The first problem with regard to distribution is to find out what are the facts in the case and what are the forces at work tending to make the division what it is. In other words, when the stream of income is divided up into the four channels of rent and interest and wages and profits, why are the dividing fines which separate the channels from one another placed where they are? Why does not rent receive a greater share of income than it does at present, and interest a less share, or vice versa? Is the division made by accident or is it the result of forces which can be observed and measured? What are these forces? The same questions may be asked for the individual flumes leading away from the four main channels. Is this division, too, the result of accident or does it represent the working of economic forces? And if the latter, what forces?

The second large inquiry in connection with distribution has to do with the justice of the division. Is the sharing of the income stream among the producers a fair one? If not, is a fairer distribution possible? And if possible, what are the best means to secure this fairer distribution? In this elementary treatise we shall be able only to answer the first problem in a general way and we shall not attempt to do more than to suggest the answer to the second.