hese articles are made and offered for
sale at that price to supply all customers who are attracted by the
offer. The men who would pay more for it do not count. Each of the
other articles in the bundle, when it is offered separately and at the
cost price which competition establishes, represents a final utility
to some one class of purchasers. Competition has made the whole supply
so large that, in order to dispose of it, venders must attract the
particular class who will take it at the ten-dollar rate. This class
is in the strategic position of market-price makers for this one
thing. They are the last class to whom the producers can afford to
cater. If each of the five articles in the bundle costs the makers ten
dollars, and if so many of each are made that they just supply the
needs of the classes that will buy them at ten dollars apiece, the
price of all five, when sold separately, will be fifty dollars. Most
of the purchasers of each article would give more than ten for it if
they had to, but some would not do so, and the producers cater to the
needs of these marginal persons.

_How the Prices of the Goods are fixed when they are sold in Various
Combinations._--How do these articles get their valuation when they
are tied in bundles containing all five of them and the bundles are
sold unbroken? In essentially the same way as when sold separately.
Article A, we will suppose, is one of the necessaries of life and is
to be had by itself in the market. Article B represents a comfort, and
C and D are luxuries. The bundles are so made that A and B are often
sold together; as are also A, B, and C; and A, B, C, and D. A
purchaser may have at his option the first only, the first and the
second combined, the first three, or all four. Article A, when it
stands alone, can be had at the natural or cost price and in quantity
sufficient to supply the wants of all classes of buyers from the
highest down to the class which will take it at ten dollars--the cost
of making it--but at no higher price. Any one can have the A either
alone or tied to other articles at this price. One who buys A and B in
combination will pay for article A only the same price that it
commands when sold separately; and since he buys B, the utility of
which is less than that of A, at ten dollars, it is clear that he gets
A for less than it is worth to him, but the ten dollars may be all he
would give for the B. This man is not the marginal purchaser of A, for