But whether or not money wages rose as fast as prices in the years from 1900 to 1907, one thing is certain, they did not rise any faster. That is to say, if real wages did not actually fall, they assuredly did not rise. But the welfare of the country requires that, in the years when business is moving toward a crisis, wages should rise; not only money wages, but real wages. What is needed is some check on the unwarranted activity of the entrepreneurs, which will make them stop and consider whether the apparently bright business outlook rests on sound and permanent conditions, or is illusory and transient. If their large profits are legitimate and enduring, they should be forced to share a part of them with the laborer. If not, the fact should be impressed upon them. We have seen that the rate of interest fails to act as an efficient check. Then the rate of wages should do it. And if the entrepreneurs were compelled to rely on the existing labor supply in their own country, the rate of wages would do it. Business expands by increasing the amount of labor utilized, as well as the amount of capital. If the increased labor supply could be secured only from the people already resident in the country, the increased demand would have to express itself in an increased wage, and the entrepreneur would be forced to pause and reflect. But in the United States we have adopted the opposite policy. In the vast peasant population of Europe there is an inexhaustible reservoir of labor, only waiting a signal from this side to enter the labor market—to enter it, not with a demand for the high wage that the business situation justifies, but ready to take any wage that will be offered, just so it is a little higher than the pittance to which they are accustomed at home. And we allow them to come, without any restrictions whatever as to numbers. Thus wages are kept from rising, and immigration becomes a powerful factor, tending to intensify and augment the unhealthy, oscillatory character of our industrial life. It was not by mere chance that the panic year of 1907 was the record year in immigration. Against this point of view it may be argued that the legitimate expansion of business in this country requires the presence of the immigrant. But if business expansion is legitimate and permanent, resting on lasting favorable conditions, it will express itself in a high wage scale, persisting over a long period of time. And the demand so expressed will be met by an increase of native offspring, whose parents are reaping the benefit of the high standard of living. A permanent shortage of the labor supply is as abhorrent to nature as a vacuum. Expansion of any other kind than this ought to be hampered, not gratified.