As far as the internal operation of business is concerned, the individual proprietor meets virtually no governmental control, so long as he complies with the social legislation concerned with hiring, paying, and discharging employees, and with the minimum and maximum prices that may be charged. He can buy from anyone who will sell to him and on any agreed terms. He can sell to anyone he chooses. If he doesn’t to wish to sell to certain persons, he need not do so unless his business enjoys some peculiar privilege granted by the public authority, without which it would not be able to exist, or when the business supplies some commodity or service so essential to economic life that it may be regarded as a public necessity.
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