86 In France, according to _Cordier_ (Mémoire sur l’Agriculture de la Flandre Française), the wheat harvest yielded, in 1817, forty-eight million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of two thousand and forty-six million francs; in 1818, fifty-three million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and four hundred and forty-two million francs; in 1819, sixty-four million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and one hundred and seventy million francs. A rise in the value in exchange of wheat, such as was witnessed in 1817, is synonymous with a decline in the value in exchange of money, and of all those goods whose money price has not risen. It is no objection to the views here advocated, that when the necessaries of life are very scarce, the want of clothing, furniture, articles of luxury etc., is not felt so keenly as at other times, and that the value in use of these commodities really falls; and _vice versa_. 87 Compare _B. Hildebrand_, N. Œkonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, 1848, I, p. 316 ff. _Knies_, loc. cit. 88 The greater importance attached, in our days, to value in exchange, than to value in use, is seen especially in the attitude which the buyer, who is possessed of the more current commodity (money), assumes toward the seller,—an attitude not unlike that of a patron towards his client. In the interior of Africa, the possessor of money, as such, would scarcely look down on the possessor of the means of subsistence. The South American Indians are ready to render an amount of service for a little brandy, which it would be in vain to ask them to perform for ten times its value in gold. (Ausland, Jan. 15, 1870.) The miser estimates the possibility of being able to procure for himself, for one dollar, a hundred different articles worth a dollar each, to be worth one hundred dollars. 89 When the wants of a person or of a people change, it is possible for the value in use of one kind of goods, which had the greater prominence before, to take the place occupied previously by its value in exchange; and _vice versa_. Thus, the youth sells the plaything he used in childhood; the man, the educational apparatus of his earlier years; the old man, the implements that enabled him to acquire wealth, and which he can no longer use except with great effort. (_Menger_, Grundsätze, I, 220 ff.) _ 90 Rau_ (Lehrbuch, I, § 61 ff.) distinguishes between the concrete or quantitative value which a certain kind of goods may have for a certain person, under certain circumstances, and the abstract or species-value which a whole class of commodities may have for men in general.