3. _The ability of superior material agents and of skilled workers to secure higher returns than do poor ones does not constitute monopoly._ The free competition assumed in abstract discussions of value, does not mean equal capacity or efficiency, but the legal freedom and personal willingness to move a productive agent into the highest industrial place it is capable of holding. The rocky field does not compete with the fertile one in the sense that it can yield the same uses. The field fit only for potatoes does not compete with those rare and favored localities that can raise the best wines. The gardener earning two dollars a day does not compete with the skilled physician with an income of twenty thousand dollars a year, for he has not the economic capacity to do so; but he is _free_ to compete (as is the owner of the rocky field) unless law, caste, class legislation, social prejudice, or some other objective factor forbids. Anything, however, that prevents the labor or capital of buyers or sellers from application for which they are fitted, defeats free competition. To use the term monopoly of any and every limitation of economic ability is to extend it to every case of value. To use it of the high wages of skilled workmen, where no union to suppress competition exists among them, is to make it a colorless synonym of scarcity. It should be confined to a narrower and more exclusive use. Some special kinds of limitation should be connected with the idea of monopoly. [Sidenote: Monopoly consists in unified control] 4. _The limitation connected with monopoly is not that of economic capacity but that of ownership and control._ The derivation of the word from the Greek points to the general thought: _monos_, alone, _poléo_, to sell, a single seller, the sole source of supply in a given market. The term was first used in England of special grants or patents of monopoly from the crown to make or deal in specified articles, such as soap, candles, etc. The political power of the state created and defended the monopoly. This policy is pursued in a limited degree to-day for the encouragement of invention, in the granting of patents and copyrights. In the current definition, "The exclusive right, power, or privilege of dealing in some article or trading in some market," the term "dealing in" is well chosen, for it is broad enough to cover cases of buying as well as selling, and includes power derived from political as well as from other sources. But the term "exclusive" is too absolute, allows of no gradations, and makes the definition applicable only in the rarest cases. [Sidenote: Definition of monopoly] [Sidenote: Monopoly limits supply]