STATIC STATE AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ECONOMIC REFORM 35 
The law passed by Congress soon after the war restricting immi- 
gration is wholly responsible for the present labor shortage. If this 
law had never gone on the statute books, if our portals had remained 
as free to immgration since the war as they were before the war and 
as they have been throughout our history, our inflated wage scale 
would have been well liquidated before now. 
This furnishes an excellent example of the efficacy of the 
method of controlling price by playing with an economic 
equilibrium. It would take Mr. Munsey’s class a long time and 
much hard fighting to beat down wages by the direct method. 
By simply removing the restriction upon immigration, the thing 
would, after that was accomplished, work automatically. Immi- 
grants from all the low wage countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, 
and the Islands of the sea would swarm here seeking jobs. They 
would force wages down without further effort on the part of 
employers. If wages can be forced down by this simple device, 
they can also, if other factors remain the same, be maintained at 
the present level, or forced even higher, by further restriction, 
that is, by putting the American Continent, as well as Europe, on: 
the quota basis. 
Again, if it is found that one factor in the equilibrium of the 
demand for and supply of labor is a low standard of living on the 
part of native laborers, that is, if it is found that they have such 
a low standard of living that they will multiply and keep the 
labor market well supplied on a low wage, then it will begin to 
appear that if the standard of living can be raised so that they 
will not multiply and offer themselves at such low wages, a new 
and higher equilibrium wage will establish itself automatically. 
That is to say, where laborers have a very high standard of 
living, one generation after another, it will take a very high wage 
to induce as many laborers to offer themselves for hire as 
employers are willing to hire. 
If no one would marry and undertake the support of a family 
until he could have a savings deposit, a life insurance policy, a 
home, or an automobile, it is obvious that no children would be 
legitimately born except in homes where these things could be 
afforded. That would, in a generation or two, eliminate low wages 
and poverty. 
If, however, the attempt is made in the opposite direction, and 
wages are merely advanced artificially without first raising the 
standard of living, such a rise may, with the exceptions noted in