Note 1 — Chapter VI

The term market, as used in this discussion, means a local area within which goods of given kinds are bought and sold; and for different purposes we may make the area small or large. For some purposes it is necessary to take a "world market" into consideration, while for others it is desirable to include only that part of the world within which competition is very active and within which also goods and persons move freely and cheaply from place to place. A single country like the United States affords a market large enough to illustrate the laws of value, though one must always keep in view the relation of this circumscribed area to its environment. How local areas may, in a scientific way, be delimited and isolated for purposes of study will appear in a later chapter.

[2] It will be seen that to a man who buys the seventy-five dollar coat that article in its entirety is the final one of its kind which he will buy. He does not want a second coat exactly like the first. The same thing is true of the man who buys the five hundred dollar watch, since he does not think of buying more than one. In each case the first unit of the article bought is the last one, and it contains utilities which are worth more than they cost. It contains one utility only which is marginal in the true sense of affording no surplus of gain above cost. This utility stands on the boundary line where consumers' surpluses stop.