Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fied with itself or not. Most groups are satisfied with themselves and their methods of choosing men. Groups always call themselves progressive even when they are degenerating and going straight to perdition. The question is whether the group can meet the requirements of the universe or not; whether it can compete with other groups under the rules of the game laid down by certain "ancient, elemental powers," and not of its own devising. The group which meets this test must adopt the most accurate possible test of fitness in choosing men for responsible positions within itself. That the value of a productive agent to its owner is dependent upon the margin between its product and its cost ormaintenance, is perceived by every one The uni- capable of running a business. versality horse whose daily earn- of the law of value ing power is exactly equal to the cost of keeping him, is worth exactly nothing. A horse which costs a dollar a day and earns a dollar and twenty cents is worth exactly twice as much as a horse which costs the same and earns a dollar and ten cents. It is not so generally perceived that this principle of valuation is not the result of commercial practices but the cause of them. This principle of valuation is universal, and the commercial practice is merely a reflection of it. Though the citizen is not owned by the state, and therefore has no commercial selling price, yet his real value or utility to the state or the group to which he belongsis precisely the same as though he had. If the state should assert property over him and start the commercial practice of buying and selling citizens, that would not create any new factor in the citizen's utility provided he kept the same habits. It would merely inaugurate the practice of estimating whatever utili...