es as a stipulated sum,
paid at stipulated times, for stipulated services, measured either by the
number of distinct services or by the time of service. A wage-earner must
therefore be one who sells his powers, whatever they may be, for the use
of another, bringing his own services rather than the products of those
services to the best market he can find. In general, he prefers the
definite promise of another to the indefinite chances that he may produce
what is to be wanted in the future market. Very often he considers the
bird in the hand worth any number in the bush, and is satisfied to take a
certain living from day to day rather than risk his ability by his own
contrivance to meet larger wants. Among the wage-earners we necessarily
find all individuals of undeveloped powers of body or mind, dependent upon
the rest of the community for both tools and task; also all who render
personal services, and most of the laborers of all sorts in every kind of
factory.

_Profits defined._--Profits may be defined as the indefinite returns for
exertion, including all risks, which any manager of his own or others'
industry secures by bringing his products into open market. In general the
term includes the recompense for any kind of labor, however rendered, if
the uncertainty of demand and supply belongs to the one who renders the
service. Thus even the fees of a lawyer or a doctor come under the general
principles of profits, whenever the conditions of payment in any respect
depend upon success. If, on the other hand, such fees are stipulated sums
for a stated service, they fall into the rank of wages. That the dividing
line between wages and profits is not always clear is shown in comparing
payment by the piece in manufacturing clothing, for instance, and payment
by the hour for the same kind of work. In the payment by the piece, the
stimulant of enterprise borders upon the nature of profits. In payment by
the hour, that stimulant is wanting. Yet we are likely to consider the
difference as simply a difference in method of estimating wages. Two men
ditching side by side may work, one by the day and the other by the rod.

It is possible even to combine the two systems of payment so as to involve
both wages and profits. Farm hands in England have been paid a certain
price per month, with a share in the profits, measured by the number of
cart-loads of grain marketed. Clerks and agents frequently work for
stipulated wages, with an add