150 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
are related obversely to us in a similarly graduated series of 
interests and sympathies. It is this grand gravitation of human 
interests and sympathies which make possible ideas and forces 
which make home, friend, and fatherland; and these, not 
nominal cost of products, are the great factors which determine 
the engergies and welfare of any community. Commercial laws 
tend to destroy the heart of all ideas which centre in home and 
fatherland, and if the nation is to live it must carefully guard 
against their decrepitating influence. Their shuttle seems just 
as ready to weave the shroud of a nation as to bind nations in 
bonds of broader sympathies. 
Dominating Wants DETERMINE OCCUPATIONS AND NECESSARILY 
Propuce INEQUALITIES IN THE FoRM OF SERVICES. 
Hitherto, in the writings of social reformers, the greater part 
of the attention has been confined to the monopoly by the few of 
the lands, houses, railways, and other instruments connected 
with the production, security, and distribution of the necessary 
wants of human beings. It is generally assumed that there is 
abundance of primary wants for each one if the aggregate 
products annually created were more equitably distributed. But 
if the necessary primary satisfactions were annually produced in 
sufficient quantity for the wants of all, it would go to prove the 
curious and inexplicable circumstance that the present haphazard 
training, and supply and demand, allocation of those who are 
engaged, or who are being trained to engage, in the various 
divisions of labour are in perfect harmony with conditions which 
combine to effect that result, which might seem too formidable if 
undertaken by the most absolute regulations of intelligent 
prevision. The present supply of satisfactions is determined by 
the estimates or combined action of self-interested producers. It 
cannot be affirmed, on the basis of producers’ self-interest, that 
wants are produced with the sole idea of providing the highest 
quota of each satisfaction to each individual. At best they 
favour the mnimum supply, as self-interest is best rewarded by 
a keen demand—involying high prices—a result which would not 
be attained if the maximum quota of satisfactions for each 
individual was created. Of course, the absence of a perfect 
scheme of combined prevision among producing competitors, and 
the unforeseen variable effects springing from natural causes year’ 
by year, often produce abundance or superfluity, or over- 
production, as it is termed ; but this is a result not premeditated, 
and, although favourable to consumers for the time being, it is a 
mere accident, causing a fall in prices, and is likely to be followed 
by purposeful under-production during the succeeding period, in 
order to produce a straitened market with a corresponding rise in 
prices, and results in a certain reduction of the ideal quantity of 
ne 
