instead of competitive selling of different brands of the same class of wares.
Attention is here called to this matter of advertising and the necessity of it in modem competitive business for the light which it throws on " cost of production " in the modem system, where the process of production is under the control of business men and is carried on for business ends. Competitive advertising is an unavoidable item in the aggregate costs of industry. It does not add to the serviceability of the output, except it be incidentally and unintentionally. What it aims at is the sale of the output, and it is for this purpose that it is useful. It gives vendibility, which is useful to the seller, but has no utility to the last buyer. Its ubiquitous presence in the costs of any business enterprise that has to do with the production of goods for the market enforces the statement that the " cost of production " of commodities under the modern business system ia cost incurred with a view to vendibility, not with a view to sei^ viceability of the goods for human use.
There is, of course, much else that goes into the cost of competitive selling, besides the expenses of advertising, although advertising may be the largest and most unequivocal item to be set down to that account, A great part of the work done by merchants and their staff of employees, both wholesale and retail, as well as by sales-agents not
exclusively connected with any one mercantile house, belongs under the same head. Just how large a share of the costs of the distribution of goods fairly belontrs under the rubric of competitive selling can of course not be made out. It is largest, on the whole, in the case of consumable goods marketed in finished form for the consumer, but there is more or less of it throughout. The goods turned out on a large scale by the modern