294 WISCONSIN STATU AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
without value, as air and sunlight under ordinary circumstances. 
But value attaches only where utility is present. Utility is the 
limit of value. ISTo man will give for a thing more than his 
highest estimate of its capacity to serve his purpose. An act of 
exchange is a sort of equalizing of estimates. It implies two per¬ 
sons, hence two desires, and two services rendered. These ser¬ 
vices may be labor, pure and simple, or may be commodities. If 
the latter, two important requisites are necessary, 1st, that these 
commodities be possessed of some utility; 2d, that they have 
some difficulty of attainment—represent or embody human labor. 
Four variables, then, must enter into a correct notion of value— 
two desires and two exchangeable things. Any change in one of 
these, the others remaining constant, must vary value. 
To speak of a thing’s having value, is to use language figurative 
rather than accurate. Nothing is truer than that value cannot re¬ 
side in anything. The expression is convenient, and perhaps upon 
that score admissible, and but little harm can come of its use, if 
the nature of that which is a mere relation is clearly grasped. 
It is often said that value depends upon cost of production. But 
the cost of producing a thing is but one of the four variables which 
must be considered to determine value. It would be more nearly 
correct, though not entirely so, to say that the value of a thing 
depends upon its cost of production, if the cost of producing other 
things with which it exchanges, and the desires of the parties ex¬ 
changing remain unaltered. This condition of things is rather 
imaginary than real. Hence there is very little accuracy in the 
expression, “Cost of production determines value.” If we had a 
perfect, invariable standard — something which remains fixed and 
constant, while everything else is subject to change, we might 
then say with tolerable accuracy, that the value of things measured 
by this standard, depends upon their cost of production, plus the 
effect of any alteration in the desires of the parties making the 
exchanges. The most perfect standard known is gold and silver. 
Value estimated in them, or in any recognized representative of 
them is called price. 
Value is general, price is specific. Value is purchasing power 
expressed in any exchangable thing, price is purchasing power 
expressed in current money. On the hypothesis that this standard, 
