Again, there runs through the length and breadth of this business community a certain measure of incompetence or inefficiency of management, as seen from the point of view of the conceivable perfect working of the system as a whole. It may be due to a slack attention here and there; or to the exigencies of business strategy which may constrain given business concerns to an occasional attitude of "watchful waiting" in the hope of catching a rival off his guard; or to a lack of perfect mutual understanding among the discretionary businessmen, due sometimes to an over-careful guarding of trade secrets or advance information; or, as also happens, and quite excusably, to a lack of perfect mutual confidence among these businessmen, as to one another's entire good faith or good-will. The system is after all a competitive one, in the sense that each of the discretionary directors of business is working for his own pecuniary gain, whether in cooperation with his fellows or not. "An honest man will bear watching." As in other collusive organisations for gain, confederates are apt to fall out when it comes to a division of what is in hand. In one way and another the system is beset with inherent infirmities, which hinder its perfect work; and in so far it will fall short of the full realisation of that rule of business that inculcates charging what the traffic will bear, and also in so far the pressure which the modern system of business management brings to bear on the common man will also fall short of the last straw--perhaps even of the next-to-the-last. Again it turns out to be a question not of the failure of the general proposition as formulated, but rather as to the closeness of approximation to its theoretically perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that vigilant and impartial surveillance of this system of business enterprise by an external authority interested only in aggregate results, rather than in the differential gains of the interested individuals, might hopefully be counted on to correct some of these shortcomings which the system shows when running loose under the guidance of its own multifarious incentives.