This is not a question, it should be observed, of motive or incentive.  Very likely we much exaggerate the importance of the profit motive.  It may be true that men would work, perhaps that they already work in fact, as zealously for a fixed salary, as for personal gain.  But aim and motive are two somewhat different things, and the aim of profit, is, and will remain, essential to the efficient conduct of business.  In a game the players are not animated by the motive of scoring runs or points, but they aim at them; and the zest disappears very speedily from the game, if that aim ceases to be of interest.  Moreover, while a scoring system is always a somewhat arbitrary thing, measuring imperfectly the true merits of the play, if it measures them with the roughest accuracy, we prefer the issue of our games to be decided so, rather than by the decisions of an impartial judge, who can take into account the finest points of skill.  So it is in the world of business.  The scoring-board of profits may be an imperfect one; let us, by all means, where we can, alter the rules of the game so as to make it better.  But let us not imagine that it displays a finer insight or a superior intellect to speak as though the scoring-board could be dispensed with, and the test of profit and loss treated as irrelevant.  Quantitative measurement is essential to efficiency.  Let us be careful to remember all that this implies.

INDEX

Ability
Accountancy
Allocation of resources
Ambiguities
Australasia

Bastiat, Frederic
Beef and hides
Borrowing and lending, system of
Business efficiency
Business man as a purchaser
Business risk

Capital;
  as representing a period of waiting;
  distribution;
  distribution and rate of interest;
  effect on labor of an increased supply;
  not a stock of consumable goods;
  reaction of price charges on;
  reflections upon;
  supply;
  supply as affected by charges in interest rate
Capital goods
Capital market
Capitalism
Capitalist
Chance
Coal industry, cost of production and price;
  miners’ wages
Coats, J. & P.
Collective saving
Commodities;
  labor as a commodity
Competition
Composite demand
Composite supply
Consumable goods
Consumers’ goods and producers’ goods
Consumption, margin of;
  waiting for
Control and risk-taking
Controversy
Cooeperation;
  unorganized
Cost, general relation of price, utility and cost;
  price relation to;
  rent as factor in real costs;
  ultimate;
  utility and
Cotton and cotton-seed;
  contrast to wool and mutton
Cotton industry
Criteria of policy
Currency inflation
Cycles