forms--lies one influence which has a great power
over human destiny and is one main cause of weal or woe for coming
generations. Method as it improves is related in two ways to this
critical change in the ratio of capital to population. It is a
prominent cause of the increase of capital. What men make by juggling
with values and putting taxes on other men adds nothing to the
aggregate wealth; but what they make by improved methods of production
causes a net addition to it. The improvement in method also directly
reenforces the influence of enlarging capital, by infusing
productivity into labor and increasing its returns.

_The Resultant of the Five Dynamic Changes acting Together._--So long
as the increase of capital more than offsets the increase of
population, the ultimate result of all five of the general changes
which characterize a dynamic state is to increase the well-being of
laborers. The movement of labor from point to point in the system of
industrial groups is a necessary means of securing the largest gain
for society as a whole and of diffusing the benefit among all members.
It is wage earners who are most numerous and most needy, and the
greatest benefit which can be credited to any economic influence is
that which takes the shape of a rise in wages. Moreover, an upward
trend in the rate of pay is of far greater importance than the level
of the rate at any one time. A system that should afford high present
wages would stand condemned if it precluded all chance of higher ones
hereafter; while a system that should begin with a low rate and afford
a guaranty that it should grow higher each year to the end of time
would have the most important merit which any system could possess.
The outlook it would afford for humanity would far outweigh a measure
of hardship imposed on the present generation. A present purgatory
with dynamic capabilities must in the end excel any earthly paradise
which is held fast in a stationary state.

We may represent the resultant of the actual growth of population and
of capital by the following figure:--

[Illustration]

Measuring time by decades along the horizontal base line and the rate
of wages at the beginning of a century by the line _AB_, we represent
the increase in the pay of labor which would be brought about by an
increase of capital not counteracted by any other influence by the
dotted line _BC_, and the reduction which would be caused by an
increase of population by