s the monopolist's own interest is quite a low
price, one such as to allow for an enormous quantity of sales and a very
low cost of manufacture. This, we say, _may_ be the case. But it is not
so of necessity. In and of itself the monopoly price corresponds to the
monopolist's profit and not to cheapness of sale. The price _may_ be set
far above the cost.

And now notice the peculiar relation that is set up between the
monopolist's production and the satisfaction of human wants. In
proportion as the quantity produced is increased the lower must the
price be set in order to sell the whole output. If the monopolist
insisted on turning out more and more of his goods, the price that
people would give would fall until it barely covered the cost, then till
it was less than cost, then to a mere fraction of the cost and finally
to nothing at all. In other words, if one produces a large enough
quantity of anything it becomes worthless. It loses all its value just
as soon as there is enough of it to satisfy, and over-satisfy the wants
of humanity. Thus if the world produces three and a half billion bushels
of wheat it can be sold, let us say, at two dollars a bushel; but if it
produced twice as much it might well be found that it would only sell
for fifty cents a bushel. The value of the bigger supply as a total
would actually be less than that of the smaller. And if the supply were
big enough it would be worth, in the economic sense, just nothing at
all. This peculiarity is spoken of in economic theory as the paradox of
value. It is referred to in the older books either as an economic
curiosity or as a mere illustration in extreme terms of the relation of
supply to price. Thus in many books the story is related of how the East
India Companies used at times deliberately to destroy a large quantity
of tea in order that by selling a lesser amount they might reap a larger
profit than by selling a greater.

But in reality this paradox of value is the most fundamental proposition
in economic science. Precisely here is found the key to the operation of
the economic society in which we live. The world's production is aimed
at producing "values," not in producing plenty. If by some mad access of
misdirected industry we produced enough and too much of everything, our
whole machinery of buying and selling would break down. This indeed does
happen constantly on a small scale in the familiar phenomenon of
over-production. But in the organiza