facts it rests on or asserts were not contradicted. If the phenomena of production and prices were as easily resolved as the witness implies, much discussion and much literature have been wasted, and some of the problems that are now distracting the world would have been given composing solution. Of course, competition affects prices, but it is only one among other influences, and does not more than they register itself in definite and legible effect."
In the earlier Knoxville case,[1] the Court said: "Before coming to the question of profit at all, the Company is entitled to earn a sufficient sum annually to provide not only for current repairs but for making good the depreciation and replacing the parts of the property when they come to the end of their life. The Company is not bound to see its property gradually waste, without making provision out of earnings for its replacement. * * * It is not only the right of the Company to make such provision, but it is its duty, etc."
Of course, this duty is simplicity itself in the kind of case there treated, because the stock of the Company was chiefly invested in real property, but when one comes, in a rapidly fluctuating market, to calculate what may be necessary for replacement of commodities that must be entirely parted with, and then replaced,—not merely used, the calculation, as will be shown, is absolutely impossible. Again, the Court says in the same case:[2] "The operations of the preceding fiscal year, or of any other past fiscal year, were valueless if the year was abnormal. * * * If, as in this case, sufficient time has passed, so that certainty instead of prophecy can be obtained, the certainty would be preferable to the
