Ske. 6] WEALTH 13 
§ 6 
Having obtained the price of any kind of wealth, we may 
compute the value of any given quantity of that wealth, 
without necessarily supposing that particular quantity to 
be exchanged. The value of a given quantity of wealth is 
found by multiplying the quantity by the price. Thus, if 
the price of wheat is % of a dollar per bushel, then a lot 
consisting of 3000 bushels would have a value of 3000 x 
% per bushel or $2000. In other words, the value of a 
certain amount of one kind of wealth is the quantity of 
some other kind for which it would be exchanged, if the 
whole amount were exchanged at the price set upon it. 
The exchange which sets the price need not be the ex- 
change of the particular 3000 bushels which we are valuing ; 
some other exchange of, say, 300 bushels for $200 may set 
the price. This is one reason why it is preferable to ex- 
plain price first and value afterward. 
The definition of value which has been given, applying, 
as it does, to an aggregate of wealth instead of the unit, 
departs somewhat from economic usage; but it follows 
closely the usage of business men and practical statisti- 
cians. Economists have not usually thought it necessary 
to distinguish between the purchasing power of the unit 
and the aggregate, but have employed the term “value” 
indiscriminately to both. In other respects also their usage 
has been somewhat different from that here employed. 
Some of them have confined “price” to a money expression, 
v.e. to what is here called money price, and applied the term 
“value” to purchasing power in “goods.” Others have 
used the term “price” in the sense of what an article ac- 
tually sells for (market price) and “value” in the sense of 
what it ought to sell for (appraised price or reasonable price). 
Others, in turn, have used the term ““price’’ in the sense em- 
ployed in this book, but “value” in the sense of the degree 
of esteem in which an article is held (“marginal utility”