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s fast with an increase of supply the monopoly price will be high for it, and it will pay the monopolist better to restrict the output and sell the limited supply at a high price, because a large reduction of price will not stimulate a proportionably large increase of consumption. So where the marginal utility sinks slowly, it will pay to increase the supply and lower the price, for each fall of price will stimulate a large increase of consumption. Since the marginal utility of a number of increments of supply will not be the same in the case of any two commodities, it is evident that the determination of monopoly prices is a very delicate operation. It is not possible to present even an approximately accurate classification of commodities in relation to the powers of a Trust or Monopoly. But the following considerations will assist us to understand why in some cases a Trust appears to raise prices, in others to keep them as they were, and in others even to lower them:-- (_a_) The urgency of the need which a commodity satisfies enables the monopolist to charge high prices. Where a community is dependent for life upon some single commodity, as the Chinese on rice, the monopolist is able to obtain a high price for the whole of a supply which does not exceed what is necessary to keep alive the whole population. Thus a monopolist of corn or rice in a famine can get an exorbitant price for a considerable supply. But after the supply is large enough to enable every one to satisfy the most urgent need for sustenance, the urgency of the need satisfied by any further supply falls rapidly, for there is no comparison between the demand of famine and the demand induced by the pleasures of eating. A monopoly of a necessity of life is therefore more dangerous than any other monopoly, because it not merely places the lives of the people at the mercy of private traders, but because it will generally be the interest of such monopolists to limit supply to the satisfaction of the barest necessaries of life. Next to a necessary in this respect will come what is termed a "conventional necessary," something which by custom has been firmly implanted as an integral portion of the standard of comfort. This differs, of course, in different classes of a community. Boots may now be regarded as a "conventional necessary" of almost all grades of English society, and a monopolist could probably raise the price of boots considerably without
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