would reduce the productive power of labor in Texas; while the dynamic changes which will actually go on within any such period will increase the productive power of that labor, and it is not certain whether the one or the other influence will predominate. For the United States as a whole it is probable that progress in the useful arts will more than offset the influx of new laborers and give to wages a rising trend. If, however, we establish the natural standard of wages by cutting off such progress and letting the influx of labor continue, the test would give a standard lower than the present one,--a false, as well as a discouraging result. The resultant of all the changes we are about to study will probably give to the future pay of labor in America a rising trend. _How Industries adapt themselves to Unequal Density of Population._--In view of this fact it is necessary to recognize a proximate rather than an ultimate static state as that toward which the adjustments now going on are immediately tending. We will treat the unequal density of population within our economic society as something which will last, not forever, but so long that it will not be removed or appreciably affected within the period required for the other adjustments that we are studying. Given a population that is dense in Belgium and sparse in Texas, and competition will cause the industries to take on the types which they would have and retain if that difference in density were destined to be permanent. The type toward which the economic life of both regions is tending is thus a proximate rather than an ultimate one. Each region will, in the near future, be of the type toward which influences which do not involve an equalization of population are impelling it. We get the true direction of the change that is going on in the earning power of labor and in the shape of the industrial organism in both regions by recognizing the fact that the differences in the density of their populations will continue through the period which we are considering. [Illustration]