We examine the complete historical light curve of the dwarf nova SS Cygni taken by the American Association of Variable Star Observers which spans more than 95 yr: from 1896 September 27 to 1992 April 7. The data consist of 29,387 daily means based on 180,233 individual observations. We investigate the statistical properties of the outburst durations, quiescence intervals, and cycle times associated with the 705 outbursts which occurred during this time. Our findings for the general properties of these time scales are in accord with previous studies. However, we find that correlations found by some earlier workers were artifacts of inconsistencies in their analyses. In particular, we find no significant difference between the correlations of (1) the duration of a burst with the length of the following cycle time and (2) the duration of a burst with the length of the preceding cycle time. By considering long-term moving averages we confirm an inverse relation between cycle time and quiescent magnitude pointed out previously by Warner. We use the accretion disk limit cycle computations of Duschl & Livio to infer from this relation that the mass transfer rate M(T) greater-than-or-similar-to 1 X 10(-9) M. yr-1 in SS Cyg. If we assume (1) the bright spot contributes approximately 25% to the quiescent visual flux, (2) variations of a given amplitude in M(T) produce variations of a similar amplitude in the bright spot flux, and (3) the observed fluctuations in the quiescent magnitude are primarily due to secular changes in M(T), then from the amplitude of the fluctuations in the quiescent magnitudes we infer that M(T) can vary by as much as about a factor of 2 on a time scale of several years, and by a smaller amount on longer time scales. In addition, the quiescent state appears to have undergone a secular decrease in brightness of approximately 0.1 mag over the past approximately 100 yr.
