r to its lower or to its upper limit."[61] But the higgling
cannot touch the underlying attitudes. Even "power of persuasion" is
only one part of "skill in bargaining," with all the rest and like all
the rest; if it were more than this there would be for Boehm-Bawerk no
theoretically grounded price limits to define the range of accidental
settlement and the whole explanation, as a theory of price, would reduce
to nullity.[62]

With this, then, appears to fall away all ground for a one-sided, or
even a sharply two-sided, conception of the process of fixation of
market-values. A "marginal utility" theory and a "cost of production"
theory of market price alike assume that the factor chosen as the
ultimate determinant is a fixed fact defined by conditions which the
actual spatial and temporal meeting-together of buyers and sellers in
the market cannot affect. In this logical sense, the chosen determinant
is in each case an ante-market or extra-market fact and the same is true
of the blades of Marshall's famous pair of scissors.

The price of a certain article let us say is $5. According to the
current type of analysis this is the price because, intending buyers'
and sellers' valuations of the article being just what they are, it is
at this figure that the largest number of exchanges can occur. Were the
price higher there would be more persons willing to sell than to buy;
were it lower there would be more persons willing to buy than to sell.
At $5 no buyer or seller who means what he says about his valuation when
he enters the market goes away disappointed or dissatisfied. With this
price established all sellers whose costs of production prevent their
conforming to it must drop out of the market; so must all buyers whose
desire for the article does not warrant their paying so much. More
fundamentally then, Why is $5 the price? Is it because intending buyers
and the marginal buyer in particular do not desire the article more
strongly? Or is it because conditions of production, all things
considered, do not permit a lower marginal unit cost? The argument might
seem hopeless. But the advantage is claimed for the principle of demand.
Without demand arising out of desires expressive of wants there would
simply _be_ no value, no production, and no price. Demand evokes
production and sanctions cost. But cost expended can give no value to a
product that no one wants.

Does it follow, however, that the cost of a commodity in which