Business Enterprise

Sposed of the output, and ao has converted his holdings of consumable ai-ticles into mouey values, his gains are as nearly secure and definitive as the circumstances of modem life admit. It is in terms of price that he keeps his accounts, and in the same terms he computes his output of products. The vital point of production with him^. is the vendibility of the output, its convertibility i into money values, not its serviceability for the 1 needs of mankind. A modicum of serviceability, | for some purpose or other, the output must have if it is to be salable. But it does not follow that the highest serviceability gives the largest gains to the business man in terms of money, nor does it follow that the output need in all cases have other than a factitious serviceability. There is, on the one hand, such a possibility as overstocking the market with any given line of goods, to the detriment of the business man concerned, but not necessarily to the immediate disadvantage of the body of consumers. And there are, on the other hand, certain lines of industry, such as many advertising enterprises, the output of which may be highly effective for its purpose but of quite equivocal use to the community. Many well-known and prosperous enterprises which advertise and sell patent medicines and other proprietary articles might be cited in proof. In the older days, when handicraft was the rule