An unexpected shape:
Among the details of the 20th century:
- A peak in 1915,
- A high from 1920 to 1933,
- A peak in 1944, and
- A low point in 1977.
I searched the Google Books from the year 1700 -- the kind of books that have words like "happinefs" and "profperity" -- and found Arch-Bishop Tillotson's Several Discourfes · Volume 5. I can picture the old archbishop wagging a finger at his congregation and saying things like
Even the best of men are more corrupted by prosperity than afliction.
and
Nothing afflicts a man more, and toucheth him more sensibly when he is in misery, than the remembrance of his former prosperity; had he never been happy, his misery would be the less.
And from William De Britaine's Humane Prudence ... The eighth edition corrected:
None will be so severe enemies to you in adversity, as those that in prosperity have been your friends.
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