Supply and demand, however, are merely the immediate forces. They are themselves the outcome or resultant of factors more remote. On the side of supply, the principal remote forces which regulate the rate of interest are: the industrial resources of the community, and the relative strength of its habits of saving and spending. On the side of demand, the chief ultimate factors are: the productivity of capital-instruments, the comparative intensity of the social desires of investing and lending, and the supplies of land, business ability and labour. Each of these factors exercises upon the rate of interest an influence of its own, and each of them may be assisted or counteracted by one or more of the others. Precisely what rate will result from any given condition of the factors, cannot be stated beforehand, for the factors cannot be measured in such a way as to provide a basis for this kind of forecast. All that can be said is that, when changes occur on the side of either demand or supply, there will be a corresponding change in the rate of interest, provided that no neutralising change takes place on the other side. FOOTNOTES: [111] "Final Report of the Industrial Commission," pp. 410, 411. [112] "Report of the Industrial Commission," vol. IX, p. 380. [113] "Publication No. 32 of the Railroad Commission of Wisconsin," pp. 165, 166. CHAPTER X THE ALLEGED RIGHT OF LABOUR TO THE ENTIRE PRODUCT OF INDUSTRY In a preceding chapter we saw that Marxian Socialism is logically debarred from passing _moral_ judgment upon any social institution or practice.[114] If social institutions are produced necessarily by socio-economic forces they are neither morally good nor morally bad. They are quite as unmoral as rain and snow, verdure and decay, tadpoles and elephants. Consistent Socialists cannot, therefore, censure on purely ethical grounds the system of private capital and interest.