It is true, that sometimes the actual producers or distributors may not be getting living wages because the entrepreneurs or the rent-or the interest-takers are absorbing too much. But ordinarily it is probable that stress of competition between capitalists and between managers will keep their shares within fairly moderate bounds. Capital competes with capital for a share in production just as one firm competes with another to secure a market for its product. Hence it may be reasonably presumed in any given case, when nothing is known to the contrary, that where the laborers are insufficiently remunerated, it is because the price obtained for their product will not cover just wages. Nor are appearances always a safe guide. A man who owns and manages a factory (thus drawing by himself alone wages of management, rent, and interest) may seem able easily to afford higher wages. Yet to divide his whole income among all his employees might give only an inappreciable increase to each. Therefore, it would seem that the principle of the market price being just, cannot be applied strictly to-day. On the contrary, many persons are claiming that the market price fixed by competition is usually unjust. A better principle, a more fundamental principle, one that really strikes its roots down into justice itself, would be to say that a just price is one that will yield a just return to all concerned--the actual laborers who produce the commodities, the clerks in the stores that distribute them, wages of management to the entrepreneurs concerned, and interest on the capital invested. Certainly if this be not done, the equality between the "value" of the article and the price is not preserved. And as Ballerini says, "when the equality is not preserved, so that the seller sells for more than the highest price or the buyer buys for less than the lowest ... injustice is committed."[13] But even though the price asked were sufficient to pay the employees just wages and the entrepreneur simply refused to do it, would the Consuming Class be justified in buying the article? It is contended that they would not. For one of the duties of the seller is to give a just title. And it would seem clear that one who hires a person to make a certain article, playing upon his necessity to avoid paying what his labor is worth, has not acquired a just title to the object produced. There is something in that article for which he has not paid. Human flesh and blood that has not been compensated for have gone into its making. The seller not having a good title himself, cannot transfer such to another. Persons who buy from him do not, therefore, secure a just title, and hence, it is argued, commit a grave injustice by buying such an article.[14]