classes, and a change in the laws. And it may be tremendously significant whether the increased number of laborers consists of Irish Catholics, or of Russian Jews, or of native Americans, or of negroes,--significant from the standpoint of distribution, of the values of economic goods, and the direction of economic activity.[173] Reduce your labor force to "efficiency units," so that from the standpoint of productive power of the additions no difference is made whether they be of the one class or the other, and still it is a matter of consequence, from the standpoint of distribution, and ultimately of the values of goods, whether they belong to one class or the other. One sort of laborer may be capable of efficient labor-union organization, with the result that a large share of the product goes to labor. Another sort of laborer may be incapable of much organization, may work at cross-purposes with the rest of the labor force, and may be an easy victim of exploitation. "Other things equal," we may concede that productive efficiency, or "standard of living," or other abstract principle, determines the share that goes to labor--but many indeed are "the other things." The distribution of wealth is not an "arbitrary" matter--if by that it be meant that no scientific laws can be worked out to describe it. Mill himself would be first to protest against any metaphysical "freedom of the will" here. But it is a matter into which law and morals and personal friendship and monopoly privilege and charity and benevolence and statesmanlike purpose and selfish struggle--in a word, the whole intermental life of men in society--are involved. And any principle of distribution that we may select is only true, not only if other things are "equal," but also if other things are in a particular set of relations. We have seen the assumptions of a non-economic sort that are implicit in Wieser's conception of a "natural society." It may be interesting to note what is involved in the situation which Professor Clark treats in his _Distribution of Wealth_. That his system should hold, we must have, of course, private property, and personal freedom. We must have perfectly free competition. We must have absolutely no monopoly privilege of any sort. We must have such rapid and free communication of ideas that no monopoly of knowledge should exist. But imagine the moral values that must rule in a society where such a situation holds! How are men to be prevented from getting monopolies? How prevent laws in the interests of the alert and influential? How prevent the monopoly of ideas? A very different moral situation must obtain in such a society from that we know. And a very different system of laws. In saying this, of course, I say nothing that was not obvious enough to Professor Clark when he constructed his system on the basis of "heroic abstraction," but still it cannot be neglected. Not every one who has undertaken to interpret Professor Clark, and to make practical