Proceeding on the common-sense view built up out of this range of habits of thought with respect to normal profits and price phenomena, the business community holds that times are ordinary or normal BO long as the accepted or reasonable rate of profits accrues on the accustomed capitalization ; whereas times are good or brisk if the rate of gain is accelerated, and hard or dull if profits decline. This is the meaning of the phrases, "brisk times" and " dull times," as currently used in any business community. 1 Under the exigencies of the quest of profits, as conditioned by the larger industry and the more sweeping business organization of the last few decades, the question of capital in business has increasingly become a question of capitalization on the basis of earning-capacity, rather than a question of the magnitude of the industrial plant or the cost of production of the appliances of industry. ■ From being a sporadic trait, of doubtful legitimacy, in the old days of the " natural " and " money " economy, the rate of profits or earnings on investment has in the nineteenth century come to take the central and dominant place in the economic system. Capitalization, credit extensions, and even the productiveness and legitimacy of any
ceDUii7, than it does to the silnation of the lut decade. QiuUlflaatlons required by the later pbasea ot basmess deTelopment will be noted preaenUy.
given employment of labor, are referred to the rate of earnings as their final test and substantial ground. At the same time the "ordinary rate of profits" has become a more elusive idea. The phenomenon of a uniform rate of profits determined by competition has fallen into the background and lost something of its matter-of-fact character since competition in the large industry has begun to shift from the position of a stable and continuous equilibration to that of an intermittent, convulsive strain in the service of the larger business men's strategy. The interest of the