lem will form the subject of the sixth volume of the present
series. In the meantime it may be suggested that we are easily
credulous if we suppose that the problem has been finally disposed of
by the peculiar progress of an abnormal century. But that experience
has at least destroyed the view that there _need be_, or even is in
fact in Western countries, a relation between real wages and the
numbers of the people so close and direct that an improved standard of
living must be temporary only, doomed to destroy itself by the
increased population it engenders. One may perhaps go further and say
that it is doubtful even in what direction changes in remuneration
will influence the aggregate supply of labor. When we pass to "what
should be," it is plain that there is nothing whatever to be said for
the sort of relation indicated above. The view once widely held that
the principle of population must inevitably keep the mass of people
close to the verge of the bare means of subsistence was no statement
of a desirable ideal. It was a nightmare; a nightmare none the less
though it may haunt us yet. It is far from fanciful to suggest that it
is because this relation is so obviously _not_ "what should be" that
it may be ceasing to hold true in fact. But it would be very fanciful
indeed to maintain that as yet "what should be" is represented by the
actual population. Thus, just as with capital, so with labor, there is
no reason to suppose that the aggregate supply is determined by any
fundamental economic law, or corresponds in practice to what is
socially desirable.

Sec.5. _The Apportionment of Labor among Places_. Again, as with capital,
it is when we turn to the _apportionment_ of labor between different
employments that both economic law and social ideal make their
appearance. It will be well, however, to consider briefly in the
first instance the different question of its apportionment between
places. This was hardly necessary in the case of capital, because the
possibilities of foreign investment are very numerous and easy: the
mobility of capital is thus sufficiently strong (once again it is only
_marginal_ adjustment that is necessary) to establish over at least a
large part of the world something near to a uniform rate of
interest. But this is not the case with labor. People do indeed move
from place to place within a country, and from one country to another,
in response to economic opportunities. That even the latter m