The undertaker's profit is precisely the part of the great politico-economical tree from which further growth chiefly takes place. To artificially arrest it, therefore, would be to hasten the stationary state, and thus make general and greater the pressure on workmen and capitalists, which it is sought to remove locally. Hence _Roesler_, Grundsätze, 507 ff., very appropriately calls the undertaker's profit the premium paid by society to those who most effectually combat the "law of rent." The importance of a good undertaker may be clearly seen when a joint stock manufacturing company pays a dividend of from 20 to 30 per cent., while one close by, of the same kind, produces no profit whatever. But, at the same time, the socialistic hatred of this branch of income may be easily accounted for, in a time full of stock-jobbing, which last never produces except a pseudo-undertaker's profit.] CHAPTER VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE THREE BRANCHES OF INCOME. SECTION CXCVII. INFLUENCE OF THE BRANCHES OF INCOME ON THE PRICE OF COMMODITIES. We have seen, § 106, that the cost of production of a commodity, considered from the point of view of individual economy, may be reduced to the payment for the use of the requisite productive forces rented or loaned to the producer. Hence every great variation in the relation of the three branches of income to one another must produce a corresponding variation in the price of commodities.[197-1] When, for instance, the rate of wages increases because they absorb a larger part of the national income, those commodities in the production of which human labor, directly employed, is the chief factor, must become dearer as compared with others. Whether this difference shall be felt principally by the products of nature or of capital (compare § 46 seq.), depends on the causes which brought about the enhancement of the rate of wages. Thus, a large decrease of population, or emigration on a large scale, will usually lower rent as well as the rate of interest;[197-2] an extraordinary improvement made in the art of agriculture, only the former; and an extraordinary increase of capital, only the latter. The usual course of things, namely that the growth of population necessitates a heavier draft on the resources of the soil, and thus causes rents to go up, and makes labor dear, must have the effect of raising the price of the products of labor and of natural forces, as compared with the products of capital; and all the more as it causes the rate of interest to suffer a positive decline. The products of mechanical labor become relatively cheaper; and cheaper in proportion as the producing machinery is more durable; therefore in proportion as, in the price of the services it renders, mere interest preponderates over compensation for its wear and tear.[197-3]