36 SEVENTEENTH' REPORT. 



vision of labor's products, that through toil, fatigue and 

 self-denial, have been brought out, or forward, and thus 

 rendered available for man's emplovment, as a means of ministering 

 to his needs. Furthermore, we are here considering an equitable 

 division of labor by and through an exchange of its products, on a 

 basis from which every consideration of the relative utilities of the 

 products involved is eliminated, as not only without legitimate 

 bearing upon the equities of the case, but as tending to promote in- 

 equity, through the introduction of irrelevant data, that, if heeded, 

 must make, not for equity, but for inequity. 



Thus equitable profit arises, not from the exchange of a product 

 having less utility for one having greater utilit,y, but simply and 

 solely from the saving in cost that by right accrues to each party 

 to an exchange of this character, as a consequence of his relatively 

 suj)erior capacity to surmount one of the two hindrances that, how- 

 soever different in character, have, through free and open competi- 

 tion, demonstrated their right to be regarded as competitive equiva- 

 lents in gravity. 



This being true, it becomes apparent that there is no necessary 

 quantitative relation between the profit — or saving in cost — that 

 by right accrues to one, when compared with that Avhich by equal 

 right acciiies to the other. Though one may by right freely sacrifice 

 a portion of the profit that, on the prevailing basis of competitive 

 equivalence, rightfully belongs to him, there is no equitable reason 

 for his doing so, even though his capacity to produce or reproduce 

 the product parted with is so abnormally high as to afford him a 

 profit a hundred-fold greater than that falling to the party with 

 whom he exchanges. Nor will the party whose profit is relatively 

 low be justified in demanding a concession of this sort, which, as 

 we shall see, may be partially or wholly due to marked variations 

 from the normal in his own ca])acity to ])roduce one or both of the 

 two products necessarily involved in the exchange under considera- 

 tion. 



By way of illustration, let us consider an equitable division of 

 labor between ^, the shoemaker, and T, the tailor, by and through 

 an exchange of the products of their labors, on what we have clearly 

 shown to be an equitable basis. As the son of a tailor, S had early 

 in life become familiar A\i11i the im]ilements and methods of his 

 father's trade; so familiar, in fact, that, being of a frugal turn, 

 it had for years been his practice to fashion and with his own hand 

 make up the garments for his everyday wear. T, the tailor, on his 

 part, had in his boyhood served a short apprenticeshij) on the 

 shoemaker's bench before taking U]i his life's Avork as a bailor, lie, 



