icular workers from one group to another.

_A Perpetual Effort to conform to a Standard Shape which is itself
Changing._--We think, then, of society as striving toward an endless
series of ideal shapes, never reaching any one of them and never
holding for any length of time any one actual shape. One movement is
not completed before another begins, and at no one time is the labor
apportioned among the groups exactly in the proportions that static
law calls for. Men are vitally interested to know what they have to
hope for or to fear from this perpetual necessity that some labor
should move from point to point.

_Questions concerning the Effects of these Transformations._--These
changes of shape involve costs as well as benefits. The gains are
permanent and the costs are transient, but are not for that reason
unimportant. They may fall on persons who do not get the full measure
of the offsetting gains. What we wish to know about any economic
change is how it will affect humanity, and especially working
humanity. Will it make laboring men better off or worse off? If it
benefits them in the end, will it impose on them an immediate
hardship? Will it even make certain ones pay heavily for a gain that
is shared by all classes? Are there some who are thus the especial
martyrs of progress, suffering for the general good?

_Natural Transformations of Society increase its Productive
Power._--There is no doubt that the changes of shape through which the
social organism is going cause it to grow in strength and efficiency.
More and more power to produce is coming, as we have seen, in
consequence of these transmutations. They always involve shifting
_labor_ about within the organization and often involve shifting
laborers, taking some of them out of the subgroups in which they are
now working and putting them into others, something that cannot be
done without cost.

_Immediate Effects of Labor Saving._--Inventing a machine that can do
the work of twenty men will cause some of the twenty to be discharged.
They feel the burden of finding new places, and if they are skilled
workmen and their trade is no longer worth practicing, they lose all
the advantage they have enjoyed from special skill in their
occupations. Do they themselves get any adequate offset for this, or
does society as a whole divide the benefit in such a way that those
who pay nearly the whole cost get only their minute part of the gain?
Is there unfair dealing inhe