is the generational constellation was conducive to taking pragmatic (Reactive) action in support of Idealist generation principles, no matter how unreasonable they were. In 1770 the oldest Reactive cohorts were in their mid-forties, too young to occupy senior leadership positions. In contrast, by 1775, when the shooting started, they were past fifty and had started to occupy the top leadership positions of society. Economic distress, both that of underemployed Americans and that of the debt-laden British government had produced conditions ripe for a quarrel--the constellation did the rest.

At the beginning of this section, the Kondratiev cycle as described by Goldstein's base scheme was compared to the saeculum and shown to be insufficiently well-aligned to establish the Kondratiev cycle as the social moment generator proposed in section 3. A more detailed mechanistic description of the K-cycle was substituted for the base scheme. Statistical analysis of the data in Figure 12 showed a highly significant correlation between the Kondratiev cycle and the saeculum up to the Plague. Of the next ten social moment turnings, eight of them align closely with periods of Kondratiev-linked social distress. A ninth partially overlaps a period of Kondratiev linked distress and one fails to overlap with an identifiable period of Kondratiev distress. Summing it up, we have 8 or 9 successful alignments out of 10 social moments between 1400 and 1850. This degree of alignment is statistically significant at the 95-99% level. The evidence supports the hypothesis that the Kondratiev cycle is the auxiliary cycle proposed in section three.

Table 13 shows the an application of the combined constellation-distress model to predict social moment turnings. In the first column are given the birth dates for the adaptive or reactive generation that is coming into the leadership role performed at age A_L. In the next column, 54 years (=A_L = 2L where L = 27) is added to the birth years to obtain the dates when the generational constellation is "right" for a social moment. Right of that is the unrest years from Table 7. This unrest is the product of Kondratiev distress as has just been established. The projected turning is obtained by averaging the constellation and unrest dates together. Next is given the actual social moment turnings and finally the discrepancy between the two. This error is given in terms of years and turning lengths. If there was no alignment between the projected turning and the actual one, one would expect random error between 0 (perfectly aligned) and 0.5 cycle. A projection more than half a cycle out-of-sync is more aligned with the adjacent turning than the targeted one. We should expect half of the errors to be greater than 0.25 turning and half to be smaller. In actuality, for 13 social moments before the Civil War Crisis, the error is less than 0.25, which is like getting 13 heads on 13 coin flips. This alignment is statistically significant at the 99.99% level, an extraordinary level of agreement. In sharp contrast, the Civil War Crisis is off by 18 years, an entire turning length.

Table 13. Application of constellation-distress model to project turnings

*Generations born before 1433 assumed to have birthdates 3 years before the associated turning
**Alternate Plague Crisis dating of 1355-1385 used.

This demonstration shows the combination of the generational cycle with an empirically determined distress/unrest cycle gives an excellent prediction of 13 successive social moment turnings until the Civil War anomaly, where the model abruptly fails. We will take up the anomaly problem in section 6. But first, a causal mechanism for the K-cycle after the population mechanism was no longer valid is presented in section five.