The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-12-12

lS anu Sq qudIely, anu nut lldI IuC effects which are complained of are merely effects which followed from profits.
 The social morality which makes a manufacturer direct retailer to withhold certain commodities from the market lest it become in excess of the demand and thus the price may fall, and the profits be curtail- cd to considerable degree. does not admit of criticism by society which insists upon the profit system.
 If making profits is the supreme reason for all industrial activity, then the more profits are made the better. Nor can we delude ourselves with the notion that this is not the main ideal of good business. The man who makes big money by ma nipulating stocks, wares, merchan- disc or any particular commodity in the industrial, commercial or financial world is the successful man. He is the man who is hailed by all and sundry as the type which the youth of the land would do well to follow. And it is absurd to a degree to affect virtuous indignation when these activities are brought home to us by intolerably high prices. No complaint is in order. It is simply manifestation of the pro- fit system that is before us and which is brought home to us: logi- cal and inevitable and inherent in capitalism.
 To imagine a condition, where the struggle has been made so keen among the various ones struggling to live by buying and selling. can be in any way ideal is to imagine the wholly impossible. ...
 Usually buying and selling is re- regarded as a highly respectable function in society, performed by highly respectable men with their own code of honor and very high notions indeed of business inte- gritty.
 The average man knows the man whom he buys from, and the aver age man who sells will be in a posi- tion to call himself the friend of his customer. It seems for that reason an ideal relation between the two. Society has given it a stamp of ap- proval that justifies the entire trans action. rss
 Moreover the seller will usually regard himself as a man who func- tions most usefully in meeting the demand for goods and justifies the extraction of certain profits for thus functioning. It is very simple.
 What really takes place is this. Labor is employed at so much per day. That amounts to the cost of producing a days labor for the nor row. That is to say, equivalent tb maintaining the laborer who win reproduce that labor power. In re turn for that hire, the worker wht is employed will produce commoI dfties over and above the amount of his hire which are usually ap1 praised, about four fifths, over and above.
 The manufacturer or owner of the means of production sends these wares to the market. These do moi realize their actual value until they reach the consumer. The middle man takes some, the retailer takes some. the shipper or wholesaler takes some. And the consumer comes up with the amount of the values of unpaid labor which were in that article. The various channels through which it passed in the way of freight. in the way of rent. in the way of taxes. in the way of profits. in the way of interest all came out of the original laborer. and the con sumer buys his moneys worth on an average. f
 They came out of the oriignal Ia. borer because the right of ownership enabled the man who had the pro ductive machinery and whose pro- perty the land and the plant were. to extract that labor power which went into the various articles. for simply paying the laborer enough to live upon. 1 '-H , What is really taking place in the