THE EQUITY OF PROFIT. 



BY RUFUS FARRIXGTOX SPRAGUK. 



That the world about us is bountifully provided with objective 

 (hings whose properties and qualities are such as to fit them, or to 

 enable them to be fitted, for man's employment as a means of 

 ministering- to his ever-recurring needs, may safely be taken for 

 granted. This admitted, it becomes apparent that the diflflcnlties 

 and hindrances of various sorts, encountered by man in his struggle 

 for existence, arise, not from the non-existence of things needful, but 

 simply and solel}' from their lack of availability for his employment. 



Such objective things as are endowed with capacity for man's 

 employment, as a means of ministering to these needs, are said to 

 have utility. While it is customary to ascribe utility unhesitatingly 

 to certain objective things, as though the quality of usefulness was 

 inherent in them, it is evident we mean no more than this, that the 

 things in question are endowed with potential capacity for useful- 

 ness to man. Be this potential capacity for usefulness what it may, 

 the actual development of such usefulness is contingent upon, and 

 quantitatively limited by, the gravity of the need to which its em- 

 ployment ministers — the quantitative importance of the impairment 

 of well-being its use averts. The true measure of an objective 

 thing's utility, then, is contingent as much upon the gravity of a 

 human need to which it can minister as it is upon the properties 

 and qualities that fit it for such ministration. 



Unfortunately, however, few, if any, of the objective things right- 

 fully entitled to consideration as factors in economic activity are 

 freely, and to the limit of the demand for them, available for our 

 employment as a means of ministering to our felt or anticipated 

 reeds. As a consequence they must first be produced; that is to 

 say, they must be brought out, or fortmrd. This can be accomplished 

 only by an intelligent application of productive energy, or labor, — 

 mental or physical, one or both, it matters not, so long as it is 

 adequate to the task of surmounting- the obstacles and hindrances 

 of various sorts that lie in the way of and obstruct the free acquisi- 

 tion and use of- things needful, but not freely available. This labor 

 cost is not only an inevitable attendant upon the task of surmount- 

 ing the hindrances that lie in the way of the ready availability of 



