APlllL 22, 1912 


491-412-lm-1217 
BULLETIN 

OF 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 

No 228 
FOUR TIMES A MONTH 
GENERAL SERIES 26 AP.KIL 22, 1912 
Everyday Economic Errors 

BY 
LEWIS H. HANEY, PH. D., 
Professor of Economics, 
The University of Texas. 

PUBLISHED BY ~rHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
AUSTIN. TEXAS 
Entered as second class mail matter at the postoffice at Austin, Texas 
Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. • • • It is the only dictator that freemen ac­knowledge and the only security that freemen desire. 
President Mirabeau B. Lamar. 
PREFACE. 

The writer would preface the following discussion by calling the reader's attention to the fact that many important mat­ters are here dealt with in very small compass. Necessarily, then, some explanations and small qualifications are omitted. The aim· is to .give a concise and forceful statement of common errors, toge.ther with the gist of the criticism. If discussion is promoted and more accurate thought directed to hazy notions, the writer's object will have been attained. 

EVERYDAY ECONOMIC ERRORS. 
Every day, in common speech or in the newspapers, one meets with statements which to the economist seem erroneous. Now, such statements come from some selfish special "interest;" again, from some enthusiast lost in a haze of sentiment. Here a socialist of the radical and ill-balanced type speaks; there it is the narrow prejudice of ignorant conservatism. So compli­cated are the facts and forces of the industrial world, that fe,v are able to see its problems from all sides or in all relation­ships, and consequently loose reasoning and fallacies are unusu­ally common in economic thought. It is the irony of fate that a complicated and abstract science should have as its province the ways in which men get their daily bread, and the ordinary phenomena of the business world; and that on subjects con­cerning which no one hesitates to form an opinion, a high de­gree of scientific training or a broad and varied experience is necessary to enable one to see the truth. 
Economic life moves in a sort of ci.rcle. Put in a nutshell, men consume to produce and at the same time produce to con­sume-; sometimes it is hard to tell whether ·we work to eat or eat to work. By the same token, the same men are generally both producers and consumers. And so, if some politician ar­gues that a tariff duty on raw wool is passed along by the man­ufacturer and merchant to the consumer, and that with an in­crease, he forgets, perhaps, that this consumer is also a pro­ducer-a worker as well as an eater and "vearer-and that his product is needed by the woolen manufacturer in the latter's capacity of consumer; that the duty is handed around a circle, rarely coming to one who is a mere consumer. One can't keep piling it on the consumer indefinitely, for, worm though he is, as a producer he will turn. This case is mentioned to bring out forcibly the circular nature of economic life, and so lead up to a series of common errors, some of ·which get lost in the circle (perpetual motion), while others seek to move backward against the stream (put the cart before the horse). 
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REASONING IN A CIRCI..tE. 
1. Perpetual motion fallacies. 
One of the most widespread and persistent of economic er­rors, and one which rests largely on circular reasoning, is the common notion that by placing certain restrictions on freedom of exchange a man or group of men may gain a favorable bal­ance in trade with another man or group of men. The idea is that by restricting the other fellow's ability to trade freely with you, you may gain at his expense. This idea may be based upon hasty generalization from individual experience. We see certain individuals gaining steadily, while others are losing. We see the strong or cunning winning at the expense of the weak. We straightway conclude, that, in exchanges or trades with one another, one party generally gains while the other loses; and we proceed to favor restrictions which we hope will make our town, State, or nation the winner in its exchanges with other towns, States, or nations. But, (1) we fail to reflect that in the case of individuals, the majority of the winners and losers are competing with one another without legal restriction and that their winnings or their losings are generally an expression of their economic merits-that, or chance. We, however, are proposing the restriction of competition, and a system that probably will prevent m·en 's gains and losses from corresponding to their efficiency. (2) We overlook the simple fact that a man can not sell without buying; that trade (made up as it is of many individual ''trades'') is reciprocal; and that, therefore, barring monopoly, no man or group of men can keep on selling without giving the buyer an equivalent for his purchases. Even the monopolist's price is limited by the purchasing power of consumers. But, you say, I know some men who put things through and gain continuously. The reply is, that in the first place, you must throw out all cases of pure chance or luck, for they are as likely to go one way as another. As for the rest, you may be forgetting that a part of the things sold by thfl successful man are his skill or his foresight or his energy or his integrity, all things which do not appear as the ·goods leave the factory or pass over the counter. These things are a pa.rt 
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of his. ex(~hallge or trade and may explain why he gains. On the other side, too, we are apt to think of expenditures which seem to us wrong-or foolish, expenditures which to our view re­sult in a loss to the buyer; whereas the buyer himself may be well content and no loser in reality. 
The simple hard-headed truth is that on the average both parties to an exchange gain; general production and consump­tion must · be equal ; selling is at the same time buying, and vice versa. "'What goes up must come down.'' To discover some means of forever going up would be to solve the problem of perpetual motion. And so we may call the notion that an ex­change is a deal in which A "stings" B, and so gets a favorable balance of trade, the perpetual-motion fallacy. LP.t us see how it works out in the nation and the city. 
F~om the beginning, one nation has sought to overreach the other, seeking always to go up and never to come down, perpet­nally to sell (export) and not buy (import) . This is what we are after when we worry about our ''balance of trade. '' When the paper tells us that the nation's balance for the :first quarter has been ''favorable'' a feeling of pride swells each chest, while there is a· profoUilld wagging of heads "'Then we read that it is ·unfavorable, i. e., that our exports appear to have been ex­ceeded by our imports. In the former case are we not selling 
other nations more than we buy? Is money not coming in to ·. 
pay for the balance f Bravo ! In the latter case are we not los­
ing money Y Alas ! 
Vanity of vanities ! AB with men, so with nations : for trade to endure, both parties must gain. The only way one nation can demand goods of another is by supplying goods wanted by that other in return ; demand comes from products and is the reciprocal of supply. No nation ever has produced or can con­tinue to produce ·without consuming-to sell without buying, to export 'vithout importing. But, you say, see these statistics. I read that the United States has exported more than she has imported by some $351,000,000; but as an economist I am not elated. I observe that at the 'Same time we exported several million dollars in specie. Again, I am not cast down. Indeed, that we should both export more goods than we import, and also send out money, is neither strange nor any indication 
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either of prosperity or depression. The explanation is the fact 
that trade statistics do not tell the whole truth. A part of our 
imports consist of unrecorded services rendered to us by foreign­
ers, such as ocean carriage, loans of capital, and the like. · 
Thus, besides silk, tea, cutlery; and other goods, our import 
statistics should show millions of dollars worth of ocean trans­
portation received from the merchant marine of England and 
the Scandinavian countries, and millions of capital invested by 
French, English, Dutch, and other capitalists. Adding these 
''invisible'' imports to the visible merchandise-imports gives our 
true aggregate imports, and explains why we exported some 
specie in spite of what seemed to be a so-called favorable bal­
ance. Generally it is foolish to worry about the balance of 
trade or to adopt protective measures to modify it. Ultimately, 
goods and services exchange for goods and services, and, con­
sidering all elements-those visible in statistics and also the 
unrecorded ones-the balance must be equal as surely as what 
goes up must come down or the perpetual-motion machine is a 
delusion. 
Now for the city. The "patronize-home-industry" cry is 
here the form which the fallacy takes. To fear outside pur­chases in general is little less foolish than the national balance­of-trade notion, and rests upon a sort of municipal protection, backed, in this case, by moral suasion. In fact, the same perpet­ual-motion fallacy is involved. Is it not true that the great majority of the men in any given town are producers, creating some form of utility in the shape of goods or servicP~? How, then, do they pay for the things that they buy? Is it not with the things which they produce and sell? Surely, from their own products comes the effective demand. Then, as surely does it follow that in order to make these outside purchases which are so decried, the inhabitants of the town must have a reciprocal outside demand for their products. The importation of goods can not, in the long run, decrease the demand for home goods, . for the reason that the imported goods will necessarily be paid for with the products of home industry. As with the nation, the bogy painted by some merchants, which represents · a perpet­ual drain of money from their town to feed producers else­
where, is without logical substance. 
Ev-eryday Economic Errors 
Like the steel manufacturer and his protection, the retailer opposes c_hanges which will impinge upon his own interests. That is natural. But in all cases in which his goods are not as cheap as the outside competitor's, he must yield-just as the tariff on steel must be lowered. Plate glass fronts, shiny de­livery wagons, and square yards of advertising are not what we, the people, want. We want the goods as cheaply as they may be bought. Nor are we logical in subsidizing men to stay and keep up these unessential things just because they pay taxes. ''Furniture dealer A is an old citizen and pays taxes here ; therefore I '11 trade with him, even though I could do bet­ter outside,'' I hear grocer B say. But Mr. B is perhaps over­looking the fact that he himself, along with all other local buy­ers of furniture, may be virtually paying A's taxes. And he may forget the fact that his gains from A are offset by .A's gains from him-more than offset in the case of Messrs. C and D, the laborer and teacher. Whole communities are taxed to sup­port A's and B 's, a considerable part of whose goods could be secured elsewhere with a net gain to the consumer. 
Of course, all this presupposes ( 1) that, on the whole, produc­tion is directed according to individual wants, (2) that the town must, in practice, depend upon outside producers for its supply of many goods and services. Moreover, it seems reasonable to assume ( 3) that the merchant's function is to supply the wants of customers a.t the least expense compatible with a normal profit ; and that if this function is not filled, the greatest good of the town demands that the merchant fail. The only rational alternative to this view is Socialism. 
Another circle of error in which economic-reasoners often go astray is that which leads to the conclusion that the nation is suffering from a general overproduction. Such talk we hear in times of crisis or depression. Like the preceding error, this con­clusion assumes perpetual motion. Of course, it must be noted at once that there may be mistakes and overproduction in any one industry ; there may be too much cotton grown, for instance. Even here, however, there is not too much produced for the world to use. The world has never had more cotton than it needed. What is meant is that more is produced than can be sold at a profit at the prevailing prices-an overproduction in 
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value, not quantity. But when a man says that a general de­pression is due to overproduction, he means not such a limited case but that there is a general inequality between demand and supply. Again such a one is to be reminded that the demand for goods consists, in the last analysis, of goods produced ; for is it not true that the only way to secure goods is to offer goods in exchange Y The only reason why men make things is to exchange them for other things that they want. Thus, if all goods are produced in greater and greater abundance, each one will get more of everything else and no one will lose. A general over­production is inconceivable. Until that almost inconceivable remote day when man has so conquered the earth as to satisfy freely all his wants and nothing has value, there will be ample and profitable application for the income of every man in pro­duction; and to reason that a nation can overproduce is to as­sume that what goes up 'vill never come down. 
A very old case of perpetual-motion fallacy is found in the two closely related notions that men can permanently ''make work'' by not working, and that luxurious expenditure can help labor by giving employment. These two ideas illustrate the fallacy of the cast-1:ron cake. It is a. mistake to think that a man can eat his cake and have it too. No one has ever discovered the bottomless cake. Just so, it is an error to imagine that there is a permanent fund of work to be done and that laborers, by ''go-­ing easy'' can make that amount of work last longer. The only reason why men work and wages are paid is that the things workers make are wanted and have value. This being true, the only source of employment and of wages lies in products, and the demand for labor must depend upon these products. But to ''go easy'' and kill time means less products. Let the reader draw his own conclusion. Surely the way to make work is to make products, and laborers can't lie back and eat their cake and still keep it. Temporarily and locally they may do it; but the end comes soon. 
So it is with waste and luxury. Mr. Vanderbilt has a $100,000 surplus. What shall he do with it? He can put it in a stocking and hoard it. He can invest it, either directly, or indirectly by depositing it in a bank. He can "blow it in" by giving a ball or purchasing another yacht. Now there are some people who 
Ev-eryday Economic Errors 
are so foolish as to argue that the last course is a good thing because it gives employment to labor-makes work. But so does the investment. And the investment of funds means an employ­ment that will increase wealth and consumption: it means more railways, more cloth, more flour, etc. Moreover, it means an in­crease in wealth which is somewhat in proportion to work done. In short, it means the creation of an enduring source of in­creased production in the shape of machinery, factories, etc., which will give permanent employment to the laborers and their children after them. On the other hand, the luxurious ex­penditure means a gratification that is not in proportion to work done. Above all, it means in itself but a temporary source of employment: it depends upon a repetition of wasteful acts which tend to dissipate the wealth of the employer in a wasteful way. To defend such a course is but one step removed from advocat­ing fire, flood) and war, on the ground that by destroying wealth they make work. So they do. But why not work without them 1 Why tear the building down merely to have the work of building it over? All this is waste and is retarding that growth of in­dustry which means the largest real progress. It is decreasing the total product of labor along with the destruction of capital, for labor and capital must work together, and to destroy capital -or reta.rd its increase--in the long run, diminishes the demand .for labor. 
Mr. Vanderbilt can not spend the $100,000 in riotous living and have it, too; but he can invest it in productive industry and not only replace it but add to it. There are no cast-iron cakes, either in the shape of a fixed amount of work to be done re­gardless of the productiveness of labor, or in the shape of an employment coming from wasteful expenditures which does not disappear unless more waste is incurred. Let the reader ask himself, ''What would happen if all laborers in the world were 'go easy'? What would happen if everyone were to quit sav­ing and investing and spend his money in wasteful extrava­gance?') How long could they go up without coming down? 
2. 
Cart-vs...H orse fallacy. 
Getting the cart before the horse has deservedly become pro­verbial. Now, such inversions are often found in economic rea­
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soning. How often have you heard your neighborhood store· keeper say, "I can make you better prices than that dealer down town, because I don't have such high rents to pay.'' The next time he says that just ask him why he doesn't b ave to pay such high rent. Of course he may be getting a gift from some be .. nevolent landlord ; but this is not likely to be the case. Gener­ally it will come out that his location is not so guod as that of his down-town competitor; his expenses of hauling ~upplies are greater; the number of possible customers "\vbo pass his door is smaller. In short, in persuading himself that berause his rent is low his prices must be low 1 he has put the horse of his logic behind his cart. Rents do not determine prices b11t are deter­mined by prices; and his rent is low because, at the preYaiHng price he could not afford to pay the landlord any more. If he owns the place, the case is in no wise altered, for to sell cheape!9 would be to forego his economic rights and interests as landlord and to distrjbute his rent among his customers. This is no doubt done by many storekeepers who do not keep good ac­counts, and so act with ignorant benevolence. 
Another common case of wearing the horse as an appendix is found in the case of the wages argument for the tariff. Most emphatically, the tariff does not raise wages nor keep them up. Why is it that in free-trade England wages are higher than in protectionist Germany? Wages depend upon the demand and the supply of labor, and these rest respectively upon the utility of the products of labor and upon the quantity of available labor power. In countries where there is much lanC: and capital rel­ative to labor power, the application of labor power will be relatively more productive and wages correspondingly high, tariff or no tariff. Indeed, the tariff, to the extent that it keeps alive industries which are not naturally best adapted to this country, prevents the most productive use of labor and capital and so may prevent real wages from rising. Is it not clear, where an industry in which we have relatively iittle ad­vantage is kept alive by a tariff which makes consumers pay higher prices, that (1) the laborer's cost of living is increased, and (2) that the labor force of the nation is misapplied so that it can not produce so much of the things which men want for consumption? 
Everyda;y Economic Errors 
'I1his err·oneous argument as generally applied shows many in· consistencies. How about the supply of labor 1 Will immigra~ tion be so restricted as to maintain the higher wages which are assumed 1 If not, the hope is vain. Again, where is the vaunted superiority of America's high-paid labor 1 If it is so efficient, what is the neea for protecting it from European labor 1 Surely jn the competition its efficiency will care for it. 
REASONING WITH THE ''MIND'S EYEn CLOSED. 
1. The ostrich fallacy. 
It occurred to the writer to call certain errors ''ostrich fal­lacies'' because they arise from the fact that people often think that by burying their heads in the material they can escape the conclusion that certain immaterial factors are important. Reasoning on such a basis may be likened to the attempt to see when the mind's eye, or imagination and spiritual vision, is defective. Some have denied productivity to the professions be­cause they do not directly result in any commodity; but we know that production consists not in creating things but in. adding t:Q.e quality of utility to the materials and forces of na­ture. The two most frequent errors along this line concern retail traders and middlemen, and speculators. 
First, as to the retail trade. The economist does full justice to the storekeeper. He recognizes the fact that it is a valuable social service to secure the various commodities wanted by va­rious people in various amounts at various times and make them available at the place and time desired It is the creation of place and time utilities. The retailer takes the risk of keeping quantities {)f perishable goods on hand, go0ds which may spoil or go out of style. He keeps a supply on hand from which we may draw at any moment as household exigencies arise; and his Rtock often includes bulky commodities on which as individual purchasers 've could not profitably pay transportation. More­over through his agency, we get the privilege of selection .from .an assortment, and of careful inspection. He frequently extends credit to his customers. H·e is a necessary link between the consumer and the manufacturing producer, and one is blind who calls him a parasite. This does not mean that there may 
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not be waste in retailing. The most useful functions may be abused and here, as elsewhere, a golden mean exists. We may have too many retailers for economy; and \Ve all know to'1vns in which far more drug stores and clothing stores exist than the needs of citizens require, the result being a wasteful duplica­tion of plant and services and a bill for purely acquisitive adver­tising which the consumer must pay. Such a condition, how­ever, merely illustrates the usefulness of the function. 
It follows from the fact of the necessary function filled by the retailer that he need not fear annihilation by the mail-order house. In some fields, perhaps, the latter has an advantage, and here the interest of the consumer demands that the retailer give up. But ample territory is left for the home merchant and outside that territory his appeals to local patriotism are selfish, illogical, and will prove futile. 
So it is with speculation. Here again we find a most useful function 'vhich has sometimes been abused. In spite of rabid attacks which maintain that the speculator is a gambler, that he is nominally buying and selling what he does not own, thereby gaining a parasitic living and making prices higher and more unstable, it remains true that with our present industrial or­ganization we could not get along without him. Is speculation gambling~ Let us see. Speculation might be defined as in­telligent risk-taking, ·while gambling is unintelligent risk-tak­ing. The ignorant "lamb" taking his flyer in Wall Street is a gambler as truly as the visitor to Monte Carlo. In all pure gambling deals three facts are very clear: (1) the risk is an artificial one of pure chance ; ( 2) it is not necessary ; (3) one of the parties must lose. Now none of these statements is true of speculation. Here (1) the risk is one of price changes which are in the last analysis, ruled by external economic forces which may be judged successfully by experience and skill. ( 2) It is inherent in conditions of production and the markets. ( 3) Both parties may gain : broker A having bought, sells to broker B on a rise; broker B holds for a while and sells on a further rise to broker C ; broker C sells to an investor or consumer. All have gained. Ask yourself, ''Do prices fluctuate because men speculate or do men speculate because prices fluctuate?'' You must see that the latter is the fundamental fact. Would 
Ev-eryday Economic Errors 
speculation l,e done away with if we abolished exchanges? Of course not ! It would only be more local, more full of risk and violent fluctuation, and more secret. Think of the valuable services which our stock and produce exchanges render to society. With­out them no continuous and responsive market would be ready to evaluate and receive your products; you would be subject to the whims of the local situation. As a result there would be much wider average fluctuations in prices. Without them the shifting of investments which moves the labor and capital of the nation from the less productive to the more productive in­dustries would take place in a very halting fashion, if at all. Now, when the shares of corporations (say Amalgamated Cop­per) are sold, following a decrease in net income, and others 
(say U. S. Steel) are bought for the opposite reason, the re­sult is an automatic transfer of capital to the more productive field. In this transfer, too, society gets the judgment of skilled financiers. Let us as intelligent citizens, not keep our minds' eyes closed to the more intangible services 'vhich speculative in­stitutions afford. 
There is nothing mysterious or sinister about buying and sell­ing on a margin. Simply you deposit 10 per cent of the price with your broker to insure .him against loss and he borrows funds to make up the balance. You have made a part payment, just as you would in buying a lot, with the idea that an antici­pated rise in the value of real estate would enable you to sell, if desired, with a profit. The chief evil associated with margin dealing is that it makes gambling by ''lambs'' easier, as a man can take a ''flyer'' at less expense. But, in the same way, easy credit may lead the incompetent into unprofitable business in any industry. 
In this connection a word should be added concerning bucket shops. \¥e have ''anti-bucket shop laws'' in Texas and other States which do not sufficiently distinguish between the service of the exchange and the evil of the bucket shop. A bucket shop is primarily a gambling joint in which men bet on a chance event. Prices are made as a result of sales and purchases on the exchanges, which prices are taken as impersonal chance data by the shop. You bet with the shop keeper with no intention of delivery, and one of you must lose. In dealing with a rep­
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utable stock brol:er your interests are identical with his, but you are pitted against the bucket-shop keeper. In the one case, you place an order to sell or buy, paying you:..· broker a standard commission, and your act enters into the complex of the mar­ket forces. In the other, you bet the keeper of a gaming table that a certain stock ·will go up ; if it doesn't, you lose, and vice versa. And you are no part of the market. Bucket shops fat­ten on the optimistic tendency of the public to bet that prices will go up, reaping their big harvest in periods of falling prices. 
REASONING WITHOUT THE BOOKS. 
1. Ignorant Saintliness. 
One of the highest qualities attainable by man is that of for­getting self, or unselfishness. This quality raises one near to saintliness. But that there are different ways and ends in self-forgetting soon becomes apparent when the general virtue is applied in the economic field; for there we find a capital error arises out of an ignorant overlooking of ones self. For example, here is a thrifty, hard-working farmer blessed with an equally thrifty and hard-working wife and a Rooseveltian family. He owns his land and improvements. At the end of the season he figures as f ollo,vs : ''So much from the sale of my crops; I subtract so much for wages of my farm-bands, so much for seed and fertilizer; so much for freight, etc. ; the snug little balance is my profit on this season's farming. Good. The farm is the place for me. '' But wait. Has our friend reckoned his expense account fairly Y What about his own months of toil? Surely the laborer is worthy of his hire. And the wife and boys­wha.t of their services1 Have they made as much as they would have earned if working for wages1 Did ever one see such self abnegation! It might well be that a proper deduction of wages for self and family would leave a negative balance, and the log­ical conclusion follow that he had better sell out and work for hire. 
Furthermore, what about his buildings and machinery' HiB Is he ''charging off for depreciation 1'' There are certainly some farmers whose accounts would show a loss and many whose mirage-like net gains would disappear at such tests. Nor. is farming alone in this. 
Everyday Economic Errors 
2. Undigested Land. 
But this is not the only error which our self-sacrificing farmer may be committing. We hear much of undigested securities in connection with crises in Wall Street, but less often direct our attention to the rural digestive tract. Now in order to get the largest net return or rent from a given area of ]and, it is necessary to push its cultivation on past the point when returns begin to diminish relatively to expenses of cultivation, up to the point where the last bit of expenditure in labor and capital just pays for itself. As long as a man can clear anything "by tilling his land more intensively he is failing to get the maximum return. Suppose, now, that our friend has 160 acres of land, but only enough capital to work eighty acres intensively, that is, he has only enough farm animals, plo,vs, buildings, and working capital to cultivate eighty acres with such care that they are made to yield the maximum return. But in the pride of ownership he holds his 160 acres and spreads his labor and capital out over them as w·ell as he can, farming very ''exten­sively.'' Once more he stands convicted of error; undoubtedly his most profitable course, considering the present, 'vould be to sell say forty or fifty acres and invest the proceeds in tilling the remainder intensively or to sell eighty acres and put the pro­ceeds out at interest. Thus he would get the maximum return 
from the labor, land, and capital in his possession. 
Of course, we note that where land values are rising the extra eighty acres may be held as a speculation with the expectation that the increased capital value will offset the failure to farm most economically. Nevertheless it is the fact that many Amer­ican farmers are suffering from undigested land. We have in­herited the idea of large farms and extensive cultivation from a day when land was cheap and labor and capital relatively abundant. Now, with rising land values the day of intensive cultivation is at hand, a.nd land must be more and more care­fully tilled in order to secure its maximum value product. The large farm will soon be not one of many acres but one of much capital. 
We conclude, then, that here are two cases in which men every 
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day fall into ec<inomic error through failing to reason with the books. 'rhere are many others. 
There is a third class of errors which arises from the exist­ence of classes and special interests. These put beams and motes of bias in many eyes. 
REASONING WITH CLASS BIAS. 
The history of economic thought has been marred and eco­nomics perverted by the baneful influence of class interest. There have been economic doctrines for capitalists and opposing gospels of labor. J.Jandlords have stood arrayed against manu­facturers and made tariff sparks fiy. On all sides today we find errors of intellectual astigmatism which proceed from class bias~ and it is important to present one or two of the most com­mon. 
1. First, there is the no·ne-of-yo1t/1:-b1tsi1iess fallacy. This is the contention of the employer that the business in which he is engaged is "his." Perhaps no delusion has worked such strife and suffering during the course of the nineteenth century. 
This contention comes to a head in the use of the injunction, for here we find the employer coming before the courts seeking to have the law extend its arm against strikes and boycotts on the ground that laborers are interfering with his business. And not infrequently the courts so respond as to give him a property right to the business. Now '\\1hat is a "business" and to whom does it belong 1 A business is a going combination of land, labor, capital, and enterprisers responsibility, in which these various elements co-operate to produce. And it may safely be submitted that in this co-operation no one element is so domi­nant that it has a right to dictate conditions to the other with­out regard to that other's wishes and welfare. Take a business in which 50 per cent or more of the cost of the output is labor, and is it not astounding that here the employer should deny the right of the laborers to an ample voice in deciding upon condi­tions of employment 1 The time may conceivable come when la­borers will furnish the enterpriser·'s responsibility from their 0'\\111 ranks and hire capital and management to work with their labor. Then we would look back at the present claims of em­ployers as little better than preposterous. The interests of the 
Everyday E.conomic Errors 
employers and of the capitalist class have no worse enemy than the man ·who refuses to recognize the union, and, when a griev­ance committee or board of conciliation waits upon him, says, ''there is nothing to arbitrate.'' 
2. On the other hand, class bias may appear on the laborer's side. A deep-rooted notion that one often finds, both now and in the literature of the past, is to the effect that laborers as a whole produce more than they receive in wages. Sometimes this notion appears in the socialistic doctrine of surplus value and ''exploitation'' of labor by capital, sometimes in a tirade against the wrongs committed by employers, sometimes in a vague won­der at the almost endless toil undergone by laborers barely to eat their bread in the sweat of their faces. Born of this no­tion, several particular fallacies have sprung up and gained credence. 
First, there is the fallacy of the dosing-method surpl1is. There are some people, generally socialists, who believe that labor now produces a surplus of value above what it gets in wages because labor used to produce more and get more real wages than it does now. Such people imagine labor as divided up into a great number of equal units or ''doses,'' and capital likewise. These ''doses'' of labor and capital are thought of as applied or invested on land in a long series. Of course the first doses, as everyone knows, unless there are improved meth­ods, generally yield a larger return than the last ones. This is generally true because the best lands will ordinarily be used first and the earlier doses of labor and capital can be more profit­ably combined with the land. With a growth of population more doses of labor have to be invested, and these later ones often yield a diminished return. Then when one looks back at the earlier doses with their larger return, one wonders what ha8 become of it. Does it not continue to exist as surplus over the later returns 1 Some socialists say that it does, and that the capitalist employer keeps it and so the laborer is exploited. But a little further thought leads to the question, does the larger return to the earlier doses really continue to exist? Is there any such surplus 1 Certainly, time was when labor pro­duced more per unit-and got more real wag-es per unit, per­haps-than it now does; but conditions are changed. Return! 
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are diminshed, whatever the past. Each laborer, assuming di­minished returns, now produces less. If, under the later con­ditions, the average laborer actually produces less, should he then receive more than he produces Y 
The fallacy comes through keeping the eyes fixed on the old condition with its smaller amount of labor and its larger return to each labor dose, '\vitbout seeing that when more labor doses are added, the 'vhole condition is changed. The error arises from imagining that the various doses of the series (perhaps covering considerable time) remain distinet and unrelated, whereas the fact is that they are fused and each addition means a new and, after a time, a less productive organization of the tvhole. Then, all laborers of the same grade receiving the same \vage, the average productivity is decreased. 
Again. there is the organization-surplus· fallacy. It is rea­soned that ten men can do more when working together than the same ten could do as isolated laborers; the product is in­creased to more than ten times one. This ''more'' should go to the laborer, is the plea. But should it 7 Obviously the increase is due to the element of organization which functions in the labor of the combined ten. Some one must organize, plan, and direct the "rork of the gang, and the larger the gang the more the need for this element. This is what the captain of indus­try or ''entrepreneur"---0r his salaried foreman-now contrib­utes; and it would have to be done by one of the laborers at a suitable compensation in any case. 
In general, it may be said that it is a sort of blindness in the mind's eye which allows these errors to persist; for they are largely due to a failure to see that mere effort or labor­pain can't make products in any economic sense. By products, we mean things which have value, i. e., wealth, and to hav~ value things must not only cost labor, but they must also be wanted by men. One could chop firewood till doomsday on the Equator and it would probably have no value. No ~mount of groaning and sweating can make products unless they ar~ desired. No torrent of eloquent barking up the wrong tree will fetch down the coon. Thus it is that, hard as it may seem, the most severe labor is often the poorest paid. But if such labor is little wanted, can any one say that this is unjust Y How 
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els·e can society insure itself against the wasteful application of its forces? It is only by makin~ things that men want that labor becomes more than physical exertion-becomes, in short, productive. 
To be sure, it is true that thousands of laborers are under­paid in one sense or another. In some cases they are ineffi­cient producers, and then they must be educated and aided by the State; in other cases they are in unprofitable industries, when they may be helped by trade schools, employment agen­cies, etc. ; in still other cases they are overreached in bargaining by their employers, and then they must organize and bargain collectively. But sound economic analysis shows that there is no general surplus produced by labor off the exploitation of which capital fattens. 
Other common cases of class bias are found in the attitude of manufacturers toward the tariff, of farmers toward corpora­tions, and of wage-earners toward industrial education. To recount all would be an unending task. 
NO REASON. 
1. The Falacy of "Natural Price." 
Some common notions have so little ground in reason that we can hardly honor them with any epithet. Therefore, they will be briefiy pointed out under the head of ''no reason.'' First must be mentioned the fallacy of ''natural price.'' 
Frequently one meets in the press and on the platform such statements as the following: ''The low prices were occasioned by artificial causes having no bearing on actual values''; ''cot­ton growers seem pretty well agreed on the opinion that present prices do not express the real value of cotton'' ; ''The natural value of cotton is over 9 cents," etc. Such statements have been unusually common in Texas lately1 owing to the low prices which recently prevailed in the cotton market. They indicate a fundamentally wrong idea of the nature of value and price. What is a ''natural'' or ''true'' or ''intrinsic'' value? Did anyone ever see one? Is there any way of knowing value or price but by going to the market and seeing what the forces of demand and supply will register there? Can a producer sit 
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down in the southwest corner and decide that eleven cents is the ''natural'' price and on that basis insist that, however much of his product he P.Uts on the market, it "ought" to command that price? No. No such thing as a "natural" price exists. Price depends on demand and supply conditions and varies with their variations. Now it is 15 cents; now, 5 cents. Either is equally ''natural.'' The trouble comes in the producer's fail­ure to foresee the necessary results of larger and smaller out­puts, and it must be as futile as foolish to kick against the mar­ket results. We now know that the recent low prices for cotton resulted from a 16,000,000-bale crop, and those prices are as ''natural'' as the higher ones which preceded them. 
There is no remedy in the cry of natural or real price. The producer's recourse lies in a better adaptation of his production to the demand, and in some precautions by way of insurance. He must use more judgment in regulating his output, and insure himself by varying his product. Here would be the place to preach the gospel of diversification to the farmer. He is a wise man, who, instead of putting all his eggs in one basket, sees to it that he has some other resource than cotton (or whatever the specialized product may be) to fall back upon. 
And here is the place to point out that the ''law of supply . and demand" is too often. appealed to in an erroneous way. That law does not guarantee any ''natural'' scale of prices. Nor does it insure that as the product increases there will be ' nice, regular, gradual movement of prices. In other words, it does not follow because 10,000,000 bales sell at 15 cents that 20~000,000 bales will sell at one-half of 15 cents or 7 1-2 cenUI. ~supply increases, the more intense part of the demand is met, and part of the supply, if it is to sell at all, must be sold to m-eet less intense demands. Thus a time comes sooner or later when the price must fall very rapidly if the crop is to be dis­posed of, and doubling the crop may cause the price to drop much more than 50 per cent. It might even cause the price to drop to nearly 0. In a word, there is no ''natural'' proportion between the amount of change in supply and the amount of change in demand. Consequently, also, there is no "natural" relation between the amount of increase in supply and the amount of decrease in price. The law of supply and demand 
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merely states that othe1· things being equal an increase in sup­ply will cause some decrease in price. Obviously, if supply were to increase continuously, there would come a time when cotton would be worth nothing and would be as free as air or good advice. It is just as "natural" then that with an increase in supply prices should first drop a little and then fall very rapidly (i. e., faster than the supply increases), as it would be for prices to vary in exact proportion to supply. 
2. Decwxration-of-lndependence Fallacy. 
The Declaration of Independence was a very estimable pro­nunciamento. So were the Magna Charta and other venerable documents. But all are now largely out of date. Few now be­lieve that all men are created equal. And the ''inalienable'' rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness have gone the way of predestination and witches. Still, the old belief that, re­gardless of reason and changing conditions, certain acts are ''natural, 5' persists. Thus there is the widespread notion that ''competition is the life of trade'' and competition is the ''nat­ural'' condition of successful industry. On the contrary, it has become more and more apparent to economists that competi­tion may often be the death of trade. We mus.t associate with ''free competition'' woman and child labor, long hours, unsan-· itary conditions, wasteful reduplication of plant, favoritism, manipulation, adulterated food products, exploitation of nat­ural resources, and a host of ill favored attendants. These things sap the vitality of the people and retard the progress of civilization, keeping it to a certain brute level far below the ideal. Therefore such restrictions on competition as factory acts~ railway regulatioL, pure food laws, and conservation of natural resources have become accepted policies. Yet we still cling to the crumbling doctrine and oppose other restrictions upon competition which are just as beneficial. 
In fact, the idea that monopoly is abnormal is quite un­founded, though it is a most common error. Economics recognizes a class of "Natural Monopolies" which embraces those indus­tries in which competition can not normally exist. Here fall the municipal monopolies of water, gas, and street railways; the steam railways; and such limited natural resources as the 
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anthracite coal fields. The economist does not mean that, here competition is physically impossible; for clearly two street railways can be built, and two steam roads may be stretched between the same termini. The point is that such construction is economically impossible. The cut-throat nature that competi­tion inevitably assumes in such cases together with the lure of great economies in combination, soon bring monopoly. Where will you find competition persisting in such industries? 
It is scarcely necessary to draw the further conclusion that in such cases governmental regulation or management is the nat­ural remedy, not individual initiative. 
Perhaps no better illustration of this fallacy could be found than that furnished by certain critics of the majority opinion in the recent Standard Oil decision. They look with real or feigned horror upon the toleration of any '"restraint of trade'' or monopoly. As for the economist, aside from the question of judicial encroachment upon the legislative field, he hails as a triumph of reason this logical attempt to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable, between natural and non-natural monopoly. To enforce the old construction of the Anti-trust Law would either hamper industry or result in the saddest of all dead ones, a dead law. 
A good illustration of the Declaration-of-Independence-fal­lacy is found in that provision of the Texas constitution which requires that all taxes shall be levied in an ''equal and uniform'' manner. This looks harmless and sounds fair. But what does it mean in practice? It has been found to work great inequality, and for this reason : some kinds of property are better able to bear taxes than others, True justice ean only be gained by adjusting burdens to ability. It is the height of logical in­equality to treat equally people or things that are unequal. Uni­formity may be deadening. Every thinking Texan should agitate for the repeal of this foolish provision, and so help strike off the fetters which now hinder our tax officials, both state and local, in their efforts to adjust taxes wisely. 
Another phase of Declaration-of-Independence falla.cy is what may be called the lion-a·nd-the-lamb-error. It is common in the mouths of all optimistic persons who have little acquaintance with industrial life. In brief, it is the notion that the interests 
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of labor and capital are the same, or that there is an ''innate harmony of interest'' between them. Of course2 capital and labor must work together-so must the members of clubs, fac­ulties, and partnerships. But does this mean identity of inter­ests or harmony ? Far from it ! It is true that the larger the joint product of the two, the more each may get ; but the amount of the "more" is at issue and each is interested in the question of how much more. There is always a part of the joint product of industry which so far as the impersonal forces of demand and supply are concerned might go either. to capital or to labor. It depends which is the strong holder in bargaining. We know that the unions sometimes force raises in the wages and im­provements in conditions by strikes, etc. It follows that in the nature of the case the two factors stand in the relation of rivals and that the solution of the labor problem is not to be found in a foolish dream of harmony of interest-of lions and lambs lying down together. 
It might be argued that laborers will in the long run get what they produce, employers likewise, and so the problem will solve itself and the total product be divided without friction. But this suggestion assumes perfect competition. No one believes that competition is perfect in fact, nor that each one gets ex­actly what he produces. lVIoreover the long run is not apt to appeal very forcefully to a starving man. Above all, the ques­tion remains, just what do they produce? how much? That will partly depend, in the laborer's case, upon the kind of a living he gets-which involves the whole point at issue. To assume a fixed product would beg the question. 
We do not mean to argue that employer and employe are in­evitably and always enemi,es. By conciliation and joint confer­ence-or by arbitration, if needs be-their interests may be ad­justed. But that this end is not to be gained by a shallow op­timism is the point. 
But if one were to attempt to state all the errors that arise from a lack of reasoning, one would never stQp. Besides, it is a task which encourages pessimism.; whereas the truth is that the average man is thinking much straighter on economic top­ics than ever before. It is not in vain that, as recent statistics show, the number of students who each year take an elementary 
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college course in Economics exceeds 18,400. And the moral iB that the time has passed when we merely shudder at the words ''monopoly'' and ''regulation,'' when demagogues can per­suade us that stock and produce exchanges are rmmitigated evils, when a single-taxer can convince us that by making peo­ple pay taxes on land instead of rent we may somehow have freer farms, when selfish woolen interests can pull the wool of a tariff over our eyes. Every day, economic errors decrease.