an important labor-saving
device, it may be possible for him to keep all his men employed and to
let the improvement show itself wholly as a means of increasing the
output. He may secure a machine which will do what twenty men formerly
did. If it were possible to cut the uppers of a dozen shoes by the
quick stroke of a single die, the machine that carried this armature
would do the work of perhaps twelve knives handled by that number of
skillful workmen. If the original number of men were retained in the
cutting department, and if each of them were furnished with the new
appliance, it would mean that twelve times as many uppers would be cut
as were cut before the change was made. There would, of course, be no
use in trying to do so much cutting of uppers for shoes, without doing
twelve times as much sewing, welting, making soles and heels, etc.,
and to secure all this at once would require a twelve-fold enlargement
of the manufacturer's plant. This is too much to secure at once. The
manufacturer might perhaps double the output of his mill and nearly
double the number of his employees, but that would require only two
of the twelve cutters he formerly had. The new workers would be in
parts of the mill other than the one where the great saving of labor
was effected. Ten men would be removed from the cutting department,
and the two left there would cut, by the aid of the new machines,
twice as many uppers as the whole number cut before, and that would
require the furnishing of a double number of all other parts of the
shoes and a double working force to make them. The ten men liberated
from the cutting department would be available for this purpose, and
new ones would be brought in and set sewing, pegging, lasting,
welting, etc. Within a single establishment, therefore, a radical
saving of labor at one point usually involves some shifting of labor
from that point to others, though it may increase the total number
employed in the establishment which secures the economical device.

_The Effect on a Subgroup of an Improvement by One Entrepreneur._--If
an employer who has this experience is one of a hundred in the
shoemaking industry and the only one who secures the cutting machine,
the market will receive as large an increase of the product as would
be involved by multiplying the output of his mill by two, without
requiring that the price should be more than slightly reduced. An
improvement which is monopolized for a time by