A. The greater skill of the workman. Even physically, many capacities are, by an indefinite number of repetitions of the same operation, enhanced to an extraordinary degree; which, however, renders the performance of other operations more difficult. Thus, the man who has developed his muscles and hardened his hands working in a smithy, renders himself incapable of becoming a violin-player or an operating oculist. Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children2 and old men may be made, in this way, to play a part in the production of goods. It becomes practicable, too, to relieve men endowed with superior faculties from common labor, and allow them to devote themselves exclusively to the development of the peculiar powers with which nature has gifted them.3

B. A great saving of time and trouble. The simpler the operation performed by a single workman, the more easily is it learned; the smaller is the price paid for apprenticeship, which depends on this, at least, that beginners perform poorer work and are paid more poorly. "The shortest way to the

1 According to Adam Smith, a nailer can make 2,300 nails (Rau says 3,000 shoemaker's tacks in the Odenwalde) per day; a smith who is only occasionally employed in the manufacture, from Soo to 1,000; and smiths who never made nails before, from 200 to 300. A clever filer makes 200 strokes in a minute; a skilled comb-maker can make in a day froin 60 to 70 combs of such fineness that there are from 40 to 48 teeth to the inch in them; eight Liege brick-makers, working together, produce 4,800 bricks per day; children employed in a needle manufactory, in making the eyes of needles, grow so skillful at it that they can make a small hole in the finest hair and draw another hair through it. Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 115. The old proverb, "practice makes perfect," is followed even by thieves in their great division of labor. See Thiele, Die jüdischen Gauner I, 87. Fregier, Des Classes Dangéreuses. 2 Children, with their thinner fingers, can point twice as many needles in the same time as a grown person.

3 The manufacture of English needles demands, on the part of workmen, degrees of skill so different that their pay varies from 6 pence to 20 shillings per day. If the most skillful workman were to manufacture whole needles alone, he would partly be obliged to be satisfied with one-fortieth of what he might otherwise receive. Babbage, loc. cit.

end is most easily found when the end itself is near, and can be kept continually in view." (F. B. Say.) Where the same workman combines different operations, a great deal of time is lost in changing tools etc. Besides, it always takes some time for a workman to get rightly under way of his work. The person who changes thus frequently becomes more easily indolent. Lastly, there is a great number of operations which demand the same aggregate amount of effort, no matter what the number of objects on which they are performed. It is thus, for instance, with shepherds, mail-carriers etc. The post carries a thousand letters with almost as much ease as one; and the entire life of a wholesale dealer would scarcely suffice to carry all the letters which he mails in a single day, to their place of destination. During the middle ages, every man was obliged to watch over his own personal safety and the maintenance of his own rights; while in 1850, in Great Britain, twenty-one million people are protected in their persons and property, in an infinitely more effectual manner, and at less cost, by fifteen thousand soldiers, and by a much smaller number of policemen, whose place it is to preserve public order. (Senior.) Something similar takes place among merchants, and it may be admitted as correct in principle, that every new intermediary, freely recognized by both sides in commerce, makes labor better or less expensive.

C. As the land of a country is, in a sense, the natural extension of the national body, the international division of labor affords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates. If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea

In the case of machines and in the chemical branches of industry, the labor increases in a much smaller ratio than the material used in production. 5 In opposition to monopolies, and to practical constraint which has its source in ignorance etc.

• Hence Torrens calls foreign trade the "territorial division of labour." (Essay on the Production of Wealth (1821), 155 ff.)

which they annually consume, it is possible that its whole agricultural population would not suffice to procure it; while, at present, it is obtained by the labor of forty-five thousand industrial workmen. (Senior.) Moreover, the division of labor increases not only the aptitude of the workman but also his incentive to productive labor, since it guaranties to every one the certainty of being able, by means of exchange, to enjoy the productions of every other person.

SECTION LIX.

CONDITIONS OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR.

It is by its division, that labor, considered as a factor of production, is raised to the highest degree of efficiency. Its results in any given industry are, therefore, more important in proportion as the element labor predominates in it. Hence, these results are much smaller, in agriculture, for instance, than in the trades, or in personal services. The most expert sower or harvester cannot be employed the whole year through in sowing or harvesting. Some kind of rotation of crops, some kind of combination of tillage and stock-raising is necessary to every agriculturist. On this depends the importance of the technic secondary industries of agriculture, which are, in principle,

See Bastiat, Harmonies, ch. 1, for a very beautiful exposition of the doctrine that each man receives much more from society than he accomplishes on his part, for it.

1 The working together of a great number of persons is often carried on to the detriment of agriculture, for each then waits for all the others to work, throws all the blame on them etc. (Columella, I, 9.) As many a housekeeper must have observed, two seamstresses or ironers accomplish, in a day, less than one, in two days. Of course, this rule does not apply in the case of work which cannot be performed by one man, under any circumstances, or the magnitude of which would easily discourage him, and in which mutual aid is easily obtained; as in the raising of heavy loads, the construction of roads, dikes etc.

opposed to the division of labor. Hence, too, almost any person engaged in a trade, no matter of what kind, supposes a greater number of customers than a tiller of the land of the same rank.

The more labor is divided, the greater is the amount of capital necessary to it. It may be even said, that all preparatory labor becomes capital in its relation to subsequent labor. If ten isolated workmen can produce ten dozen articles of any kind, daily, and, after the introduction of a more efficient division of labor, fifty dozen, the employer must provide them, in the latter case, not only with five times as much capital, but probably with fifty times as much, as then, five hundred dozen are making continually.

SECTION LX.

INFLUENCE OF THE EXTENT OF THE MARKET ON THE DIVISION OF LABOR.

But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;1 upon their

* Ad. Smith, B., II, Introd. Hufeland, Neue Grundlegung, I, 215. In many instances, a division of labor, of course, favors the saving of capital. If every workman needed all the tools necessary to the work in which he participates, three-fourths of them would have to lie idle at present. J. Rae, New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, 164.

3v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 211 ff.

This necessity is observable, although in a peculiar form, even where what has been called the "despotic organization of labor" prevails, instead of freedom.

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smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal. Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand. While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.1; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active. And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, in

In the highlands of Scotland, in Adam Smith's time, there were no smiths who manufactured nails only; for the reason that no smith had a market for more than 1,000 nails a year, that is not for so many as might be manufac tured in a single day.

3 It is of course very different when there is question of a foreign market, even if it be only indirectly. Thus, for instance, there are in the Hartz mountains, persons who are simply post-makers, trough-makers, chess-woodmakers, block-hewers, shingle-makers etc.

4 Too much should not be inferred from the existence among the Egyptians of physicians, specialists for the several members of the body. Herodot., II, 84. Something analagous is to be found even among barbarous nations; but it is accounted for entirely by the superstition of the people. See Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, I, 266.

5 In the whole of Hesse, there were under Philip the Magnanimous, only two apothecaries, one at Cassel and one at Marburg. Rommel, Gesch. v. Hessen, IV, p. 419, note. And there were no bakers among the Romans before the time of the war with Perseus. All the bread needed by the family was baked by the wife or by female domestics. Plin., H. N. XVIII, 28. The common oven in new towns marks the period of transition. Even yet, in the central part of France, there are localities where each family bakes its own bread for a whole month in advance; and, in the Alpine departments for even a year in advance. M. Chevalier, Cours II, 366.