h matters as can be most definitely measured in
dollars and cents. Losses from accidents to teams and other live stock
have already been studied and insurance to a limited extent attempted. The
difficulties of such insurance are greatly increased by the ease with
which owners may contrive to market unsalable stock through a false
representation of misfortune. The possibilities, however, of extending the
advantages of insurance in a business of this nature are worthy of more
careful study.

PART II. DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH FOR WELFARE.

Chapter XVII. General Principles Of Fair Distribution.

_Wealth distributed, not welfare._--In considering the principles of fair
distribution among all the parties contributing to production of wealth,
it is necessary to remember that wealth and not welfare is the subject of
thought. A child may have equal right to welfare with his father, but
cannot in any sense have equal ownership of wealth. The welfare of a
complete imbecile may be the care of the state, but he can in no sense
control wealth. Distribution of wealth cannot, therefore, include the
subjects of charity, but must be confined to a study of the natural
relations between individual owners of wealth or individual contributors
to production, which make control of a portion of accumulated wealth
essential to individual welfare.

A pound of tea may include in its value the efforts of a hundred different
persons. What are the principles upon which those hundred people may be
fairly compensated by the actual consumer of the pound of tea? This
illustrates the complexity of the whole subject of distribution. No
drinker of tea would dare to settle the question of fair distribution
arbitrarily. No one would even offer a theory by which a perfect
settlement could be reached. Yet when the pound of tea is put upon the
pantry shelf, the fifty cents paid for it has already been divided into a
hundred unequal portions adjusted by some method of custom to meet the
ideas of every helper in the long list. Each has had some portion of the
wealth produced, though the distribution may have taken place in different
countries, under different laws and customs, through a period of months or
years. This distribution involves the whole question of industrial
freedom, and rests finally upon the principle of equity as applied to
ownership of one's powers and the product of those powers. It also
involves, to a certain extent, the decisi