(2) If improvements were long confined to one subgroup, they might send labor into other subgroups and even into other general groups. Occurring as they do at nearly all parts of the system, they very seldom require an absolute diminution of the amount of labor in a subgroup, and practically never cause such a reduction in a general group.
(3) The gradual introduction of an improvement is important, since it affords time for an increase in the social demand for the product which is thus cheapened and for introducing at many other points improvements which neutralize, in a large degree, the labor-expelling effect of the first improvement.
(4) Technical gains are the largest source of additions to the total amount of the social capital. The constant influx of new capital facilitates the placing of laborers at the points where they are needed.
(5) The fact that elementary utilities which are produced by agriculture cater to a less elastic demand than do the form utilities which are the product of manufacturing occupations, has caused labor to move slowly from the lowest subgroups of the various series to the upper ones, as the productive power of labor in agriculture has increased.
(6) This movement is so gradual that it can be accomplished almost entirely by devoting to the industries constituting the upper subgroups an enlarged share of new laborers as they enter the field in quest of employment. Young men drift from the farm to the village and the city.
(7) In addition to the upward flow of labor in the series of subgroups there are some lateral movements, or transfers from group to group, to be taken into account. The fact that improvements are widely diffused and that there is a succession of them at each point makes it possible to make these lateral movements of labor in the same way in which the movement within the groups is accomplished; namely, by putting the new men who are entering the field of employment in the places where they are most needed.
(8) These facts do not always prevent particular men from losing the special benefit that skilled handicrafts have insured to them, since a machine, to the running of which they are compelled to betake themselves, may often be as well tended by persons who have never learned such a handicraft.
(9) The loss thus entailed on craftsmen was very large during the original process of supplanting hand labor by machinery, but bids fair to be relatively small hereafter, since fewer men go through long and costly apprenticeships, and since the operator of one machine can usually learn to operate another with little waste of time.
(10) Such injuries as particular men now suffer from the introduction of economical devices are, as a rule, more than atoned for even to these men by the greater productivity of social labor, as it is applied in new ways, and by the greater abundance of social capital. These gains are the result of improvements made in the earlier periods, and they benefit every one who labors.
(11) The new capital created by productive inventions is an essential cause of the continuing gain of the working class.