[40 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
grocery store or a metropolitan bank—will tell you a very different
story concerning the risks of business. He is under no
fond delusion that business enterprises “run themselves.” He
will tell you of the shifting prices and supplies of raw materials,
and the danger of carrying either too large or too small inventories.
He will discuss labor shortages and unemployment,
wage-scale agreements, efficiency, strikes, boycotts, walkouts,
lockouts, picketing, arbitrations, injunctions, and accident compensation.
After briefly touching upon insurance, advertising,
and the problem of obtaining loyal and efficient management,
he will have something to say also concerning sales managers
and salesmen, expense accounts, sales policies, the protection of
trade-marks, and the ever-changing markets for his products,
with a few concluding remarks upon competition here and
abroad, tariffs, bank accommodation, foreign exchange rates,
and (possibly with a rising inflection) taxation.
Anyone who has followed him, except the purblind doctrinaire,
will gather from his remarks some idea of why corporation
net earnings and dividend rates vary so greatly, not merely
from year to year, but even from month to month, and will
begin to appreciate the truth of the statement by the late President
Hadley of Yale University, that “The success or failure
of a man engaged in manufacturing, transportation, or in agriculture
depends more upon his skill as a prophet than upon his
industrv as a producer ”’
Assumption of Risk in the Modern World.—These risks
of business pervade the entire field of human enterprise. They
are fundamental to and must be borne by the manufacturer, the
wholesaler, the jobber, and the retailer in every line of trade.
[n a large measure the contractor, the builder, the banker, the
real estate dealer or owner, or anyone who creates or constructs
anything in the present to sell in the future—all are speculators.
The farmer, who continually stakes his capital and his judgment
against even the blind forces of nature, is probably the
most persistent. heroic. and useful speculator in the country.
