No one absolutely sets price. It is determined by far-reaching
industrial conditions, and by economic law. War, weather, famine,
stocks, strikes, elections, all have a say. Yet, to a certain degree,
there are those who rule price. As a representative of the ideal, as
executors of social trust, how shall each one use his Power of Price?
The man who has control of a price--a price for a day's labor, for
wages, for a cargo, or for any kind of product--has control of the
living conditions of the one who works for him. The question is not: How
shall I grind down price to the lowest? It is: What price will be an
ethical return to this man for his social toil?--just to me for my
brains, my capital, my energy, my distributing power,--just to him for
his brains, his time, his skill, his artistic perceptions, his fidelity
and honor? Each buyer must henceforth not only resolve: I will buy only
what I can pay for, but, what I can pay for at a just rate. So far as
lies in my power, I will make an adequate return to society for this
personal benefit.
Some one says: Do you realize that you are making a moral laughing-stock
of much of our system of trade? that you are setting an axe to that
system, more cutting than the axe of any Socialist, Nihilist, or
Anarchist in the world? Oh, no. I have simply set myself to answer the
question: How can the business man stand among the ideal-makers of the
world, so that he shall no more, in spiritual assemblies, be told to
go away?
Woman is the real economic distributer. The millionaire manufacturer
imagines that he himself runs his business. Oh, no. It is run by
farmers' wives. When they do not care for yarn or calico, his looms
stand idle for a year; the vast machinery of the world turns on woman's
little word: _I want_. Hence the education of women should include this
factor: the desire to want the right things. Extravagance is not a part
of woman's make-up; it is extraneous.
_Gain is that which permanently enriches the life._ By every act of
charity, or justice, or insight, or right barter, the soul is made more
grand. True trade everywhere may be made a new method of inspiration,
growth, and power.
Money is a makeshift of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we
never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass
wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet paid for
our trade.
The higher value of money is its spiritual capacity. Not what it will
bring me is primarily important, but what I can buy with it for the
race. Sometimes the question comes over me: What am I trading for money?
My time? My energy? My ideals? Part of my soul is passing from me: do
dollars ever repay? Hence it comes about that all money transactions are
fragmentary and symbolic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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