ortionment of population in
different parts of the area that the society inhabits and the
obstacles which wholesale migrations encounter. For the solution of
problems of the present and the near future we must accept as a
standard the quasi-static adjustment of the population and the
consequent quasi-static selection of industries in the different local
divisions of the broad area--the arrangement that we have described as
locating an excess of manufacturing in the more densely peopled areas
and an excess of agriculture in the more sparsely settled ones. With
this qualification it may be said that there is a standard
apportionment of labor and capital among the producing groups, and
that these agents gravitate powerfully and even rapidly toward it. If
there were a certain amount of labor and capital at _A_, a certain
amount at _B_, and so throughout the system, this standard shape would
be attained, and the elements would not move, except as a very slow
movement would be caused by changes in the comparative density of
population of different regions.[1] This standard shape would long
remain nearly fixed if it were not for the appearance of the dynamic
influences which are so active within the area we are studying.

[1] It is obvious that capital as well as population is
distributed with uneven density over the territory occupied
by society; but the movement of capital is less obstructed
than that of a great body of people, and moreover it is
chiefly the fact that the people are not dispersed over the
area in a natural way which creates the chief obstacle to the
moving of capital. It goes easily when it accompanies a
migration of laborers.

_Alternations in the Direction of Movements caused by Improved
Methods._--In a dynamic state this standard shape itself--the
approximately static one--is forever changing. At one time, for
example, conditions exist which call for a certain amount of labor at
_A_, another amount at _B_, etc. A little later these respective
quantities at _A_, _B_, etc., are no longer the natural or standard
quantities; for something has occurred that calls for less labor at
_A_, more at _B_, etc. If _A_ represents wheat farming, the amount of
labor that it required when grain was gathered with sickles is more
than is necessary when it is gathered with self-binding reapers,
always provided that there has been no increase in population, which
would require an increase in