PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION F. ISAs: 
may appear that much of the idleness, pauperism, crime, misery, 
and death experienced in crowded centres is due to the defects 
of distribution. 
Let us therefore examine this root difticulty, free from the 
clouds of irrelevant or less urgent considerations. Division of 
labour without facilities for exchange may render a unit more 
helpless in such a scheme than he would be in a savage state. 
Much ingenuity and ability has been exercised by many writers 
in showing to us, as Bastiat does, the glorious provisions of one 
of the so-called social harmonies (Liberty alas Competition ) in 
preventing monopoly, and in effecting the distribution of wealth. 
And it may be at once conceded that human society does reap 
all the advantages claimed on behalf of competition. 
The question, however, is not—Does competition effect much 
good? That may be readily conceded. But confining attention 
to the minimum of primary wants alone—Do the combined 
effects of division of services, competition, and modes of exchange 
now existing provide for the Areservation of due proportions 
between the different classes of services, so as to ensure the production 
of primary needs in sutliciency for the wants of all; and are the 
means of exchange sufficiently perfect to secure with more or 
less certainty a due modicum of primary needs to all. In a word, 
is the “all for each” as effectively complete as the “ each for all?” 
If this latter provision be defective—and this unfortunately 
seems too true—can the defects be removed? And if this be 
impossible, can the evils be minimised to any extent? All 
possessors of services must be enabled to secure primary wants, 
or they perish. References to the wide distribution of wealth in 
exchange or commercial va/we, or to standard prices or wages— 
low or high—are utterly misleading. Without the power to 
acquire, or the actual possession of a due provision of that portion 
of exchange wealth—not necessarily possessing a high exchange 
value—the whole aggregate of the remaining part of. the world’s 
wealth in exchange fwould be worthless ; for it. would fail to 
preserve the life of the man destitute of primary satisfactions. 
This is the root difficulty ; and it is forcibly exemplified in the 
first notable exchange recorded in sacred history between the 
typical representative of the hunter of wild animals and the 
more skilled and peaceful agriculturists :— 
And Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and 
Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents. . . . And Jacob sold 
pottage: and Esau came from the field and he was faint: And Esau 
said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I 
am faint. . . . And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 
And Esau said, Behold I am at the point to die, and what profit shall 
this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day ; 
and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then 
Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and 
drink, and rose up and went his way; thus Esau despised his birth- 
right.—( Genesis xxv. 27-34.) 
