I hesitate to quote Professor Fisher's "Stabilizing the Dollar," published this year, because of the difficulty of resisting a re-printing of the whole work, but one passage I must include in this review. He says:[1] "It will do no good, of course, to rail at the lucky winners in the lottery. The public was greatly mistaken in attributing low prices to the 'strangle-hold' of wicked bond-holders, and is equally mistaken today in attributing high prices to the personal turpitude of profiteers. * * * How can we blame a business man (especially one who, as an officer of a corporation, acts in the interests of others whose capital he is managing) for getting the best prices he can? We cannot expect him to sell below the market. In fact, if market conditions cause profits to fall into his lap, he would be recreant in duty to throw them away."
However true this may be, it is unfortunate that Professor Fisher, although it was not relevant to the purpose of his book, did not use his illuminating mind to show how great such failure of duty would really be; for, where a business is a continuing one, such profits are always more than apt to be entirely illusory, and ultimately absolutely necessary to balance inevitable loss!
Let us refer again for a passing moment to the hypothetical case of the sugar refiner, which was discussed in Chapter I. Raw sugar advanced in price within the past year from five to ten cents per pound, and thence to twenty cents per pound, and even still further. If the refiner sold his sugars at a reasonable profit on the first price of five cents, the inevitable consequence would be that he could "replace" only half of his necessary supplies. And then suppose, this sup-
- ↑ Fisher's "Stabilizing the Dollar" (at page 59).
