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radical improvements in their machinery, this change should, in the
absence of a strong monopoly, affect the price of rails in England,
Germany, etc. Within the central region wages and interest tend toward
uniformity, though, as we have seen, they do not attain it. Across the
boundary which separates this center from the outer zone, economic
influences act in a more feeble way and are unable to bring rates of
wages and interest even to an approximate equality. Western Europe,
America, and whatever regions are in very close connection with them,
we treat as a society, with the remainder of the world as its
environment. This center trades with the environing region, sends some
capital and labor thither, and draws some of each thence to the home
countries. Willingly or otherwise, it instructs the people of the
outer region in modern methods of industry, and thus causes what we
may regard as a slow annexation of a part of the outer zone to the
economic center and a modification of the character of industries at
home and abroad. The principal movement of labor is in an inward
direction, and from our point of view it is immigration not into one
country merely but into all economic society. The predominant movement
of capital has been outward.

_Mode of Studying Interchanges between Center and Environing
Zone._--All these movements have to be recognized in a study of the
economic life of the central society. How, for example, is commerce
with undeveloped regions to be regarded if we have the center only in
view? It is simply one of two possible ways of getting goods. The
people of the center can make a commodity that they use, or they can
make something to send into the outlying countries in exchange for it.
In the latter case they acquire it indirectly rather than directly,
but they acquire it by their own industry in the one case as well as
in the other.

_Natural Selection of Modes of procuring Usable Goods._--Under natural
influences, as we have said, men select the most economical way to get
what they use, or--what is the same thing--they select the mode of
utilizing their own labor and capital that will give them the largest
return in goods. There is competition between different methods of
directly making goods, and the best method survives. The man with a
good machine undersells the man with a poor one; this latter producer
must improve his equipment, or fail, and appliances thus tend toward a
maximum of efficie