Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/46

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has, to the great benefit of its passengers, paid for a system by which its tunnels are supplied with air; and seaside lodging-house keepers make a handsome harvest out of Londoners, who come to stay in otherwise most unattractive spots in order to breathe sea-air and get the London soot out of their lungs.

Value is merely a question of the extent to which somebody wants a thing in relation to the extent to which its present owner wants to keep it. It thus depends to a great extent on place, since an article that is a drug in the market here may be scarce to the point of preciousness somewhere else. As was well shown by the answer of the Scotch drover when a Londoner remonstrated with him for the prices at which he was selling his beasts at a Highland fair, and told him that if he took them to Smithfield he would get twice the money for them. "Vera true," said the Scot; "and if I could take Loch Lomond to Hell I should sell it for half a croon a glass." Value, then, is what we can get for a thing or what we have to give for it, when we work, as practically all of us do now, in co-operation with our fellows, making something or doing something that they will pay for and using their payments to us in paying for work that they