Now, before the transfers are completed something happens that calls for a different movement. Let us say that only three units of labor have as yet gone from _A_ to _C_ instead of five, leaving forty-seven at _A_; only two have gone from _B_, leaving thirty-eight; and only five have gone from _D_, leaving ninety-five at that point. Eighty would then be at _C_, and the static adjustment would not have been perfectly attained. It is at this point that a new change of conditions occurs, which calls for fifty-two units at _A_, forty-one at _B_, sixty-five at _C_, and a hundred and two at _D_. _C_ now contributes something to _A_ and _B_, but it gives more to _D_; and the fluctuations go on forever. Particular men may, more often than otherwise, stay in their places, since the incoming stream of new labor, by going where it is needed, may suffice to make the adjustments, in so far as they are gradually made; but labor, in the sense of the quantum of energy embodied in a succession of generations of men, is never at rest. It is a veritable Wandering Jew for restlessness and in a perpetual quest of places where it can remain. Moreover, there are to be taken into account changes so sudden that they thrust particular workers from one group to another. _A Perpetual Effort to conform to a Standard Shape which is itself Changing._--We think, then, of society as striving toward an endless series of ideal shapes, never reaching any one of them and never holding for any length of time any one actual shape. One movement is not completed before another begins, and at no one time is the labor apportioned among the groups exactly in the proportions that static law calls for. Men are vitally interested to know what they have to hope for or to fear from this perpetual necessity that some labor should move from point to point. _Questions concerning the Effects of these Transformations._--These changes of shape involve costs as well as benefits. The gains are permanent and the costs are transient, but are not for that reason unimportant. They may fall on persons who do not get the full measure of the offsetting gains. What we wish to know about any economic change is how it will affect humanity, and especially working humanity. Will it make laboring men better off or worse off? If it benefits them in the end, will it impose on them an immediate hardship? Will it even make certain ones pay heavily for a gain that is shared by all classes? Are there some who are thus the especial martyrs of progress, suffering for the general good?