secured. One who seeks the service of an artist who stands alone among
ten thousand people, may be willing to give the services of a thousand
other men, which can be had for a trifle, because they are everywhere
abounding.

_Essentials of value._--Experience seems, therefore, to settle upon three
conditions for value in any article of wealth or any service rendered.
First, the article or service must have utility--that is, it must be useful
in satisfying somebody's wants, either present or future. Second, those
wants must be of such a nature that effort on the part of some human being
will be necessary to gratify them. Nothing which can be had at all times
by mere desire of it can have value. Third, the object must be of such a
nature as to command other services or exchange of other wealth. For this
reason it must be transferable from one owner to another.

_Utility as related to value._--While utility is a basis of all values, it
is not the chief element in measuring the value of wealth. The things of
highest utility, like air and water, have no value as long as trifling
exertion will bring them. Even land is without appreciable value so long
as any person can obtain it by settling upon it.

In general, we measure utility by the relation between the nature of any
object and human nature as expressed in wants. A bushel of wheat has
utility equal to the number of loaves of bread it will furnish to hungry
humanity. In this respect every bushel may have the same utility as every
other. This would be true if every bushel of wheat was wanted by hungry
people able to exert themselves in securing it; but if five bushels of
wheat are sufficient for each human being in a year's supply of bread, a
distribution to all the world of more than five bushels to each would make
some of the wheat useless. So if the world's product of wheat more than
supplies the world's want, the extra amount will be without utility unless
some means of storing against future want is devised. In that case the
utility of the stored portion will be lessened by the extra exertion
required to store it until the need comes. One may be glad to pay
twenty-five cents for a good dinner, but an equally good dinner offered
immediately afterwards will have no utility, unless he can save it for
supper. If the dinners offered are so many as to imply that several will
be useless, the value of each is likely to be affected by this estimate of
lost utility in some. Din