_How a Normal Supply is Determined._--This present stock, however, was brought into existence by producers who looked forward to the time when they could probably sell it at a certain price; and the higher this anticipated return for the article, the more of it they were induced to make. The price, which to-day depends on the quantity on hand, acted in advance as a lure to bring that quantity into existence, and among the different articles which men can produce, they are forever singling out for increased production those things which offer the strongest lures--that is, the things that sell for the largest amounts as compared with the cost of making them. The ultimate tendency of all this is a certain adjustment of the relative supplies of different commodities. It is that adjustment which brings all prices to a level determined by cost. _Natural Value._--This tendency toward cost prices--those which afford to the producers wages for all their labor but no true _entrepreneurs'_ profit--establishes a further law, that of "natural value," and this it is that fixes the standard to which, in the long run, market values, as adjusted by supply and demand, tend to conform. A market value is natural or unnatural according as it does or does not conform to a certain standard, and this ultimate standard itself is the cost of producing the several kinds of goods. What the term _cost_ in this connection really means we must later see; but for the present we may take the common and practical view that it is the amount of money that an _entrepreneur_ must pay out in order to bring the article into existence. If there were very little wheat in the granaries of the world, demand acting on this limited supply would determine the selling price of it, and this price would be high as compared with the cost of raising this grain. It would also be higher than the selling prices of other things which are produced by the same expenditure of labor and capital that has to be made in raising the wheat. The market price would, for the time being, be unnatural and would in due time be brought down; but this would have to be done by the raising of more wheat. In other words, though the selling price of a small supply of wheat may be _normal for that amount_, the amount supplied is itself abnormally small, and in view of that fact the resulting price is too high to be allowed to continue. As a permanent price it would not be natural. The quantity supplied tends to increase till the market price conforms to the cost of raising the wheat. We have to see, first, how demand fixes the price of a definite amount of anything which is offered for sale and, later, how the quantity offered is controlled.