The change brought on in this way by the growth of technology was neither abrupt nor sharply defined. Like other changes in the technological scheme it was an outgrowth of the knowledge and methods already previously current, and it took effect in detail and in a very concrete way, leading on through fluctuating usage to a gradually settled general practice which came at length to differ substantially from the situation out of which it had grown. By insensible gradations it came into such general prevalence and everyday recognition, and established such stable methods of procedure, as presently left it standing as an established institutional fact. It grew into the prevalent habits of thought without a visible break, and made its way more or less thoroughly in the several branches of industry which it touched, until it came to be accepted as the type of handicraft organisation to which other, outlying branches of industry would then also tend to conform, even when there was no direct provocation for these outlying members of the industrial system to take on the typical form so given. But given the tranquil conditions necessary to the accumulation of such industrial appliances and to the invention and employment of long and roundabout processes in industry, and the resulting change that sets in will be of a cumulative character, affecting an ever increasing proportion of the industrial arts, and permeating the industrial system at large in a progressive fashion. Under these circumstances, and in proportion as these technological exigencies take effect in one branch of industry and another, the usufruct of the industrial community’s current productive efficiency comes to vest effectually in those who own the material means of industry. Their effectual exploitation of the community’s industrial efficiency will extend to such industries, and with such a degree of thoroughness and security, as the state of the industrial arts may decide. This effectual engrossing of the technological heritage by the owners will extend to any branch of the industrial arts in which so considerable a material equipment is required, in appliances and raw materials, that the workmen who go into this given line of employment cannot practically create or acquire it as they go along. In an uncertain measure, therefore, and varying in degree somewhat from one industry to another, the owner of the plant becomes in effect the owner of the community’s technological knowledge and workmanlike skill, and thereby the owner of the workman’s productive capacity.