Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 128.jpg

128 up by leaps and bounds, as output decreases. 3. What are the increases in cost price going to be? We know that labor has advanced from fifteen cents to fifty-five cents an hour. We know that coal has advanced from two and one-half dollars a ton to sixteen and one-half dollars, and raw sugars have mounted from $.0327½ to $.2462 per pound. One hundred per cent. advance in price for this commodity, therefore, is really very insignificant. We know that some sum must be allowed to stimulate improvement, inventive genius and production, if the present scarcity is not to continue. At what sum are enterprising business men to be permitted to fix that item, without inviting ruin and a loss of their freedom and consequent usefulness? 4. We know it is vital that, if these improvements in plant are stimulated, an enormous amount of property must be discarded and scrapped in order that the public may receive the benefit. As an instance of this constant occurrence by reason of an improvement in the filters used in refineries, sugar plants are scrapping a very expensive portion of their machinery. What sum are they to determine, in advance of unknowable inventions which should be applied for this purpose? 5. All men who have given any attention to economic thought know that risk taking in trade constitutes the chief difference between business men and wage workers. Without it, the world would never have reached its present necessary production. What is the proper sum to be allowed in any or all cases to provide for this most essential element? 6. And what sums are to be charged, not merely for the losses of the past, but for the losses of the future? We start with the advantage, in this respect, that hope so predominates over fear that this sum is rarely, if ever, estimated in sufficiently large amount. 7. What sums should be allowed for the losses