GRADE BREEDING. 205 



But price is regulated by utility and cost, 

 being merely value in terms of money. Hence 

 the utility of an animal of a beef breed we may 

 fairly say is its capacity to make good beef. It 

 would be gauged by the demand for beef thus 

 far. But cost means the labor necessary to 

 produce a given article ; that is, to raise a cow 

 or steer, and we know that a cow or steer can 

 be raised and sold at a profit at the market 

 rate. What, then, is the reason that a Dur- 

 ham steer cannot be disposed of at the market 

 shambles at the market price? Simply this: 

 "Labor necessary to produce a given article" 

 includes the whole labor. Thus as to gold it 

 includes the labor of discovery as well as that 

 of mining and working, etc.; so that in one 

 sense the scarcity of a product is an element 

 in the cost. Hence the labor in producing a 

 Durham steer includes all the labor of the wise 

 improvers who put labor of the most highly- 

 skilled sort into the work of improving the 

 breed. Every bit of all the labor put forth in 

 thus developing his ancestry counts in his 

 price. These steers are scarce then. There 

 are few that have so much labor put on them ; 

 if it were not so the labor so expended would 

 have lacked a proper return to justify its ex- 

 penditure. The production is always limited, 

 too limited by the number of animals pos- 

 sessing this form of value, and limited by the 



