s
who have use for it. In this case, however, the makers usually put the
price of the machine at a figure that, while it affords an inducement
to buy it, does not reduce the cost of the goods that it helps to make
enough to cause a great increase in the demand for them. The owners of
the patent on the new appliance charge for it "what the traffic will
bear"; and until the patent runs out, the users of the machine have to
sell their goods almost at as high prices as before. If the machine
enables one man to do the work of a dozen, eleven men must find other
things to do. They could find them in their own industry if the
product of it were enlarged in consequence of the use of the machine;
but if the high price of the patented machine prevents this, they must
go elsewhere. When the patent runs out, there is likely to be a
considerable enlargement of the industry, and how important this fact
is we shall soon see.

_How Improvements which call Labor to a Particular Establishment may
displace Labor from a Group._--Another typical case is afforded when
some one employer has for a time the exclusive use of a labor-saving
device, and pushes his production to the utmost in order to get the
full benefit from it. Here are seen the more characteristic effects of
such an improvement. It _draws labor to_ the employer who for the time
being monopolizes the new instrument of production, but it _turns
labor from_ the subgroup of which this employer is a member. He
enlarges his output and in time this reduces the price of the product.
In the field there are marginal mills, or those so antiquated, ill
situated, or badly run that, with their product selling at the former
price, they could barely hold their own; and now that the price is
reduced, they lose money by running. They have to cease operating, and
this makes practicable a further enlargement of the product of the
efficient mill. Much labor goes thither, but some part of that which
leaves the abandoned mills betakes itself to other subgroups. Not
often, indeed, does it have to go to other general groups. The cheap
transformation of the material _A_ into _A'_ enlarges the market for
_A'_ and calls for more labor at _A_, and it involves more at _A''_
and _A'''_. If the change of method had been gradual, the growth of
the social demand for _A'''_ would probably have precluded the need of
sending any labor out of the entire group of _A_'s. Even a rapid
change often sends labor out of