Briefer Communications

Without entering into controversy, I would like to say briefly that Professor Patten, in his able paper in the last number of the ANNALS on &dquo; Cost and Utility,&dquo; has miscon- ceived what I mean by the term ' ' Consumer's Surplus.&dquo;He says (p. 30) :&dquo; The two methods of measuring utility can be illustrated by comparing Professor Marshall's view of consumer's sur- plus with mine.He takes as the utility of the first incre- ment of a good what a consumer would give if he possessed only one increment; the utility of the second increment is what the consumer would give for it if he had but two in- crements, and so on.In this way he gets the consumer's surplus of each article......... &dquo; Suppose I am in a desert with three loaves of bread.To the first I might attribute 200 units of pleasure, as it would keep me alive; to the second say 50 units, as it would make me comfortable; to the third, say 5 units.If instead of bread I had three pounds of meat, I might attribute to the first pound 300 units of pleasure ; to the second 75 units; and to the third, say io units.If, as a third hypothesis, I had both articles to the amount named, could I add the two surpluses (255-385) and say I had 640 units of pleasure ?Certainly not.&dquo; This is not perfectly explicit; but I can understand it only as meaning that he would expect me to add them together in such a case.And indeed he continues a little later on : ' ' Professor Marshall's consumer's surplus would be much larger than mine, because he estimates the surplus not from a given situation of the consumer, but from a series of situ- ations representing different stages of supply.It seems to

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