e broader zone of
sluggish movement of capital and population, of slow response to
economic stimuli, and of generally backward conditions.

_Freedom of Movement as a Test._--In Europe, America, and the other
advanced regions goods are carried from place to place so easily and
quickly that there is a tendency toward uniform prices; and such local
differences of price as exist in the case of any commodity do not much
exceed the cost of getting it carried from one place to another,
though in the cost of moving it there must often be reckoned the toll
which a government takes at the customhouse. Capital moves freely, and
there is a certain approach to a general level of interest, though
here also local differences of course survive. The obstacle to the
moving of capital from one place to another, if the owner does not go
with it, is occasioned mainly by the risk it encounters and by a
virtual bill for insurance. With allowance for this cost, rates of
interest in the region we have described tend toward a general level.
Though labor migrates more slowly than capital, it moves far more
rapidly within the economic center than in the outer zones. Processes
of production are not brought to a complete uniformity within the
center, but they tend powerfully toward it; for while obstructions
exist, they surely and not always slowly yield. With due regard for
such differences of method as those existing between the European
ways of making products and the American ways, we may say that the
tendency toward the general survival of the best methods is too strong
to allow any important differences to be permanent. Everywhere, in
short, within the central area there is a strong tendency to conform
to economic standards in the matter of prices, wages, interest,
industrial processes, and forms of economic organization. The
standards are what we have defined as the static ones. If we should
stop progress and all disturbing influences and wait long enough, we
should see values, wages, interest, etc., take a static level
throughout the vast area. This, however, would require that migrations
should go on till all inducement to move from place to place should
have ceased to exist. Population would then have distributed itself
over the land in the most advantageous way, and no body of people
would be better off than any other by reason of the location of their
abode. A long period would be needed to bring about this adjustment
even within the ci