_Alternations in the Direction of Movements caused by Improved Methods._--In a dynamic state this standard shape itself--the approximately static one--is forever changing. At one time, for example, conditions exist which call for a certain amount of labor at _A_, another amount at _B_, etc. A little later these respective quantities at _A_, _B_, etc., are no longer the natural or standard quantities; for something has occurred that calls for less labor at _A_, more at _B_, etc. If _A_ represents wheat farming, the amount of labor that it required when grain was gathered with sickles is more than is necessary when it is gathered with self-binding reapers, always provided that there has been no increase in population, which would require an increase in the food supply. The society therefore will not be in what has now become its standard shape till men have been moved from the wheat-raising subgroup to others. If the invention of the reaper were not followed by any others and if no other disturbing changes took place, labor would move from the one group, distribute itself among others, and bring the system to a new equilibrium; but it has not time to do this. It begins to move in the way that the new condition occasioned by the introduction of the reaping machine impels it to move; but before the transfer is at all complete there is a new invention somewhere else in the system that starts a movement in some other direction. Before the labor from _A_ is duly distributed in _B_, _C_, etc., there is an invention in _B_ which starts some of it toward other points. _Why Movements are Perpetual as well as Changeful._--Such improvements are perpetual, and the dynamic society is not for an instant at rest. If the disturbing causes would cease, the elements of the social body would find their abiding place; and the important fact is that at any one instant there is such a resting place for each laborer and each bit of capital in the whole system. As we have seen, the men and the productive funds would go to these points but for the fact that before they have time to reach them new disturbances occur that call them in new directions. Again and again the same thing occurs, and there is no opportunity for placing labor and capital at exactly the points to which recent changes call them before still further improvements begin to call them elsewhere.