did it get there? What makes a man conform to them? What happens, if he does not?

We are beginning to see that a check much more effective than a definite standard of comfort is universal ambition and the pressure of new wants. Malthus made much of "moral restraint." But how about egoistic restraints? How, if people are keen-witted enough to realize that, the more babies, the fewer beefsteaks, bicycles, and outings? Will not the size of the family be affected with the rise of a furiously competitive democracy where strict class lines have been swept away, where old contentment is gone, and everybody is straining every nerve to get a little higher in the social scale? Or suppose the value of woman rises. Will not the keener appreciation of her burdens in child-bearing and child-rearing be a check to numbers? Again, how is the size of the family affected by the ambition of women to be something else than mothers and household drudges, by the higher education of women, by the opening of the professions to them, by the adoption of rational dress?

Besides the fact that society, as it becomes more democratic, whets the eagerness of parents for pleasures and luxuries that are incompatible with large broods, there is a further complication of the problem of increase by different ways of starting children in life. Taine describes France under the old régime as a series of staircases separated by landings. One could elbow his way upward on his own flight of steps; but he did not expect to invade the staircase above. Besant describes the English professions as pleasant parks, guarded each by a turnstile where a thousand pounds is demanded of the lad who would enter. Now in a stratified society, where in general a man is content to bring up his children to his own trade and manner of life, the restraint on numbers will not be so strong as in a society stirred to its depths with hope and ambition, where to talent equipped with

knowledge all doors are open, where higher education is not difficult of access, and where the competition of parents to get their sons on in the world has made schooling needful in the battle for life to an almost preposterous degree.

The question of population is not the only one that ramifies into a region not economic. The writer once undertook a study that should bring to light the forces that fix the time of labor. There is, of course, the physical limit, at which the arm refuses to lift the pickaxe and the eye to follow the stitches. There is the psychical limit, at which the pain of further toil becomes intolerable. There is the technical consideration that prolongs the labor-day of those engaged in the hotel, railroad, street-car, restaurant, theatre, and cab services. There is the objective economic consideration, which stops labor when further strain will impair to-morrow's work. There is the subjective economic limit, at which the disutility of another quarter-hour of labor exceeds the utility of that quarterhour's product. And this inverse relation of hours and reward of labor is found to prevail through the whole social gamut, from bank presidents and theatrical managers to cobblers and charwomen. Then there is the fixing of the length of the labor-day by this consideration working through a body of men, as in a factory. The day's limit is the consensus of the trade, as in bricklaying, or of some other trade, as in hod-carrying.

So far, so good. But, when the writer began to inquire what fixed the days of labor in the year as well as the hours of labor in the day, new and lawless forces were encountered; and the essay on "The Time of Labor" was never written. Why are there fifty-two holidays a year for almost every kind of labor? Why should this quota of rest-time be reserved for the destitute as well as the comfortable, in bad times as well as in good times, in poor societies as well as in rich communities, in cold

climates as well as in hot climates? How is it that the six-day period of labor introduced by the duodecimal Babylonians among the state slaves employed on public works, in order to prevent their being driven to death by their taskmasters, has come to be universal in the Western world? Is it tradition, belief, or expediency that upholds this stupendous institution, disposing as it does of oneseventh of the time of man with an authority certainly more than economic? If the last, is it valued for its uses in this world or for its bearing in the next? Is it primarily for the good of the man who is told to rest or for the benefit of the society that bids him? Is it a hygienic measure to guard the vigor of the race, a socialistic measure to compel the capitalist to furnish the laborer seven days' keep for six days' work, or a police measure intended to fortify a religion that is considered indispensable to the existence of social order?

Again, take the twin pillars of exchange,- security and probity. Security is of course explained by what political science can tell us of law and of the state. But whence this probity? Is it an individual quality, like color of eyes? Or does it vary with social conditions? At the present moment Japanese firms are importing Chinese to fill the fiduciary posts. Is this because commercial trickiness is a Japanese race-character? Then why was this trait so rare under the old régime? Here is a quality of great economic importance, which varies in mysterious sympathy with social changes. What is the correlated fact in the new social era of Japan? Is it bad Western example, or an appetite for wealth whetted by new wants, or a flood-tide of new ideas, weakening the grip of the old standards and ideals that held fast the egoistic individual in a kind of moral matrix?

The honesty of Chinese bankers and merchants is well known. Yet the rottenness of government is proverbial. We read: "Mines do not pay the proprietors, because the

laborers pilfer the production; cotton factories, because the mill-hands carry off the raw material stowed away in their clothes. The most important Chinese companies are machines for the wholesale misappropriation of funds." The explanation of the paradox seems to be that for the traditional and familiar business relations the Chinese have slowly elaborated, as a sine qua non of commerce, a professional morality which rules very authoritatively those trained under it. But in novel relations and responsibili ties not provided for in the professional ethics the native slipperiness of the Celestial comes to light. But this, in turn, opens up attractive lines of inquiry. How do these professional standards and ideals grow up? What gives them their binding power? Are they imposed for the good of society at large or for the good of the trade or profession? Can the larger social group impose its standards in the same way? Should abuses be cured by invoking law or by stiffening professional ethics?

Capital takes wings, and, surveying the planet from China to Peru, alights wherever there is a railroad to build or a mine to develop. But it is otherwise with labor. If the economist is allowed only a single sentence on the mobility of labor, he will probably say that, like borax or bicycles, it seeks the best market, but that its cost of transportation is high. If, however, he is granted a chapter, he will find himself compelled to follow up this problem to its head-waters in another region. Why does the Englishman migrate only to English colonies, the Frenchman to French colonies? Why are there streams of migration that can be directed or turned aside? There are not streams of wheat or lumber that can be so easily diverted. Why is it that the tide flows easily enough after the first few boat-loads of Italians have gone to Brazil or the first Norwegian settlements have been planted in Minnesota? We are told American labor and enterprise will invade the Philippines, if we keep them. Why do

they not invade them now? The economic situation will not be changed by annexation. All this suggests that there are forces that influence the groupings, co-operations, and dealings of peoples in defiance of economic considerations.

At this moment Germany is losing her Scandinavian trade through the hostility aroused by the expulsions of Danes from Schleswig-Holstein. An anti-Semitic journal in Paris has just been ruined in paying damages to tradesmen whose business it had injured by publishing them as Jews. French unfriendliness is resented by fewer American orders for articles de Paris. Here is uneconomic behavior in response to powerful sympathies and antipathies that we had assumed to be dying out. There is certainly room for a science that shall inquire how far social groupings correspond to economic interest, and how far they ignore it; that shall assign to religion, race, language, nationality, and propinquity their due share in the formation and division of groups; and that shall lay down the conditions favorable to the blending of such groups, comparing in assimilative value the Russian policy of persecution with the American policy of freedom and equality.

The tame treatment of the consumption of wealth by most economists has been due to a dim perception of many factors which are not economic. The façade type of expenditure, that lavishes on show and luxuries and scrimps on necessaries, goes with a development that removes the old landmarks and stimulates social ambitions. Fashion extends her baleful sway with the disappearance of the fixed classes of peasants, burghers, gentlefolk. The fact that all genuine, plain, homespun articles disappear before the universal demand for cheap, tawdry imitations of the furniture and clothes of the wealthy is due to the democratic constitution of society. Our buggies and parlor organs, our plated silver and veneered furniture, are as eloquent of equality as our corridor cars. The absence of distinct