Essentials of Economic Theory Part 4

The essential fact about production, as it is carried on by all society, is that it is a synthetic operation, by which a grand total is made up by the contributions of different industries. There is a corresponding fact about the production which is carried on within a particular line of business, or, as we should express it, within a particular subgroup; for within the subgroup there are laborers, on the one hand, and capitalists, on the other, helping each other to make a joint product. In our table A''', B''', and C''' are the goods of which the social income is composed. Subgroups, such as A, A', etc., help to make this grand total of finished goods; but in A, A', and all the other subdivisions there are laborers and capitalists working together. Farming, mining, cotton spinning, shoemaking, building, and a myriad of other occupations all work together to create an aggregate of goods which const.i.tute the social income. In each of these branches of business there are men and working appliances contributing each a part to the quota that this branch furnishes.

_Distribution as an a.n.a.lysis._--The essential fact about distribution is that it is an a.n.a.lysis. It reverses the synthetic operation step by step, resolving the grand total produced by society into shares corresponding with the amounts contributed by the specific industries, such as mining, cotton spinning, shoemaking, etc. The men who own and work the mines do not keep the ore they secure, nor do they wish to keep it. The ore goes into a stock of goods for the general use of society, and it const.i.tutes a definite addition to the value of that stock. As ore it is trans.m.u.ted into a myriad of forms, merged with other materials and lost; but the amount that it adds to the total product of society is definite. It is a certain definable quant.i.ty of wealth, and that quant.i.ty of wealth the producers of the ore should get for themselves. Distribution further resolves the share of each particular industry into final portions for the use of the laborers and capitalists in that industry; and these correspond with the amounts which these laborers and capitalists contribute. The result of distribution is to fix the rate of wages, the rate of interest, and the amount of the profits of employers, if such profits exist; and the general thesis which is here advanced and remains to be proved is that, if society were without changes and disturbances, if compet.i.tion were absolutely free, and if labor and capital were so mobile that the slightest inducement would cause them to pa.s.s from one branch of business to another,[1] there would be no true profits[2] in any business, and labor and capital would create and get the whole social income. Moreover, each laborer and each capitalist would get the amount of his personal contribution to this sum total. Amid all the complications of society the modern worker would be in a position akin to that of the solitary hunter in a primitive forest--his income would be essentially of his own making and would include all that he makes.

He would not, like the primitive man, get the literal things that he fashions, but he would get the _amount of wealth_ that he creates--the value of the literal products which take shape under his hand.

[1] It will be seen that we here a.s.sume for the process known as compet.i.tion a degree of perfection which it does not attain in actual life. This process would be absolutely free if labor could and would instantly abandon one industry and enter another whenever it appeared that it could create an increased product by so doing, and if capital also moved with the same promptness on the smallest inducement. In actual life there is friction to be overcome in the making of such transfers, and this const.i.tutes one of the subjects of the theory of Economic Dynamics and will in later chapters be fully considered.

Whenever either labor or capital thus moves to a new place in the group system, it becomes an active compet.i.tor of the labor or capital that was already there. We need a definition of the competing process. In the case of producing agents it consists in a rivalry in selling. The laborer who moves from A' of the table that, in the preceding chapter, has been used to represent organized industry to B', offers for sale, as some would say, his service, or more accurately, the product which his labor can create. The purchasers are the employers in the subgroup B', and in order to induce them to accept the new labor it is necessary to offer it at a rate of pay which will make it worth their while to take it. If the workers already in this division of the field are getting just what they are worth, a larger force cannot be employed at the same rate of wages, because, for a reason that will later appear, the new labor cannot offer for sale as large a product as an equal amount of the labor that is already there. If the transfer to B' were made, the new labor would have to accept lower pay than the old has been getting, and the old labor would be forced to accept a cut in its rate of pay or be supplanted by the new. A rate sufficiently low would insure the employment of all. If the labor formerly in this subgroup has been getting less than it is worth, there will ensue a compet.i.tion among employers who desire to realize, each for himself, the margin of profit which can be made by getting additional labor, and this will either raise the pay of the men already in this subgroup or call new men into it, or do both. In any case it will, in the absence of all trace of monopoly on the side of the employers, end by giving to the men what they are worth. It is, in fact, such a bidding for new labor by employers in any branch of business that moves labor from point to point in the industrial system. The _entrepreneur_ is the agent in the case, profits are the lure, and compet.i.tion--rivalry in buying--is the means; and compet.i.tion is, as we use terms, absolutely free whenever it is certain that the smallest margin of net profit will set it working and draw labor or capital to the profit-yielding point.

There is compet.i.tion among the _entrepreneurs_ at A''' in selling this finished product to the consuming public, and among different purchasers in buying it. Whenever the price of A''' is so high that the whole output of it cannot be sold, each vender tries to supplant others and insure a sale of his own product rather than that of any one else.

Compet.i.tion here is overt and active. When all can be sold at the current price, finding a market for one vender's supply does not require that he win away another's customers, and although the different sellers continue to be rivals and each would welcome an increase of patronage made at others' cost, no one is forced to underbid others in order to continue to sell his accustomed output. Compet.i.tion is here quiescent, since actual underbidding and the luring away of rivals'

customers do not take place. When _entrepreneurs_ who are not now in the subgroup A''' are ready to enter it and to become rivals of those already there whenever any profit is to be had by such a course, their compet.i.tion is not actual but potential; and yet it is a real influence and serves to deter producers already in the field from establishing such a price for their product that the possible compet.i.tors will become real and active ones. These three influences may conceivably act without obstruction or may be hindered and deprived of much of their power. In actual life they are subjected to hindrances, and whether they shall hereafter insure a certain approximation to the general state which a perfectly free compet.i.tion would insure or whether the economic condition of the world shall be permitted to drift far from that normal state, depends on the success which governments will have in reducing or removing the hindrances.

[2] In this treatise the term _profits_ will be used to designate the net increase which may remain in employers'

hands after paying the wages of labor of every kind and interest on all capital used. The term _gross profits_ describes a sum made up of this net profit and interest on the capital.

_Standards of Wages and Interest._--This accurate correspondence between men's incomes and their contributions to the general earnings of society would exist only in the absence of certain changes and disturbances which it will be our aim, in the latter part of this work, to study. These changes give to society the quality that we shall term _dynamic_, and we shall examine them at length. What can, however, be a.s.serted in advance is that the rates of wages and interest which would prevail if the changes and disturbances were entirely absent const.i.tute standards toward which, in spite of all the changes that are going on, actual wages and interest are continually tending. How nearly in practice the earnings of labor and capital approximate the ideal rates which perfect compet.i.tion would establish is a question which it is not necessary at this point to raise. We have to define the standard rates and show that fundamental forces impel the actual rates toward them. The waters of a pond have an ideal level toward which they tend under the action of gravity; and though a gale were to force them to one end of the pond and cause the surface there to stand much higher than the surface at the other end, the standard level would be unaffected and the steady force of gravity would all the while be drawing the actual surface toward it. In our study of Economic Dynamics we shall encounter influences which act like the gale in the ill.u.s.tration, but at present we are studying what is more akin to gravity--a fundamental and steady force drawing wages and interest toward certain definable levels. In our present study of Economic Statics we must seek to discover how these standards are fixed, in the midst of the overturnings which industrial society undergoes.

A''' B''' C''' H'''

A'' B'' C'' H''

A' B' C' H'

A B C H

We have already represented, in a highly simplified form, the synthesis by which the goods which make up the income of society are produced. A, B, and C represent different raw materials, and they are changed by a series of trans.m.u.tations into A''', B''', and C''', which stand for all the consumers' goods that the society uses. They represent food, clothing, furnishings, vehicles, and countless means of comfort and pleasure.

_The Making of Active Instruments of Production._--It is necessary always to have and use a stock of tools, machines, buildings, and other active instruments of production; and as these wear out in the using, it is necessary that there should be persons who occupy themselves in keeping the stock replenished. Under a system of division of labor there would be special industries devoted to the making of new appliances of production to take the place of those which are worn out and discarded, and also to make repairs on those which are still in use. For ill.u.s.tration, we may let the symbol H'''

represent all active capital goods that the society uses, the various raw materials which enter into such active goods being represented by H and the partly made instruments by H' and H''. If the stock of appliances is not growing larger, just enough of the articles H''' are made to replace the discarded ones. No producer gets new machinery, but every one keeps his stock intact.

_The Simplified Representation Correct in Principle._--We have now a very simple representation of what actually goes on under the name of the division of labor, and yet the representation is in essential points accurate. In reality a very detailed and minute division and subdivision of industries takes place and the varieties of goods produced are innumerable. Society, as a whole, is making the most highly composite product that can be conceived; namely, consumers'

wealth in its countless forms. Each of the grand divisions of society--the general groups that we have represented by the series of A's or of B's--makes a complete article; but even that is in its own way far more composite than the symbol indicates, for it is apt to contain several kinds of raw material and to be made up of a large number of distinct utilities, each of which has its own set of producers. This complexity of the process of production does not change the principle of distribution, by which the product is virtually a.n.a.lyzed into its component elements and the value of each element is a.s.signed to those who create it. This principle can be clearly represented by a.s.suming that each subgroup has one distinct utility to create and that it takes only four of these to make an A''', a B''' or a C'''.

_A Synthesis within Each Subgroup._--There is within each subgroup a synthesis going on, and this also may be complex. Labor and capital dig ore from the ground--an unusually simple process; and yet there are several distinct operations to be performed before the ore is ready for smelting. When it comes to fashioning the metal into useful shapes, the operations become very numerous and require many subordinate trades even for the making of one product. How many mechanical operations go to the making of a bicycle, an automobile, or a steam yacht? Too many to be represented in any table, but not enough to change at all the principle according to which those who help to make one of these composite products are paid according to their contributions to it. We may consider that all the work that is done in one kind of mill creates one utility. Though there are many subtrades in making a shoe and many more in making a watch, we may proceed as though there were only one transformation of the raw material required in each case. We may let the division between the contiguous subgroups be made commercially rather than merely mechanically, and regard the establishments that buy material and sell it in a more highly wrought condition as moving it forward by one stage on the road to completion, however many changes they may have made in it in the different departments of their several mills. The difference between shoes, on the one hand, and the leather and findings of which they are made, on the other, thus pa.s.ses for one utility. A manufacturer of shoes puts his leather and findings through many operations before he has shoes for sale; but it is convenient to call all that the manufacturer imparts to these raw elements before he makes them over in their new form to the merchant, one subproduct.

_Further Complexities which may be Disregarded._--One man may be in several of the general groups. It is possible, for example, that he may furnish raw materials which enter into more than one finished article. Iron is so extensively used that it goes into more products than can easily be counted. The man who digs iron ore contributes to the making of bridges, rails, locomotives, buildings, machines, ships, and tools in indefinite number and variety. The price of each of the articles into which any of this material goes contains in itself the price of that part of the raw material which goes into it. There is steel in a ship, and the maker of that part of the output of raw steel which goes into a ship gets his pay from the price of the vessel; and so with the crude metal which goes into a bridge, a building, an engine, etc. What the producer of a material gets from each source tends, under perfectly free compet.i.tion, to equal in amount what he contributes toward the value of the corresponding article. In terms of our table a miner may furnish ore from which iron is taken for the making of both A''' and B'''; and if so, when the distributive process a.n.a.lyzes these products into their elements, the value of what he has in each case contributed will fall to him. He will be paid according to the help he has afforded in the making of the A''' and the B''', and this fact does not change in principle the manner in which the income of society is divided. If the man helped to make only one thing, he would get a part of the price of that one thing; but if he helps to make several, he will get a part of the price of each of them. Each group has one grand function to perform, such as the making of an A''', and if the man helps in more than one, and is paid accordingly, his total pay is according to the amount he produces in all the different functions he performs, and the principle of distribution works as perfectly as it would if the man were confined to the single subgroup A. For simplicity we a.s.sume that he is so.

_The Functions of Capitalist, Laborer, and Entrepreneur often performed by One Person._--One person may perform several functions, not only by contributing to the products of several groups, but by contributing in more than one way to the product of one subgroup. He may, for example, both labor and furnish capital, and he may, further, perform a special coordinating function which is not labor, in the technical sense, and scarcely involves any continuous personal activity at all, but is essential for rendering labor and capital productive. What this function is we shall presently see. We shall term it the function of the _entrepreneur_, using this term in an unusually strict way. We shall keep this function quite distinct from the work of the superintendent or manager of a business.

_How Much the Term "Labor" Covers._--We include under the term _labor_ all effort expended in a routine way in carrying on business. The overseers in the shops, the bookkeepers, clerks, secretaries, treasurers, agents, and, in short, all who perform any of the labor of management for which they get or can get salaries are laborers in the comprehensive sense in which we use the word. It comes about that the employer usually labors; for he does the highest and most responsible work in his own mill or shop. It is not, however, in his capacity as _entrepreneur_, or "_undertaker_," that he labors; for, as the _entrepreneur_, properly speaking, he employs and pays for all the work that receives a stipend. He may employ himself, indeed, and set aside a stated sum to pay his own salary; but this means that in his capacity as _entrepreneur_ he needs a good manager and hires himself to act in that capacity. Scrupulous fidelity is the most important quality that a manager can possess, and the employer can always trust himself to possess it so long as it is his own interests that he controls.

_Entrepreneur and Capitalist._--In the same way we include in the capital of an establishment whatever invested funds the employer himself supplies, as well as what he hires from others. Here again a man is likely to serve in more than one capacity, for as an _entrepreneur_ he hires capital and as a capitalist he lets it out for hire, so that in the one capacity he hires capital from himself acting in the other capacity. The man "puts money" into his own business and gets interest for the use of it.

_The Different Functions of the Same Man distinguished in Business._--This distinction between the different functions that one person may perform is not a mere refinement of theory, but is something that is recognized in business and has great practical importance. In a corporation officials who are also stockholders receive salaries that are usually reckoned on the basis of the amount that they could get in the market if they were to enter the employment of other corporations and do the same kind of work they are now doing.

Favoritism may give them considerably more than this amount, but even then this amount is the basis of the calculation which fixes their stipend. If they are paid more than their work is worth to their own corporations, what they get is something besides wages or any other normal and legitimate income. If they accept for their time less than they are worth, they make a donation to the corporation. Neither filching something for nothing out of the returns of the corporation, nor giving it a gratuity, is to be here a.s.sumed as existent, since we are not dealing with the phenomena of quasi-plunder or eccentric benevolence. The character of wages of management, as the reward for a high grade of labor, is recognized in business life, and the salary of the manager, whether he is a stockholder or not, is usually expressed in a definite sum of money and is gauged, crudely or accurately, according to his value as a servant of the company.

_Dividends often Composite._--In like manner it is important in the bookkeeping of a company to ascertain how much of the return to the stockholders is merely interest on the capital they have themselves invested and how much is true profit, or the net gain which is over and above interest. In business life a distinction is pretty clearly maintained between the three kinds of income that have been described; namely, the reward of labor in all its forms, the reward of capital, going to whoever furnishes it, and the reward of a coordinating function, or the function of hiring both labor and capital and getting whatever their joint product is worth above the cost of the elements which enter into it. This essentially commercial margin of returns from production above all costs of production is profits in the strict sense and would be nonexistent in an absolutely static industry. It comes into existence in consequence of the changes with which social Economic Dynamics deals.

_Three Incomes entirely Distinct._--Wages, interest, and profits, then, are the three incomes that we shall distinguish. We shall keep profits completely separated from the wages of any kind of labor and from the interest on any kind of capital. This income falls to the _entrepreneur_, otherwise called the undertaker, or the employer and coordinator of labor and capital, and it comes only when the product of the operations carried on in his establishment exceeds all wages and all interest that he has to pay.

_How a Man could be an Entrepreneur Only._--If a man should hire all the capital that he needs in a business and also all the labor, including the labor of every man in the office force, and reside thereafter in a distant country, holding no consultations with his managers, whatever income he might get would be purely an _entrepreneur's_ profit. It would not be interest--for that amount would have to be paid to the men who had loaned the capital--and it would not be wages--for they would have to be made over to the men actually doing the work. The absent _entrepreneur_ would be, in the eye of the law, the purchaser of all the elements which go into the product, since all the purchases are made in his name. The managers are only his agents, and when they buy raw materials or supplies for the mill, they buy them for him and by his authority, and he is under the obligation to pay for them. Moreover paying wages is, in reality, buying the share which labor contributes to the product of the mill.

The workmen have a natural right to the value which their work, _of itself and aside from the aid furnished by others_, imparts to the material that is put into their hands, and when they sell their labor, they are really selling their part of the product of the mill. In like manner paying interest is buying the share which capital contributes to the product. The owners of the capital have an original right to what the machines, the tools, the buildings, the land, and the raw materials, of themselves _and apart from other contributions_, put into the joint product. In reality they sell this share for a consideration in the form of interest. In a static state labor and capital together create the whole product of the mill; wages and interest are the prices that they get for their several contributions, and the _entrepreneur_ pays these purchase prices and by virtue of this becomes the owner of the whole product. Having the product, he sells it in the market for what he can get. If this were more than the cost to him of all the elements that have gone into it, he would have a net profit remaining. It would be a remainder accruing to the owner and seller of the product after the costs of getting a t.i.tle to it have been defrayed. Whether the absent _entrepreneur_ of our ill.u.s.tration gets anything from his business or not depends on the question whether such a remainder of returns above costs is afforded.

_Profits Nil in a Static Society._--We shall see that if labor and capital can move about in the system of groups so freely that each agent is as productive in one place as it is in another, there will be no product anywhere in excess of wages and interest. Labor and capital then create and claim for themselves the whole output of their industries. When the _entrepreneur_ has given them their shares, by paying wages and interest, and has paid for raw materials, he has nothing left. In actual business compet.i.tion is often sharp enough to prevent men from getting more than interest on their capital and a fair return for the labor they spend in directing their business; and pure theory here a.s.sumes that compet.i.tion is always and everywhere sharp enough to do this. It is ideally efficient. Labor and capital are ideally mobile and ready to flow at once to the points where any net profits can be made. Such a condition implies that society is in a _static_ state, and we shall see what this condition is. It implies an absence of organic change in society. The great collective producer does not alter either its form or its mode of producing wealth.

Industry goes on, indeed, but it goes on in a changeless way.

Reserving the full description of this state for a later chapter, we note here that the adjustment which would theoretically bring a society to such a state would preclude all gains for its _entrepreneurs_.[3]

[3] The preceding paragraphs may seem to show that if an _entrepreneur_ ever gets an income, he does it by wresting from labor and capital a part of their products. We shall see that in _dynamic industry_ there is a normal way in which he may get an income without taking anything from the incomes that labor and capital would get if he did not perform his part. His return may come from the result of an enabling act which he performs, whereby both the labor and the capital of a particular subgroup become more productive than other labor and capital are and more so than they would be if the _entrepreneur's_ enabling act were not performed.

_The Merging of Functions Desirable._--The uniting in one person of the functions of capitalist, laborer, and _entrepreneur_ contributed much to the productivity of the small-shop system of former days. The man who had a few thousand dollars invested in a little shop and employed a few men to a.s.sist him got three different kinds of income, and the sum of the three was larger than anything he could have secured if he had been only a laborer or only a small capitalist and _entrepreneur_. He worked harder and more intelligently than a hired superintendent would have done; he was led to be cautious because his own capital was risked in his business, and yet he was spurred to enterprise by the fact that when, by virtue of the influences which we call _dynamic_, profits were made, he got them. Even in the largest corporations the same conditions contribute to success, and it is best that managers should be owners of some part of the capital which they handle and receivers of some portion of the profits which they try to secure for their companies. Where compet.i.tion is sharp, companies directed by their owners may supplant those of which the direction is given over to hired managers. The growth of corporations does, however, tend to put salaried men more and more into controlling positions and to reduce the power of the body of stockholders, who perform a joint function as capitalists and _entrepreneurs_. In itself this tends to reduce profits and detracts from the advantages which the incorporation of a business offers.

_Distribution primarily Functional rather than Personal._--Where men get incomes that are composed of wages, interest, and profits, economic science should, in the first instance, tell us how the rates of wages and interest and the amount of profits are determined. A study of the static laws of distribution concerns itself with the reward of labor as such, and the reward of capital as such, while a study of dynamics takes account of pure profits. When we know what the rates of wages and interest are, we can tell what any capitalist-manager should have by knowing how much capital he furnishes and how much and how well he works as a manager. If the business is yielding a net profit, over and above the interest on its capital, we can tell what part of this net income any one stockholder will get--in the form of a rate of dividends in excess of the rate of interest--if we know how much of the common stock of the company he owns. His personal income depends on the incomes attaching to the functions he performs. The science of distribution should tell us primarily, not what any man personally gets as a total income and how well off he is as compared with other men, but in what way the wages of his labor, the interest on his capital, and the return for the _entrepreneur's_ function are fixed. In technical terms this is saying that distribution is primarily _functional_ and not personal. Certain forces a.s.sign certain rewards to different functions which are involved in the creating of wealth, and the science of distribution tells us how these forces work--tells us, in short, how wages, interest, and true profits are, in and of themselves, determined. If any man works and gets wages, that part of his income will be determined by the wages law. If he furnishes capital, a second part of his income will be determined by the interest law. If he also coordinates labor and capital, whatever he may thus gain is determined by the law of profit. Economic science has to ascertain and state what these three laws are, though in its static division it has only to account for two of them.

_Costs as well as Gains Apportioned._--The term _distribution_, as commonly used, denotes a division of the gains of industry; but as we have said, there are sacrifices which have to be borne in getting the gains, and these also have to be shared. Wealth benefits men in the using, but puts burdens upon them in the making; and when all society does the making, it has to apportion, in some way, not only the benefits but the burdens. We shall take account of these sacrifices because of the relation that they bear to the gains. They act as an ultimate check on production. Men would go on producing indefinitely if the operation cost them nothing, since it would always be agreeable to have a further income; but they necessarily encounter pains and sacrifices that, sooner, or later, bring the enlargement of their incomes to an end. Much that is of importance occurs at that critical point where the sacrifices of production put an end to the extension of it. It is the positive fruits of production that we have first to consider; and what in this connection we wish first to know is how wages and interest are determined when industry is carried on in a social way and under a system of compet.i.tion. We shall find that these incomes are always tending toward standards which they would reach if society were in the state which we have described as static. How they are forced away from their standards by the changes and disturbances of actual life, and how the standards themselves change with social development, will be the subject of the latter part of this treatise.

CHAPTER VI

VALUE AND ITS RELATION TO DIFFERENT INCOMES

Functional distribution controls personal incomes since each man who gets, in a normal way, any income at all performs one or more productive functions, and his total income is the sum of the returns for these several functions. Moreover under such a condition of ideally perfect compet.i.tion as we have a.s.sumed each of these functions is rewarded according to the product that it creates; and each man accordingly is paid an amount that equals the total product which he personally creates. Men's products, even in the disturbed conditions of actual life, set the _standards_ to which their returns tend to conform, though they vary from them in ways that we shall not fail to notice.

_Group Distribution._--The grand total of the social income has to go through a preliminary division before it is shared by laborers, capitalists, and _entrepreneurs_. In each industry the pay of all these functionaries comes from the selling price of the commercial article that they cooperate in making. The price of shoes pays all shoemakers, whether what they contribute to the manufacturing is labor, capital, or mere coordination; and it also pays ranchmen and tanners for what they contribute in the shape of leather, raw and dressed. If the price of shoes should rise, there would be a larger income for the group whose activities create them. So if woolen clothing were to become dearer, there would be more money for the group that makes it, and this would include those who raise sheep and those who convert wool into cloth, as well as the garment makers themselves. The question, what members of a group would get the benefit of a rise in the price of its product, is one that must be discussed in connection with economic dynamics, and we shall find, when we reach this part of the subject, that it is _entrepreneurs'_ gains which come largely from sources like this. We have already seen that, in a static condition and with prices, wages, and interest immovably held at rates to which perfectly free compet.i.tion would bring them, _entrepreneurs_ as such would get _nil_, and the whole price of every article would be distributed among the laborers and the capitalists who make it. The proof of this will appear when we have examined the process by which the values of goods are adjusted, and this will help to prepare the way for a study of the sources of net profits, which are an all-important feature of actual business.

Society is honest or dishonest according as this _entrepreneurs'_ income is gained in one way or in another; and it is not too much to say that before the court of last resort, the body of the people, no system of business will be allowed permanently to stand unless the basic principle of it tends to eliminate dishonest profits. A chief purpose of static studies is to afford a means of testing the legitimacy of the incomes that come to _entrepreneurs_.

_Market Price._--The old phrase _supply and demand_ describes the process by which the market price of anything is determined. The total mercantile stock of goods of a particular kind at any one time on hand is, of course, an exact quant.i.ty, and the law of "market value," when these words are used in a restricted and technical sense, determines the price at which this predetermined amount can be sold.

_How a Normal Supply is Determined._--This present stock, however, was brought into existence by producers who looked forward to the time when they could probably sell it at a certain price; and the higher this antic.i.p.ated return for the article, the more of it they were induced to make. The price, which to-day depends on the quant.i.ty on hand, acted in advance as a lure to bring that quant.i.ty into existence, and among the different articles which men can produce, they are forever singling out for increased production those things which offer the strongest lures--that is, the things that sell for the largest amounts as compared with the cost of making them. The ultimate tendency of all this is a certain adjustment of the relative supplies of different commodities. It is that adjustment which brings all prices to a level determined by cost.

_Natural Value._--This tendency toward cost prices--those which afford to the producers wages for all their labor but no true _entrepreneurs'_ profit--establishes a further law, that of "natural value," and this it is that fixes the standard to which, in the long run, market values, as adjusted by supply and demand, tend to conform.

A market value is natural or unnatural according as it does or does not conform to a certain standard, and this ultimate standard itself is the cost of producing the several kinds of goods. What the term _cost_ in this connection really means we must later see; but for the present we may take the common and practical view that it is the amount of money that an _entrepreneur_ must pay out in order to bring the article into existence. If there were very little wheat in the granaries of the world, demand acting on this limited supply would determine the selling price of it, and this price would be high as compared with the cost of raising this grain. It would also be higher than the selling prices of other things which are produced by the same expenditure of labor and capital that has to be made in raising the wheat. The market price would, for the time being, be unnatural and would in due time be brought down; but this would have to be done by the raising of more wheat. In other words, though the selling price of a small supply of wheat may be _normal for that amount_, the amount supplied is itself abnormally small, and in view of that fact the resulting price is too high to be allowed to continue. As a permanent price it would not be natural. The quant.i.ty supplied tends to increase till the market price conforms to the cost of raising the wheat. We have to see, first, how demand fixes the price of a definite amount of anything which is offered for sale and, later, how the quant.i.ty offered is controlled.

_How Prices are Determined._--It is certain that if, in a given market, we increase the quant.i.ty of goods that are to be sold, we lower the price,[1] while, if we diminish the quant.i.ty, we raise the price. That is the commercial fact and it furnishes a beginning for a theory of value.

[1] The term _market_, as used in this discussion, means a local area within which goods of given kinds are bought and sold; and for different purposes we may make the area small or large. For some purposes it is necessary to take a "world market" into consideration, while for others it is desirable to include only that part of the world within which compet.i.tion is very active and within which also goods and persons move freely and cheaply from place to place. A single country like the United States affords a market large enough to ill.u.s.trate the laws of value, though one must always keep in view the relation of this circ.u.mscribed area to its environment. How local areas may, in a scientific way, be delimited and isolated for purposes of study will appear in a later chapter.

Let us suppose that we have a fixed quant.i.ty of goods on hand, that all must be sold, and that no one knows at the outset what price they will bring. There might conceivably go on an inverted kind of auctioning process, in which the sellers at the outset would ask a high rate, sell a few of their goods, and then gradually reduce the price till the last article should be sold. At each reduction of the price the "effectual demand," so-called, would increase. This means that the people who want the article are actually willing to take and pay for larger quant.i.ties the lower the price falls. Mere desire does not influence the market, but an "effectual demand" means a desire and a tender of the money that is asked for the goods. It is, in short, an actual purchase and the amount of it becomes larger as the price goes down. People who did not buy the article before now add it to the list of goods that they take for use, and the people who were already taking a certain quant.i.ty of it now take more.

_Equation of Supply and Effective Demand._--If this effective demand, or amount of goods actually bought and paid for, becomes steadily larger the lower the price becomes, it is clear that, however large the total supply may be, it can all be sold by making the price low enough. It was once thought that this is all we need to know of prices current or market values. At some selling rate or other the quant.i.ty actually offered will come to equal the quant.i.ty that is actually bought. This is the equation of demand and supply. The quant.i.ty offered is here supposed to be fixed and to include all of the article that is in dealers' hands and that has to be sold; and the price, starting at a high rate, is supposed to go down till the sale of the entire quant.i.ty is effected.

_Varying Demand and Price._--The facts that have just been stated account only in a partial way for the adjustment of market price. One who wishes to trace phenomena to their causes cannot help asking why demand and supply insure the selling of a given amount of goods at one rate rather than at another. If apples are offering at two dollars a barrel, why is it that, in a particular local market, one thousand barrels and no more can, at that rate, be sold? We can readily see that at one dollar a barrel more could be sold than at two, and that at three less would be sold. But why is it that, at two dollars, the definite number of one thousand barrels is the amount that is taken and paid for? Why is the equation of demand and supply established at exactly that price?

_Demand and Final Utility._--We come nearer to the cause that acts in adjusting the price of apples when we say that they sell at two dollars a barrel because that sum expresses their "final utility."

This means that, if such an auctioning process as we have described were resorted to, the last barrel of apples which would be sold would have to the buyer an amount of utility just equal to that of the final unit of any other article that could have been had for the same money.

The auctioning, however, would cause different barrels of apples to sell at different prices, whereas there is something in the working of compet.i.tion which causes all of them to sell at the same price. It is necessary to see, first, how the price of the "final" one is adjusted and, secondly, how that fixes the price of all the others.

_The Law of Diminishing Utility._--We revert here to one of those general laws of economics that we have already stated and see it acting under the conditions of distinctly social life. Goods of a given kind have less and less utility, per unit, the more the user has of them. If you offer him apples in increased quant.i.ty, he will value the first part of the supply highly, but will attach less value to the later parts. When the desire for this fruit is fairly well satisfied, he will find other articles of more importance. At the price of two dollars a barrel it is just worth his while to buy a final barrel of them. That quant.i.ty, as added to his winter's supply, will give him two dollars' worth of benefit. This means that it will do him as much good as anything else which he can get for the same amount of money.

_The Equalization of Final Utilities._--Two dollars spent in adding to his previous stock of other things will do the man in the ill.u.s.tration the same amount of good that he can get from a final barrel of apples, and no more. In the case of goods which are all alike and of which consumers are always glad to use an additional amount, prices tend to adjust themselves in such a way that a final unit of any one which the consumer buys with a dollar is worth just as much to him as a final unit of any other article he buys with that amount. The last dollar paid for apples is as remunerative, in the way of pleasure and benefit secured, as is the last dollar used to improve his wardrobe, to add something to his stock of furniture, to buy tickets to the theater, etc. Apples have, as it were, to compete with clothing, furniture, and amus.e.m.e.nts for the consumer's favor, and if the vender charges more for them than do the venders of other things having the same power to give pleasure, some of the apples will remain unsold; for though customers will always give as much as they would have to pay for other things of equal final utility, they will not give more.