iew improvements
would have a threatening look, though their ultimate effect
would still appear as beneficial as ever, were it not for the
fact that the disturbances that result from them are made to
be relatively small by the influences we are studying.

_Counteracting Influences._--The importance of a gradual introduction
of an improvement rather than a rapid one lies in the fact that it
permits these influences to do their work and often to render the
actual moving of laborers even from their subgroup unnecessary. Time
is the salvation of the laborer menaced by an impending displacement
from his field. When we see what is the grand resultant of all the
dynamic influences we are studying, we shall see how this neutralizing
and canceling of the labor-expelling force takes place. But for them
one isolated change would tend to expel labor from its subgroup and
would nearly always send it away from the point within an
establishment where the new device is introduced. It usually attracts
labor to this establishment and away from the inefficient or marginal
ones. A gradual adoption of the improvement allows time not only for a
general increase in the size and the wealth of the community, but for
other influences which act more quickly and in practice make it nearly
always unnecessary to reduce the total amount of labor in an industry
which produces an article in permanent demand. Statistics may be
confidently appealed to in support of this general statement.

_The Dynamic Law of Price and its Effects._--We briefly noted in
passing that the price of a product the making of which is subject to
repeated improvements naturally tends toward the cost of it in the
establishment having the latest method and the greatest facilities for
production. The natural price at any time is the cost of that part of
the supply which is created at the greatest advantage, and not the
cost of the part produced at the greatest disadvantage, as an old
formula expressed it. It is the mill that makes the goods most cheaply
which is enlarging its product and bringing the price down toward its
level of cost; as soon as other establishments get possession of the
improvement they help forward the process, and as they get still
better appliances they help in carrying the price to still newer and
lower standards.

_The Cause of the Coincidence of Maximum Cost and Price._--At any one
moment, it is true, there are ill-located, ill-equipped,