A

1. Why are profits a share in distribution?

2. What is the chief function of the enterpriser?

3. Just why are profits residual?

4. Characterize the typical American enterpriser.

5. Why in the successful conduct of a business is imagination as important as skill?

6. In what way does enterprising skill resemble land? labor?

7. Should enterprisers be guaranteed a profit by society ? Explain.

8. What is the source of profits ?

9. How may an enterpriser protect himself against risk ?

10. How does this protection affect profits and losses ?

11. In what way do profits resemble rent?

12. What is the relation between profits and prices?

13. Why do competitive profits tend to disappear?

14. How are profits related to cooperative schemes?

15. Why has cooperation usually failed in the United States ?

B

1. Many business men, farmers in particular, call their entire net income profits. Interview some retail merchant that owns his own store building.

a. How much does he set aside each year as rent?

b. What amount of interest does his capital earn?

c. What portion of his income does he attribute to his own wages ?

d. What is the government's share in the way of taxation?

2. Call to mind a successful enterpriser in your community.

a. What are his most outstanding business characteristics?

b. Does he give attention to details?

3. Question a retail merchant concerning advertised sales in which goods are offered at cost.

a. What does he understand by "cost" in this connection?

b. Does he always use the word "cost" in exactly the same way?

c. What variety of meanings may the word have?

d. Analyze your own notion of its meaning.

4. Examine, if possible, any attempts that have been made in your community to eliminate profits through cooperation.

a. What was the nature of these attempts?

b. Did any one oppose them? Who?

c. How well did they succeed?

C

1. Explain in each case why the following are, or are not, enterprisers: a. Farmers.

b. Bankers.

c. Scissors-grinder d. Gamblers.

e. Professional beggars. f. Railroad engineers. g. Factory managers. h. Taxi-drivers.

2. Give reasons why American enterprisers should be more daring than their European competitors.

3. Explain just how the profits of a cotton-cloth manufacturer may be affected by the following: a. New inventions and discoveries in spinning, weaving, dyeing.

b. Increase or decrease in the ravages of the boll weevil.

c. Changes in style of clothing.

d. Production of wool, flax, and silk.

e. Changes in the current rate of wages for farm labor, railroad men, weavers. /. Changes in the current interest rate.

4. Recently a convention composed of wheat-growers declared that the low price of wheat then prevailing was caused by speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade. On the same day a body of millers assembled in a near-by city made the claim that speculation in wheat caused wheat prices to be too high. Discuss.

5. Sometimes a miller is found who refuses to have any dealings with a wheat exchange on the ground that to do so would be speculation.

a. Can a miller trade in wheat without speculating ? How ?

b. Can a miller who sells flour for future delivery avoid speculation if he refuses to buy wheat for delivery at the same time ? Explain.

c. Are millers more than other people likely to become wheat speculators ?

Supplementary Reading

Bullock, Introduction to the Study of Economics, 3d od., pages 460-467. Ely, Outlines of Economics, 3d ed., pages 525-541. Fetter, Economics, Vol. I, pages 317-381. Seaqer, Principles of Economics, pages 198-212. Selioman, Principles of Economics, 5th ed., pages 351-370. Taussig, Principles of Economics, 2d ed., Vol. II, pages 158-191.