The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

The Fundamentals of Prosperity
Consider first the fundamentals of prosperity. Progress is not made by pull-
ing off a series of stunts. Each step has to be regulated. A man cannot expect 
to progress without thinking. Take prosperity. A truly prosperous time is 
when the largest number of people are getting all they can legitimately eat 
and wear, and are in every sense of the word comfortable. It is the degree of 
the comfort of the people at large—not the size of the manufacturer’s bank 
balance—that evidences prosperity. The function of the manufacturer is to 
contribute to this comfort. He is an instrument of society and he can serve 
society only as he manages his enterprises so as to turn over to the public 
an increasingly better product at an ever-decreasing price, and at the same 
time to pay to all those who have a hand in his business an ever-increasing 
wage, based upon the work they do. In this way and in this way alone can a 
manufacturer or any one in business justify his existence.
We are not much concerned with the statistics and the theories of the 
economists on the recurring cycles of prosperity and depression. They call the 
periods when prices are high “prosperous.” A really prosperous period is not 
to be judged on the prices that manufacturers are quoting for articles.
We are not concerned with combinations of words. If the prices of goods 
are above the incomes of the people, then get the prices down to the incomes. 

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Why Not Always Have Good Business?  •  119
Ordinarily, business is conceived as starting with a manufacturing process 
and ending with a consumer. If that consumer does not want to buy what 
the manufacturer has to sell him and has not the money to buy it, then the 
manufacturer blames the consumer and says that business is bad, and thus, 
hitching the cart before the horse, he goes on his way lamenting. Isn’t that 
nonsense?
Does the manufacturer exist for the consumer or does the consumer exist 
for the manufacturer? If the consumer will not—says he cannot—buy what 
the manufacturer has to offer, is that the fault of the manufacturer or the 
consumer? Or is nobody at fault? If nobody is at fault then the manufacturer 
must go out of business.