5. _Changes in Consumers' Wants._--The wants of consumers are changing. They are growing more numerous as well as more refined and intellectual. This expansion of desires follows the general increase of productive power, since every one already wants some things that he cannot procure, and all society has a fringe of ungratified wants just beyond the limit of actual gratification. Even if all these wants that are now near the point of actual satisfaction were to be satisfied, the desires would at once project themselves farther. The mere increase in earning power without any special education enlarges the want scale, but intellectual and moral growth cooeperates with it in that direction and calls latent wants into an active state. More and more eagerly do men seek things for which the desire was formerly dormant. Changes of this kind affect values, cause labor and capital to move from group to group, and thus cause society as a whole to produce less of some things and more of others. They sometimes cause wholly new groups to appear, and draw workers and equipment from the old ones. [Illustration] _Advantage of Diversity of Wants._--One very marked effect of the diversification of wants is to increase the aggregate utility of a mass of commodity produced with a given expenditure of labor. Measure the whole wealth available for consumption on the basis of the labor that it takes to create it, and it will appear that it has more utility and is worth more to society in consequence of this evolution that is going on in the nature of the individual consumer. A given amount of labor benefits most the men whose wants are of the most varied character. If _A_, _B_, and _C_ are three commodities, and if their several utilities decline, as successive units of them are given to a consumer, along the curves descending from the letters _A_, _B_, and _C_ of the diagram, it is clear that the man whose consumption is confined to the commodity A gets less benefit from three units of wealth than does the man who consumes _A_, _B_, and _C_. The utility of the first unit of _A_ is measured by the vertical line from _A_ to the line _DE_, that of the second by the line from _A'_ to _DE_, and that of the third by the line from _A''_ to _DE_. The utility of the first unit of _B_ is measured by the distance from _B_ to the line _DE_ and exceeds that of the second unit of _A_ by the difference between the lengths of those lines. In like manner the utility of _C_ exceeds that of the third unit of _A_ by the difference between the length of the line descending from C and that of the one descending from _A''_. The declining utility of the income of the man who satisfies three wants is represented by the slowly descending curve _ABC_, while the diminishing utility of the income of the man who satisfies only one want declines along the sharply descending curve _A_, _A'_, _A''_.[1]