Conditions on the other extreme, from scarcity of supply and anxiety of buyers, may also interfere with a free market. Any scarcity in food products leads to an anxiety on the part of consumers to buy and an equal disposition on the part of owners to hold for higher prices. In this case, while the law of supply and demand is still active, the effects are quite out of the ordinary course. Thus, for a long time it has been estimated that a scarcity of one-tenth in the natural supply of wheat raises the price three-tenths, scarcity of two-tenths raises the price eight-tenths, scarcity of three-tenths raises the price one and six-tenths, scarcity of four-tenths raises the price two and eight-tenths, and scarcity of one-half makes the price of the half-crop four and a half times greater. A decrease in the supply of less essential foods evidently cannot have equal effect. Thus, a scarcity of sugar, causing increased price, will directly reduce consumption of sugar, so that the limit may be easily reached. The same conditions may exist with reference to meats, since a high price diminishes the demand from the disposition of people to eat less meat. Indeed it has passed into almost a proverb that dear bread makes cheap meat, for the reason that few will diminish the supply of daily bread, but the mass are willing to lessen the meat diet to save expense. Similar conditions, affecting every market for any commodity, may easily be discovered. Yet in spite of all these extreme fluctuations, no better test of value has been suggested than the market price in open, unrestrained competition of buyers and sellers. _The market price._—In the discussion of value so far, the term market price has been used because perfectly familiar to everyone. It is necessary, however, to call attention to the fact that price always indicates an estimate of value in units of current money. If that money itself has a fluctuating value, the same article may have at different times different prices with the same value, or the same price with different values. Thus market prices in our country during and after the civil war, in which a paper currency gave the unit of prices, cannot safely be compared with each other, and can far less be compared with prices upon a specie basis. Even the reduction to a so-called gold basis may give misleading ideas in regard to the market, since a new element of speculation in gold enters into the calculation. In all the accompanying illustrations of fluctuating prices, this particular abnormal condition has been carefully excluded. Any fluctuations in the value of money metals, necessarily affecting the relation of market price to market value, will be treated under standards of price in Chapter X.