Profit and loss

“ This saying is true, providing you are making expenses and some profit as you go along, but to keep everlastingly at it when your business shows a loss means failure.
The thing that lures many on is the increased sales. ”

“ Others may tell you differently, especially those who are under the influence of the "trading humanities," a class that is singularly addicted to philanthropy or vituperation, as the balance-sheet happens to show variations of profit and loss. ”

“ Profit without labour, will be preferred to labour with loss. The effort of the best informed will be to get out of the nation into the separate interest, to avoid the labour with loss, and to gain the profit without labour. ”

“ They constitute rather the ledger of the people, in which, as the merchant in his books, the citizen can read at once all the results of a week, a month, a year, or series of years, and can deduce the profit or the loss which has accrued to the account of vitality, morals, education, wealth, power. ”

“ With such, and so many additional charges, how can there be any profit, if the goods are sold customers at a fair price that will attract them?
There is only one way to cover possible loss and that is in getting rid of the goods at a small profit. ”

“ The choice of goods to be taken from each person, the chance of accident before the day of sale, the naming of citizens who were to bear the charges of making good any possible loss, the various fortunes of the auction and of the prices it might bring, the skilful calculations necessary to ensure that however much the profits might exceed the needed sum they should never fall short of it—all these things created at every turn new chances of corruption, new hopes of profit to those in authority, and new prospects of ruin to those under the law. ”

“ A hundred and fifty-four able-bodied hands produce you a yearly profit of eleven thousand dollars, which, saying nothing about the cost of keeping your live stock, the wear and tear of your mules and machinery, and the yearly loss of your slaves by death, is only four per cent. ”

“ Measured in money, and considering the tremendous waste, how few gain and how many lose ! Measured by any other standard than filthy lucre, among the people I know, there are none who profit : all are losers. ”

“ For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakeable. ”

“ “Why be elated by material profit?” Father replied. “The one who pursues a goal of evenmindedness is neither jubilant with gain nor depressed by loss. He knows that man arrives penniless in this world, and departs without a single rupee.” ”

“ Profit, another form of interest, is an expensive process of your money system. The Romans had a saying, Caveat Emptor, 'Let the buyer beware.' History shows that your industrial, and commercial business, and services have always been based on hard bargaining. The desire for more money gain was and is so deeply impregnated in you that it has blunted and broken down your ethical standards. You have always tried to get the most gain for the least value. ”

“ An Ideal Labor Press
The Metal Worker, May, 1904 The prime consideration in the present industrial system is profit. All other things are secondary. Profit is the life blood of capital—the vital current of the capitalist system, and when it shall cease to flow the system will be dead. ”

“ Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. ”

“ The rich devise every means by which they may in the first place secure to themselves what they have amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use and profit at the lowest possible price the work and labor of the poor. ”

“ The distribution of provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of wealth, provided those who administer it have foresight enough to suffer a present apparent loss, in order really to obtain immense profits in the future. ”

“ Why should there be any profits at all, I should like to know. And if profits there must be, well then, the profit grabber isn’t going to get ten times as much as the wage-earner, just because he had a few screwing forefathers. ”

“ The whole impression of this picture is one of industry, prosperity, thrift, and—by reason of these three—happiness.
The nature of profits. Profits.—The return received by the organizers and managers of productive enterprises is commonly known as profit. The amount of their profit depends upon the degree of success with which they can produce goods for less than the selling price. Every employer or organizer assumes a considerable amount of risk. He obligates himself to pay definite amounts for the use of capital, materials, and labor no matter what the value of the finished products. ”

“ Wealth which in its making and use tends to break up the ordinary methods of industry, to throw off the minds of men from the familiar reconciliations of industry and, above all, to weaken the sense of responsibility which lies between labor and capital, must, from time to time, issue in industrial disaster to the confusion and loss of labor. ”

“ On the unpunctual man, ever missing his appointments of business and pleasure, there continually fall the consequent inconveniences, losses, and deprivations. The tradesmen who charges too high a rate of profit, loses his customers, and so is checked in his greediness. ”

“ The first two of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The third is entirely detrimental to it; for in all cases of profit derived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses ”

“ He is paying money away on every side, which he would not do if he did not expect a return, with a profit. By all these operations—by the [Pg 367] work of his horses and his labourers—by the increase in number, and the increase in value of his flocks and herds,—and by the harvest after the seed-time,—new produce is created which produces a return of capital, and ought to produce a profit if that capital is properly expended. The hope of profit sets the capital to work, and the capital sets the labour to work. ”

“ From the gross profit has first to be deducted as much as will form a fund sufficient on the average to cover all losses incident to the employment. Next, it must afford such an equivalent to the owner of the capital for forbearing to consume it as is then and there a sufficient motive to him to persist in his abstinence. ”

“ But if he embarks in business on his own account, he always exposes his capital to some, and in many cases to very great, danger of partial or total loss. For this danger he must be compensated, otherwise he will not incur it. ”

“ The underlying motive behind it all was that each man wanted to make a little profit on the trip—not much, but just enough to call it a profit; and so each one of them refused to sell full rights to anything. ”

“ Now you can see where the profit comes in. Supposing these men turn out a couple of thousand sovereigns a day—no very difficult matter with a plant like theirs; and, of course, the money can be disposed of with the greatest possible ease. ”

“ And, further, if you do anything to make the two, three, four, or five hundred thousand dollars pay less profit, you will damage the ground, or lessen its value, more rapidly than you will decrease the profits—not in the same ratio, but more rapidly. ”

“ Then what you say comes to this: that upon your hosiery goods you make no profit at all?-Not when they are once sold; that is to say, when they are once bought, the profit lies in the profit we have upon the goods. That is the only profit we have in the matter. ”

“ Goods purchased from such motives are not as you may conceive sold till the temptation of an exorbitant profit seduces the proprietor to risk a momentary possession of assignats, which are again disposed of in a similar way. Thus many necessaries of life are withdrawn from circulation, and when a real scarcity ensues, they are produced to the people, charged with all the accumulated gains of these intermediate barters. ”

“ He has the expectation of making money, of making more than he could by lending his money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, for a common experience is the loss of capital thus invested. He hires workmen at certain wages. ”

“ What do we say, in fact?
To determine value,—in other words, to organize within itself the production and distribution of wealth,—society proceeds exactly as the mind does in the generation of concepts. ”

“ We proceed, then, to consider the practical relations of Profit and Wages, as they exist amongst us. Unquestionably the only solid foundation for these relations must be equal justice; without which there can be neither permanent prosperity nor increasing intelligence. ”

“ You know that much of our capital, which ought by this time to be returning to us again, has been for many weeks locked up in our stocks of raw material. You know that the expense of keeping on our establishments has not been repaid by the production of goods for the market; or the cost of maintaining ourselves and our families, by the profitable employment of our time and our wits. ”

“ But, whether for himself only, or through the hands and for the sake of others also, the law of wise life is, that the maker of the money should also be the spender of it, and spend it, approximately, all, before he dies; so that his true ambition as an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as possible, calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and calm proportion to the ebb tide of life. ”

“ The full measure of profit is its aim; and having the substance of its desire, it shows a utilitarian scorn of the mummeries and ceremonials by which the overlordship of other days was formally acknowledged. ”

“ And all these errors were representing great fortunes, each saving panacea bringing into existence an industrial corporation selling its products at high prices—as though suffering were a privilege of the rich. ”

“ And shall a miserable financier come with a boast, that he can bring 'a pepper-corn' into the exchequer by the loss of millions to the nation? I dare not say how much higher these profits may be augmented. ”

“ A. The taking profit for money from the poor who borrow for mere necessity, or taking needful things from them in pawn for it; or the taking more profit for any than law allows, as these who take ten, fifteen, or twenty in the hundred. ”

“ They all know perfectly well, that in a private fortune, the most important fact to consider is the income, and that by the income must be regulated consumption or expenditure, or the capital will be destroyed. ”

“ They create distresses of the poor, and at the same time, create an impossibility of releef. Were money left, like all kinds of commodities, to command its own price in market; whenever its price should rize abuv the usual cleer profit of other [pg 310] business, men would import specie, or turn their stock into cash, and loan it on good security; for no man would submit to the drudgery of business, if he could make money az fast by lying stil, with hiz money at interest. ”

“ Therefore, not all things which have an exchange value are wealth, in the only sense in which the term can be used in Political Economy. Only such things can be wealth the production of which increases and the destruction of which decreases the aggregate of wealth. ”

“ The analysis of the factors controlling the value-scales is the problem of value theory. And here is, indeed, the central problem of the "theory of prosperity." What are the causes controlling the mutations of values? What factors cause values to rise, intensifying economic activity, stimulating trade, spreading prosperity? What brings about the crash in economic values (and consequently in prices) , in panics and crises? Why the low values of the period of depression, giving slight stimulus to industry and trade, leaving economic life lethargic, inert? ”

“ The immediate practical point is that, in the process of adjustment, someone will have to take a loss. And who can take a loss except those who have something which they can afford to lose? But the expression, "take a loss," is rather misleading. Really no loss is taken at all. It is only a giving up of a certain part of the past profits in order to gain more in the future. ”

“ We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are. We outrun our present income, as not doubting to disburse ourselves out of the profits of some future place, project, or reversion that we have in view. It is through this temper of mind, which is so common among us, that we see tradesmen break, who have met with no misfortunes in their business; and men of estates reduced to poverty, who have never suffered from losses or repairs, tenants, taxes, or law-suits. ”

“ Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday’s men of wealth turned into beggars. ”