Essentials of Economic Theory: As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public PolicyClark, John Bates
General
Essentials of Economic Theory: As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy
Clark, John Bates
Economics
_The Capitalist as the Vender of a Share in a Product._--Capital, as
we have seen, also contributes a definite share toward the total
amount of every product in the making of which it cooeperates. Labor
does not do all the transforming of leather into shoes which is done
in the factory, since machines, fuel, etc., help; and we shall later
find that there is a way of determining how much of the product the
help so given creates. It adds a certain amount to what labor can
claim as its own special product, and the man who owns the capital
becomes the lawful claimant for this additional share. When he agrees
to let his capital work for an employer, he virtually sells to the
employer the undivided share of the product--shoes or what not--that
the capital really creates. The furnisher of productive instruments,
like the furnisher of labor, is a vender, and the _entrepreneur_ is a
buyer.
_Entrepreneur and Capitalist._--As was stated in an earlier chapter,
an actual employer nearly always furnishes some of the capital that he
uses. If he did not do so, he would have difficulty in borrowing more,
since banks or other lenders do not loan to empty-handed men. It is
clear that what the employer gets in return for such capital as he may
put into the business is in reality a payment for a contribution which
that particular part of the capital makes to the product. Since each
bit of capital in an establishment contributes something toward the
creating of the product, the employer's own capital has the same right
to the value of its contributary share as has the capital of any one
else. What the employer-capitalist gets for capital the employer,
pure and simple, pays. As the furnisher of instruments the man is a
vender of the product of these instruments, while as an _entrepreneur_
proper he is the buyer. He must purchase the product of his own
capital just as he purchased the product of his own labor. In paying,
therefore, wages for all labor, including what he performs himself,
interest on all capital, including his own, and the price of raw
materials, he gets something which, if competition does a perfect
work, he has to sell for what he gives for it. The shoes, when he
sells them, tend, under active competition, to yield only what has
been paid for them in the making and, in a perfectly static state,
would actually yield no net profit. All the _entrepreneur's_ costs,
therefore, resolve themselves into purchase money paid, his receipts
are money accruing from sales; and under ideally free competition the
two sums total are equal.
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