and Glagow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.

On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals; but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements."

SECTION LVIII.

ADVANTAGES OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR.

The advantages of all suitable division of labor, consequent upon the natural differences of human faculties and dispositions, are the following:

century, and excited then the wonder of the English. See Sir W. Temple, Observations upon the U. Provinces, 1672, ch. 3. Works, I, 128, 143. In 1615, Montchrétien held up the Flemish as a model to the French, in this respect.

"On the bees, see Virgil, Georg. IV, 158.

"The principle of the division of labor was known to the ancients: Xenophon, Cyri Discipl., VIII, 2, 5. Plato, de Rep., II, 369, III, 394, IV, 443; Isocrat., Busir., 8. Aristot., Polit., II, 8, 8. Among the more modern writers, compare Thomas Aquin., De Reg. pr., I, 1, II, 3. Luther (Works by Walch, I, 388), in his Commentary on Genesis, 3, 19. Petty, Several Essays, 1682, p. 113. Considerations upon the East India Trade, London, 1701. Roscher, Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 118. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, enlarged edition of 1723, P. 411. Berkeley, Querist, 1735, No. 415, 430, 520 ff., 586: "What is everybody's business is nobody's." Harris, on Money and Coins (1757), I, 16. F. F. Rousseau, Emile (1762), L. III. Turgot, Sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, § 3, p. 50, 62, 66. Diderot, Encyclopédie de l'Art, s. v. Art. J. Tucker, Four Tracts (1774), p. 25 ff. Boccaria, Economia pubblica, I, 1, 9. But the author to whom we owe most on this score is undoubtedly Adam Smith. To him we are indebted almost entirely for our knowledge of the natural laws developed in § 59 seq.

Even physically,

A. The greater skill of the workman. 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.1 Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children 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. 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.

Ј

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 eapital. 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.

3 v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 211 ff.

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

VOL. I.-13