that it is worth. * * * In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns. * * * The ordinary rate of profit always rises more or less with the risk. It does not, however, seem to rise in proportion to it, or so as to compensate it completely. * * * The presumptuous hope of success seems to act here, as upon all other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into those hazardous trades, that their competition reduces their profit below what is sufficient to compensate the risk. To compensate it completely, the common returns ought, over and above the ordinary profits of stock, not only to make up for all occasional losses, but to afford a surplus profit to the adventurers of the same nature with the profit of insurers. But if the common returns were sufficient for all this, bankruptcies would not be more frequent in these than in other trades."[1]
Henry George says:[2] "Of the three parts into which profits are divided by political economists—namely, compensation for risk, wages of superintendence, and return for the use of capital," &c.
Professor Ely thus states the proposition:[3] "Profits differ from other forms of income in the degree to which they are contingent upon successful risk taking."
Professor Laughlin says:[4]" * * * the problem of price is one which includes a study of two sets of forces: (1) Those influencing the standard, and (2) those influencing the commodities in the price lists. A change in a list of prices, in itself, implies nothing as to
