ON VARIATIONS IN THE VALUE OF THE MONETARY STANDARD. 263 



under the most favourable conditions. To expend minutious care in determining our 

 weights when our balance is thus rough is nugatory. It is taking care of the 

 pence and leaving the pounds to take care of tliemselves, a course dictated rather 

 by proverbial than practical wisdom. 



It follows from the condition above stated that the frequent resale of 

 an article (such as cotton) forms no reason why it should be counted more 

 than once. Nor should materials, as distinguished from finished products, 

 be counted, or only as representative of finished products. Upon the 

 same principle the price of stipendiary labour ' (domestic wages and many 



aSord a smaller increment of advantage when the fortune to which addition (or from 

 which subtraction) is made is ampler. If, then. National Wealth increasing, the 

 average fortune becomes larger, the Unit which is equivalent to the same quantity 

 of things will no longer correspond to the same quantity of advantage. The average 

 scale of living being "higher, the same amount of goods will not appear of the same 

 importance to the average consumer. Accordingly, in such a case we must make a 

 choice between the following two conditions for the definition of our Standard or 

 Unit. The first condition is that the Unit should constantly be equivalent to the 

 same quantity of valuables. Or since, agreeably to the views here adopted, quantity 

 of valuables cannot iu general be defined irrespective of subjective considerations, it 

 might be more philosophical to lay down as the first condition that the Unit should 

 constantly afEord the same quantity of utility ; abstracting the clumge of National 

 Wealth, supposing that the fortune of the average consumer remained constant. The 

 alternative condition is that the utility afforded should be constant, that circum- 

 stance not being abstracted. As a matter of nomenclature, it seems better to restrict 

 the symbol C, the term Consumption Standard, to the former definition. The latter 

 arrangement may be regarded as a variety of the genus sliding -scale, designatedby c. 



Dr. Julius Lehr, in the important contribution to our subject made in his 

 Seitrdge znr Statistik dcr Reise (Frankfort, 1885), seems to assume the proposition 

 that the utility derived from wealth at both the compared epochs is the same ; or at 

 least that the final utility at each epoch is the same, or rather a' quantity of the same 

 order. For he takes as the measure of the importance of an article the number of 

 Gcnusseinheiten afforded by its consumption. Now, Dr. Lehr's Genusseinheit and 

 Jevons' Final Utility are quantities of the same dimension. A hundredweight of 

 diamonds, say, atfords so many times more Gcnusseinheiten than a hundredweight of 

 iron, as the Final Utility of the former is greater than the Final Utility of the latter. 

 To determine the number of Genusseinhelten conferred by (the objective unit, e.g., 

 hundredweight, of) each species of article. Dr. Lehr in effect takes the mean of the 

 Final Utilities at each epoch. Now he who takes a mean assumes that the quantities 

 of which he takes a mean are of the same order. 



' The exclusion of ' services ' as distinguished from material commodities has been 

 maintained on the ground that so-called ' unproductive ' labourers are paid out of the 

 proceeds of productive industry. The money which we expend on singers and dancers 

 finds its way to butchers and bakers. To include in the National Inventory the out- 

 lay on Singing and Dancing as well as the total expenditure on Bread and Meat is 

 therefore to count the same portion of wealth twice over. And no doubt this remark 

 is relevant, where the object is to measure the quantity of Wealth defined as some- 

 thing material. But for the present purpose, would it not be theoretically as reason- 

 able'to omit Bread and Meat and base our standard exclusively upon the price of 

 theatrical entertainments and such like, upon the groimd that what we pay to the 

 butcher and baker finds its way to the Music Halls which they frequent "l ' No,' it may 

 be replied, ' for a good part of their income must be expended on material necessities. 

 Well, but by parity a good part of the wages of ' unproductive ' labour may be ex- 

 pended on immaterial utilities. What is earned by teaching literature may be spent 

 in tickets for the opera. Theoretically it is as arbitrary to altogether exclude immaterial 

 utilities, as it would be to include nothing but them. The ditference between the two 

 errors is only one of dea:ree and practical importance. As a matter of fact in the 

 existing world, of the two defective methods the less imperfect is that which includes 

 material, aud excludes immaterial, utilities. But the converse might be true in some 

 happy island, where the material necessities of life were obtained almost for nothing, 

 and the principal monetary transactions were constituted by the exchange of mutual 

 .services. 



