As a general rule, business men who face conditions of active competition have a right to all the profits that they can get, so long as they use fair business methods. This means not merely fair and honest conduct toward competitors, and buyers and sellers, but also just and humane treatment of labour in all the conditions of employment, especially in the matter of wages. When these conditions are fulfilled, the freedom to take indefinitely large profits is justified by the canon of human welfare. The great majority of business men in competitive industries do not receive incomes in excess of their reasonable needs. Their profits do not notably exceed the salaries that they could command as hired managers, and generally are not more than sufficient to reimburse them for the cost of education and business training, and to enable them to live in reasonable conformity with the standard of living to which they have become accustomed. Efforts and sacrifices are reflected to some extent in the different amounts of profits received by different business men. When all due allowance is made for chance, productivity, and scarcity, a considerable proportion of profits is attributable to harder labour, greater risk and worry, and larger sacrifices. Like the principle of needs, that of efforts and sacrifices is a partial justification of the business man's remuneration. Those profits which cannot be justified by either of the titles just mentioned, are ethically warranted by the principles of productivity and scarcity. This is particularly true of those exceptionally large profits which can be traced specifically to that unusual ability which is exemplified in the invention and adoption of new methods and processes in progressive industries. The receivers of these large rewards have produced them in competition with less efficient business men. While the title of productivity does not entirely satisfy the seeker for decisive ethical sanctions, it is stronger morally than any opposing considerations that can be invoked. It is probably as strong as some other principles that we have to accept as the best attainable in the very difficult field of industrial ethics.