ring the business
period under consideration. In short, the business capital as it was
at the beginning of the period is first fully restored and made intact
at the end of the period before a net profit emerges. This net profit
therefore becomes in a true sense a creation of new capital and may
indeed be retained in the business as an addition to capital funds.
Even when it is paid out in dividends, partly or wholly, it becomes
new capital in the hands of the individual stockholders who then in
their private capacity may of course spend it, but by proper
investment may keep it permanently stored as capital. It is the
creation of capital then, that is in reality the ultimate money-making
aim of the business enterprise.

We can now summarize the attitude and policy of the typical business
man in his money-making aim as follows:

In seeking profits he is actuated by economic necessity.

His goal is profits in the long run, which involves conformity with
economic and ethical standards, and net profits, which implies the
creation of capital.

The creation of capital we cannot fail to recognize as a worthy aim. It
has given mankind much of all that mankind possesses and constitutes
the foundation upon which civilization largely rests. The advancement
in the arts and sciences has been in no small degree stimulated by the
demands of business enterprise for new methods of creating capital and
we may believe that should the time arrive when this motive should
fail, when men should grow to be indifferent in their attitude towards
profits, the ensuing stagnation would affect every department of human
endeavor. Of this we may be assured even when we remember that
money-making, and what goes with it, is not the only aim in life.

After cataloguing so much that is virtuous in the pursuit of
money-making the suggestion is inevitable that there must be some other
side to it, that the common views of the rapacity of the money-maker
cannot be wholly unfounded. What then are the vices of the money-making
aim? In examining this question we shall first brush aside some things
to which we have already referred. The pathological cases of mere
crime, of sharp practice, of taking advantage of others, while mounting
up into distressingly high figures considered absolutely, are much less
important relatively; that is, they are infrequent and scarce enough to
avoid obscuring the rule which they violate, the rule that honesty is
indispensable