It is a fact that many business men, especially those directing the smaller establishments, use the term profits to include rent and interest on their own property. In other words, they describe their entire income from the business as profits. In the present discussion, and throughout this book generally, profits are to be understood as comprising merely that part of the business man's returns which he takes as the reward of his labour, and as insurance against the risks affecting his enterprise. Deduct from the business man's total income a sum which will cover interest on his capital at the prevailing rate and rent on his land, and you have left his income as business man, his profits. _The Amount of Profits_ In a preceding chapter we have seen that where the conditions of capital are the same, there exists a fairly uniform rate of interest. No such uniformity obtains in the field of profits. Businesses subject to the same risks and requiring the same kind of management yield very different amounts of return to their directors. In a sense the business man may be regarded as the residual claimant of industry. This does not mean that he takes no profits until all the other agents of production have been fully remunerated, but that his share remains indeterminate until the end of the productive period, say, six months or a year, while the shares of the other agents are determined beforehand. At the end of the productive period, the business man may find that his profits are large, moderate, or small, while the landowner, the capitalist, and the labourer ordinarily obtain the precise amounts of rent, interest, and wages that they had expected to obtain. That there exists no definite upper limit to profits is proved by the history of modern millionaires. That there exists no rigid lower limit is proved by the large proportion of enterprises that meet with failure.