Strength and Skill, are provided by labour in return for wages. One of the most hopeful signs of the soundness of present public feeling, in spite of hysterical symptoms on the surface, is the general recognition that hitherto—before the war—the wages of labour were on the whole inadequate and that there can and should be no return to the pre-war level. The question of the claims of the wage-earner will be dealt with in a chapter to itself.
No. 2, Tools, Material and Time, are provided by capitalists in return for interest.
No. 3, Management, by organizers and managers in return for salaries; and
No. 4, Readiness to Face Failure, by capitalists of a venturesome type, adventurers and ordinary shareholders, in return for profits and dividends.
Labour and management are paid first; then capital takes interest; then the ordinary shareholder or whoever divides the balance takes what is left, if any, or goes without profit if the enterprise fails.
Payment for all four is provided by the consumer, if he consumes. If he does not, and failure is so complete that not even wages of labour and salary of management are provided by sales of the goods produced, then the
