Many of our factories are architectural monstrosities. Slaughter houses, packing houses, glue factories and fertilizing works give rise to continuous complaints from people living within several miles of their loca tion. Elevated railroads in cities are declared a nuisance by people who own real estate in their vicin ity. John Ruskin never tired of railing at the nine teenth century manufacturer who would slaughter a landscape or befoul a river in order that the rich might have more luxuries.
Probably as the feelings of men become finer, more and more attention will be paid to the wsthetic side of producers' goods. A tool or a machine or a factory can be beautiful as well as useful. Indeed, the French and the Japanese have already proved the truth of this statement, many of the useful products of their manu facture deserving in a sense to be called works of art. The Anglo-Saxon, however, and especially the Amer ican, has had his mind mainly bent on usefulness, convenience, speed, economy of production, and too little upon beauty. In this day of dollar watches why should the factories of a city still assault our ears morning, noon and night with their batteries of whistles? In these days of high cost of living why should the factories of towns and cities be permitted to dump poisoned refuse inlo rivers and so destroy the fish as well as the charm of the streams ? In a model city the buildings of a manufacturing plant would be good to look upon and their location would be such that the necessary noise and smoke would not annoy the consumer.
But the utility and value of producers' goods are the result, not of any beauty which they possess, but of their efficiency in the industrial process which has for its end the production of consumable goods.
4. :Marginal utility.—In order to give brief and concrete expression to the thought or general principle laid down in the law of diminishing utility, economists have invented the phrase marginal utility. They mean by it the utility of any single unit of a com munity as determined by the amount of the existing supply.
For illustration, let us return to the case of the poor man with only one shirt. To him that shirt must evi dently possess great utility. Perhaps he has to stay in bed while his wife carefully launders it. Its utility and its marginal utility are the same, for it constitutes his whole supply. But suppose lie gets a second shirt. Then neither to him nor to his wife will a single shirt seem such an important thing. The second shirt will be just as useful as the first, but he will not value it so highly as he did the first, and it should be noticed that his former high regard for the first shirt will have dis appeared. Each shirt possesses to him the same util ity, and that utility is less than the utility of shirts when he owned only one. Since he probably gets more satisfaction out of two shirts than he did out of one, we cannot say that to him the utility of shirts in general has declined, but merely that the utility of each shirt is less, that he wants each less because he has the other as a substitute; and this fact economists express by saying that to him the marginal utility- of shirts has declined.
Now suppose that thru the deaths of certain rela tives he falls heir to twenty shirts and that lie has no bureau in which to keep so many, suddenly a shirt has become to him an unimportant piece of apparel. Ile has more than he wants and would not grieve if his wife should ruin. one on the ironing board. This would mean that to him shirts possessed no marginal utility, which is only,- the economist's way of saying that his supply of shirts exceeded his possible needs as a consumer.
5. Marginal 'utility connotes reader should not fail to note that the phrase marginal utility always connotes the idea of supply. When the sup ply of wheat increases in a country, assuming that there is no change in the demandi economists say that the marginal utility of wheat tends to fall. That is only another way of saying that each bushel of wheat in that country has become of less consequence or importance as a means of gratifying men's wants. On the other hand, if the world produces only half the usual crop of wheat, then a bushel of wheat increases in importance and wheat is said to possess greater marginal utility.
The word marginal is employed because economists first thought of the law of diminishing utility in its relation to successive acts of consumption performed by a single individual. For example, take a man who likes apples and who has not eaten one since yester day. If he has before bim two apples he may know by experience that he will get equal satisfaction out of tbe eating of each apple and will not willingly part with either. If a third apple is added to his stock he may regard it with some indifference, for he may know that its eating will give him less pleasure than he gets from the first and second apples. This means that he wants the third apple less than he wanted the first and second. It means also that each one of the three apples possesses to him less utility or is less desired than was either of the two apples when they consti tuted his total supply. The third apple conceived of as added to his supply is spoken of as the marginal apple and its utility represents the marginal utility of apples when the supply is three. If ten apples are before him, the utility of each apple is no greater than the utility of the tenth added to his supply. And if we asstune that the apples would be unfit to eat on the next day, it is pretty certain that he would be willing to give away part of his stock. In other words, with ten perishable apples before him the marginal utility of apples would probably become zero.