50 ECONOMIC THEORY 



Without fully realizing it the economists of an early day were, 

 as has been indicated, trying to establish static standards. Their 

 " natural " price of a commodity, for example, was one that might be 

 realized in practice if society were in a certain changeless state. 

 Stop the disturbance and movement which progress causes and wait 

 long enough to let friction be overcome, and the cost of an article, as 

 scientifically defined, will be the real price for which it will sell. If 

 the outlay involved in making a yard of cotton cloth of a certain 

 weight and fineness were forever fixed, it might be that the price it 

 would sell for would come to vary from the cost very little; but it is 

 quite otherwise when the cost itself is perpetually varying. When 

 such goods were made entirely by hand their makers' outlay afforded 

 for some time a more or less stable basis of price, but with the inven- 

 tion of the spinning -jenny the cost fell. The actual price began to 

 tend toward the reduced level, but before it could reach its new plane 

 further inventions were made and the standard of price again fell. 

 So long as such things occur the price of an article can never stand at 

 the cost-rate, but must forever pursue that rate, as the industrial 

 changes carry it lower and lower. 



This is merely one illustration of what is occurring at innumerable 

 points and affecting many economic standards. There are natural 

 rates not only of prices for all articles, but for wages of labor and of 

 interest on capital. There is even a standard form of industrial 

 society itself, and this is continually changing. For the present the 

 standards of value, wages, and interest will serve as adequate illus- 

 trations of a general principle, for all these are undergoing perpetual 

 change and drawing actual prices, wages, and rates of interest after 

 them in their movement, though friction keeps the attracting stand- 

 ards and the pursuing practical rates by a certain distance apart. 



The economic science of the future will have to deal compre- 

 hensively with industrial changes, their causes and their results, and 

 among the results will be alterations of the economic standards as we 

 have spoken of and of very many others. The productive power of 

 labor which constitutes the basis of its pay should, for the good of 

 humanity, grow larger from decade to decade, and the pay should 

 rise, following, at a certain distance, the rising standard. On the 

 other hand, if the gross amount of the social fund of capital increases 

 as much as the welfare of all classes requires that it should do, it may 

 be expected that the productive power of a unit of it will grow 

 smaller and actual interest will fall with this falling standard. The 

 theory of economic dynamics will endeavor to refer these and many 

 other changes to their causes and trace them to their effects and so 

 afford a comprehensive knowledge of the laws of economic movement. 



At three of the general changes which are in progress we may 

 briefly glance in order to see how the phenomena of change, as actually 



