376 
DUTTON. 
viously consist in the relative difficulty of obtaining the 
wherewithal to pay it. There are, df course, thousands of 
people who would have had much less difficulty in obtain¬ 
ing a thousand dollars in gold one, five, ten, or twenty years 
ago than at present, but there are also thousands of whom 
the reverse is true. We can take account only of averages 
or, at most, of large groups or classes. 
The means of paying debts must come from one or more 
of three sources—wages, profits on capital, and rents. As 
these terms are understood in political economy, they com¬ 
prise all possible sources of income. First, as to wages, there 
can be no question that the amount of gold which an 
average worker, whether with brain or muscles, can earn in 
a given time has in this country greatly increased and is 
continually increasing. The exceptions are extremely few. 
Hence, measured in terms of labor, pure and simple, the 
price of gold has greatly diminished, and this measurement 
of the price of gold is of far greater moment to the nation 
than its price measured in commodities. Hence, where the 
means of paying debts are derived from wages alone, it is 
on the average much easier to pay them now in gold than 
formerly. 
Second, as to profits on capital. Here two considerations 
arise: first, the rate of profit; second, the amount of capital 
or principal on which the profit is to be reckoned. The rate 
of profit during the last twenty or twenty-five years has 
fluctuated with good and bad times, but, on the whole, has 
considerably diminished, and hence a person whose capital 
is unchanged in amount and who depends wholly upon such 
profits for the means of paying debts finds increased diffi¬ 
culty. On the other hand, the amount of capital has not 
only increased as a whole very greatly, but the per capita 
amount has also much increased. Whether the aggregate 
profit (average amount of capital multiplied by the rate of 
profit) has increased is a difficult matter to settle. The 
probabilities favor the view that there has been an increase 
in the aggregate profits of the average individual; but this 
