This is true up to the point where the magnitude of the whole becomes so great as to render the conducting of it difficult. Considered even subjectively, the great undertaker, whose name and responsibility keep a great many productive forces together, may demand a higher reward, because there are so few persons competent to do the same. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that a support in keeping with his position may be called the amount of the cost of production of the undertaker's labor. If this cost is once fixed by custom, it will, of course, be relatively high in those branches of business which permit only of the employment of a small capital.[196-5] In the higher stages of civilization, the undertaker's profit has, like the rate of interest, a tendency to decline. This decline is, indeed, in part, only an apparent one, caused by the decreased risk and the smaller indemnity-premium. But it is, in part, a real one, produced by the increased competition of undertakers.[196-6] The more intelligent landowners and workmen become, the more readily do they acquire the capacity and desire to use the productive forces peculiar to them in undertakings of their own; and the number of retired persons who live from their rents grows smaller with the decline of the rate of interest. The strong competition of undertakers now leads to degeneration, and undertakings or enterprises become usual in which the gains or losses are subjective, and are destitute of all politico-economical productiveness; for instance, the purchase of growing fruits, and businesses carried on in "margins," or differences. It is self-evident that the circumstances which retard the rate of interest, or turn it retrograde, would have a similar effect on the undertaker's profit. (§ 186.) On the whole, a rapidly growing people meet with great gains and losses, but the preponderance is in favor of the former. A stationary people are wont to become more and more careful and cautious. A declining people underestimate the chances of loss, although in their case they tend more and more to preponderate over the chances of gain. (_v. Mangoldt._) [Footnote 196-1: Thus _Arkwright_, by his talent for organization principally, attained to royal wealth, while _Hargreaves_, a greater inventive genius, from a technic point of view, had to bear all the hardships of extreme poverty.] [Footnote 196-2: An experienced Frenchman, _Godard_, estimates that of 100 industrial enterprises attempted or begun, 20 fail altogether before they have so much as taken root; that from 50 to 60 vegetate for a time in continual danger of failing altogether, and that, at the furthest, 10 succeed well, but scarcely with an enduring success. (Enquête commerciale de 1834, II, 233.)]