ble part of the earth does so in a disquieting
way. We are using up much of our natural inheritance. As the effect of
this appears chiefly in forcing us to change our processes of
production, we shall, for convenience, limit our study to the five
changes here enumerated.

_Movement Inevitable in the Dynamic State._--These influences reveal
their presence by making labor and capital more productive in some
places than they are in others, and by causing them ever and anon to
move from places of less productiveness to places where gains are
greater. As we have said, this moving of labor and capital to and fro
is, like currents in the sea, a sign of a dynamic condition. As in the
static state these agents would not thus move, however fluid and
mobile they might be, so in a dynamic state they are bound to move,
because their earning powers do not remain long exactly equal in any
two employments, and they go now hither and now yon, as, in the
changeful system, openings for increased gains present themselves. If
commodities were everywhere selling at cost prices and if wages and
interest were everywhere normal and uniform, labor and capital would
not move to and fro, and this would be a proof that dynamic influences
were absent.

_How an Imaginary Static Society is Created._--If we wish to discover
to what standard the values of goods, on the one hand, and the rewards
of labor and capital, on the other, continually tend to conform, we
must create an imaginary society in which population neither increases
nor diminishes, in which capital is fixed in amount, in which the
method of making goods does not change, in which the mode of
organizing industry continues without alteration, and in which the
wants of consumers never vary in number, in kind, or in intensity.

_Costs of Production in a Static State._--We have said that in such a
static state the prices of different products are just high enough to
cover the wages and interest which are generally paid. There are
uniform or all-around rates of pay for labor and for capital, and
every man who hires workmen or gets loans from a bank has to pay them.
In the real world, full as it is of disturbances, and given over as it
is to forces of change and progress, we find that values, wages, and
interest are in general surprisingly near to these standards. In a
particular business products may for a time sell for enough to afford
a large surplus above prevailing wages and interest, and