n any other,
each particle of it is impelled equally in all directions. It is the
perfect equilibrium that keeps the particles from changing their
places, and fluidity has caused the equilibrium. In like manner when
labor and capital can create and get just as much in one place as in
another, they are attracted as strongly in one direction as in another
and therefore do not move. A young man of average capacity, who is
deliberating upon the choice of an occupation, will find that he can
do as well in a cotton mill as he can in a shoe factory, a machine
shop, a lumber mill, a flouring mill, or any other industrial
establishment requiring his particular grade of capacity. This is the
picture of a perfectly static industrial condition. Economic science
has to account for values, wages, and interest as they would be in
such a condition, however impossible it is that society should ever
reach exactly such a state. The values, wages, and interest in a real
market are forever tending toward the rates that would be established
if the static condition were realized.

_The Sign of a Static State._--The sign of the existence of a static
condition is, therefore, that labor and capital, though they are
perfectly free to move from one employment to another and would
actually do so on the slightest inducement, still do not move. They
stay where they are because they cannot find places where they can
produce the slightest amount in excess of what they now produce, and
no employer will anywhere offer any excess above the prevailing rate
of pay.

_Profits and the Movements they induce the Sign of a Dynamic
State._--_Entrepreneur's_ profits, when they exist, mean that this
equilibrium is disturbed, and when it is so, mobility of labor and
capital affords the guaranty that a new equilibrium will be
established if no further disturbances follow. As we have said,
profits attract labor and capital, increase the output of those goods
which yield the profit, and reduce the prices of them to the no-profit
level. Workmen and capitalists then get from the _entrepreneur_ as
wages and interest all that he gets from the public as the price of
his goods, except what he pays for raw materials.[1] In other words,
the employer sells his goods at cost.

[1] The _entrepreneur_ of A' of our table must buy the A in
order to impart to it that utility which is his own
particular contribution. He pays as wages and interest all
that he gets