rue trade: the
spirit which may rule all trade, deny it, or discount it, or scorn it,
as you will.

Price is a value set on material, on labor, on interest, on scarcity, on
excellence, on commercial risks; it is the approximate measure of the
cost of production. The ethical price of a commodity is the price which
would enable its producer to produce it under healthful and happy
conditions--which would insure his having what Dr. Patten calls his
"economic rights."

This joyous exertion is not harmful; it is tonic. Excellence is an
inspiration, an intoxication. Let excellence, not Will-it-pass? be the
standard of exchange. From the very endeavor after excellence comes a
certain exaltation of spirit, which ennobles the least fragment of daily
toil. When the producer brings forth somewhat for sale, let him say:
There! That is the best that I can do! It is not what I tried to make of
it--the thing of my dreams--but it is the very best which, under the
given conditions, I could produce. Then the shoddy side of trade will
disappear.

The Law of Equity is the final law of trade. But in whose hands is
equity? Who appraises value? Who sets price? In whose hand is the final
price of the necessaries of life--wheat, rice, sugar, soap, cotton,
wool, coal, milk, iron, lumber, ice? The man who puts a price on an
article, as buyer or seller, enters an arena which is not only
commercial--it is judicial and ethical: he declares for what amount a
man's life-blood shall be used.

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