Samuel Benner, a farmer from Ohio, first published his prophecies regarding price fluctuations in 1875. The nineteenth century marked the era of Laplacian probability, Gaussian distributions, Peano curves, and the Cantor set. While mathematicians focused on discovering structures within mathematics itself, Benner devoted his efforts to developing a model of “time” as a means of forecasting future economic trends.
He lived during a period characterized by the Axe-Houghton Indices, the establishment of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the flourishing of agricultural commodity trading. Society at the time was deeply engaged in agriculture and the expansion of railroads, which explains why Benner’s analyses centered on commodities such as pig iron, corn, cotton, and hogs. Closely intertwined with agriculture was the emerging science of weather forecasting, which addressed critical questions: Which years would be dry or wet? When might one expect periods of extreme heat, storms, or cold? Agricultural statistics were systematically compiled and analyzed to identify patterns of demand and supply.
Approximately 140 years ago, Benner asserted that the future could not be reliably predicted through agricultural statistics alone. He argued that such data collection would always remain incomplete, irregular, manipulable, unreliable, and lacking in predictive power. For Benner, the axiom that “history repeats itself” implied cyclical patterns in human affairs. He further maintained that, given the widely accepted view that everything—particularly in nature—moves in cycles, these recurring patterns provided a more dependable foundation for economic forecasting.
The prediction of future economic trends, according to Samuel Benner, is achievable solely through the rigorous study of historical patterns. He asserted that history repeats itself with remarkable precision in its details, particularly from one panic year to the next. Benner was among the first to demonstrate this systematic repetition, emphasizing the cyclical nature of financial catastrophes. His model successfully anticipated crises in 1891, 1902, 1910, 1929, 1987, and 2003, among others. However, it notably failed to predict the 2009 financial crisis within his framework of nested cycles—positioned exactly 20 lunar node cycles after the 1637 Dutch Tulip Mania bust. For Benner, time constituted an immutable pattern, unaffected by wars, panics, or elections. It was relentless, periodic rather than random, and governed by unchangeable, determinable rules. He attributed business failures primarily to ignorance of these temporal principles.
Contemporary assessments may view Benner as either a mere farmer or a visionary genius, yet this does not alter his pioneering recognition of a mathematical hierarchy in time. His work was deeply informed by personal adversity: as a prosperous farmer, he suffered financial ruin during the Panic of 1873, prompting his quest to uncover underlying natural laws. To refine his data, Benner employed annual average prices for smoothing. Upon comparison, he identified recurring upward and downward cycles in a fixed sequence, comprising a larger cycle of 18–20–16 years and a smaller one of 9–10–8 years. The lows in these cycles signified periods of reaction and depression. Benner regarded these as ironclad rules, even likening them to “God in prices.”
Benner further identified an 11-year cycle in corn and hog prices, featuring alternating peaks at 4- and 6-year intervals, alongside an 11-year peak cycle in cotton prices. For pig iron, he discerned a 27-year cycle, with lows recurring every 11, 9, and 7 years, and peaks in the sequential order of 8, 9, and 10 years. He outlined a 54-year panic cycle, derived from recurring panics every 16, 18, and 20 years; this series repeated every 54 years, as he explained: “It takes panics 54 years in their order to make a revolution or to return to the same order.”
His book represents one of the earliest formulations of cycle and periodicity theory in financial and commodity markets, achieving considerable popularity among late-19th-century bankers and businessmen. Benner’s cycles and sequences proved effective throughout the 20th century and remain observable in contemporary price forecasting. Analysts have noted parallels between his 11-year cycle and the established 11-year sunspot cycle, the latter having been examined in modern studies, including by the Federal Reserve. Although it is unclear whether Benner directly attributed influences to sunspots, he linked cycles to weather and climate patterns and was likely familiar with prior research by figures such as Herschel and Jevons.
Benner did not fully elucidate the foundations of his theories but suggested: “The cause producing the periodicity and length of these cycles may be found in our solar system… It may be a meteorological fact that Jupiter is the ruling element in our price cycles of natural productions; while also it may be suggested that Saturn exerts an influence regulating the cycles in manufacture and trade.” He further posited that Uranus and Neptune “may send forth an electric influence affecting Jupiter, Saturn and, in turn, the Earth… When certain combinations are ascertained which produce one legitimate invariable manifestation from an analysis of the operations of the combined solar system, we may be enabled to discover the cause producing our price cycles, and the length of their duration.”
The broader 54-year cycle later received detailed treatment from Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev in 1925. Edward R. Dewey, director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, evaluated Benner’s pig iron price forecasts over a 60-year span, concluding that the cycle exhibited an exceptional gain-to-loss ratio of 45:1—deeming it “the most notable forecast of prices in existence.”
