_Standards of Wages and Interest._--This accurate correspondence between men's incomes and their contributions to the general earnings of society would exist only in the absence of certain changes and disturbances which it will be our aim, in the latter part of this work, to study. These changes give to society the quality that we shall term _dynamic_, and we shall examine them at length. What can, however, be asserted in advance is that the rates of wages and interest which would prevail if the changes and disturbances were entirely absent constitute standards toward which, in spite of all the changes that are going on, actual wages and interest are continually tending. How nearly in practice the earnings of labor and capital approximate the ideal rates which perfect competition would establish is a question which it is not necessary at this point to raise. We have to define the standard rates and show that fundamental forces impel the actual rates toward them. The waters of a pond have an ideal level toward which they tend under the action of gravity; and though a gale were to force them to one end of the pond and cause the surface there to stand much higher than the surface at the other end, the standard level would be unaffected and the steady force of gravity would all the while be drawing the actual surface toward it. In our study of Economic Dynamics we shall encounter influences which act like the gale in the illustration, but at present we are studying what is more akin to gravity--a fundamental and steady force drawing wages and interest toward certain definable levels. In our present study of Economic Statics we must seek to discover how these standards are fixed, in the midst of the overturnings which industrial society undergoes. A''' B''' C''' H''' A'' B'' C'' H'' A' B' C' H' A B C H We have already represented, in a highly simplified form, the synthesis by which the goods which make up the income of society are produced. A, B, and C represent different raw materials, and they are changed by a series of transmutations into A''', B''', and C''', which stand for all the consumers' goods that the society uses. They represent food, clothing, furnishings, vehicles, and countless means of comfort and pleasure.