Essentials of economic theory, as applied to modern problems of industry and public policy . Cost at its Maximum a Measure of SpecificUtility. — Two very important principles are atwork whenever a man is performing labor in orderto create wealth. The more consumers wealth hegets, the less important to him are the successiveunits of it, and the more do these successive unitscost him. The tenth hour of labor adds to hissupply of food, but this addition is not as importantas the supplies that were already on hand. If wedivide the supply into tenths and let the man pro-duce a tenth in each success
Essentials of economic theory, as applied to modern problems of industry and public policy . Cost at its Maximum a Measure of SpecificUtility. — Two very important principles are atwork whenever a man is performing labor in orderto create wealth. The more consumers wealth hegets, the less important to him are the successiveunits of it, and the more do these successive unitscost him. The tenth hour of labor adds to hissupply of food, but this addition is not as importantas the supplies that were already on hand. If wedivide the supply into tenths and let the man pro-duce a tenth in each successive hour, the first tenth,which rescues him from starvation, is the most im-portant, while the last tenth, which comes nearestto glutting his appetite, is least important. Thislast increment, however, is produced by the greatestsacrifice, for it is gained by making the working dayten hours long instead of nine. Let the hours of the working day be countedalong the line AD, and let us suppose that a mangets unit after unit of consumers wealth, as he works 46 ESSENTIALS OF ECONOMIC THEORY. hour after hour, and the units grow less and lessimportant. The first and most important we maymeasure by the vertical line AB. The second isworth less, the third still less, and the last one is worth only theamount CD. Thismeans that the suc-cessive units ofwhat we may callgeneral commodityfor personal usehave declined inutility along thecurve BC. On theother hand, as themans labor hasbeen prolonged, it has grown more and more weary-ing and irksome. The sacrifice that it involved atfirst was almost nothing, but the sacrifice of the suc-ceeding hours has increased until, in the last hour, itamounts to the quantity expressed by CD.^ As theman has continued to work, the onerousness of work-ing has increased along the ascending line AC until * If we should try todescribe all the possibili-ties in the case, we shouldtake account of the factthat a man may get apositive pleasure from hisfirst hour o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidesse, booksubjecteconomics
