markitect-main/examples/infospace-with-history/artifacts/sources/book-1-chapter-01.md

id, title, book, chapter, artifact_type

id	title	book	chapter	artifact_type
book-1-chapter-01	OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.	1	1	content

CHAPTER I. OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.

  The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the
  greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is
  anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the
  division of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general
  business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in
  what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly
  supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps
  that it really is carried further in them than in others of more
  importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to
  supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number
  of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every
  different branch of the work can often be collected into the same
  workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator.

  In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply
  the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of
  the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to
  collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one
  time, than those employed in one single branch. Though in such
  manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much
  greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the
  division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less
  observed.

  To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one
  in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the
  trade of a pin-maker: a workman not educated to this business (which the
  division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the
  use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same
  division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps,
  with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not
  make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not
  only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number
  of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One
  man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth
  points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make
  the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a
  peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by
  itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a
  pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations,
  which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though
  in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have
  seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed,
  and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct
  operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but
  indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when
  they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a
  day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling
  size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of
  forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth
  part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four
  thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought
  separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated
  to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made
  twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two
  hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth, part
  of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a
  proper division and combination of their different operations.

  In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour
  are similar to what they are in this very trifling one, though, in many of
  them, the labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so
  great a simplicity of operation. The division of labour, however, so far
  as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable
  increase of the productive powers of labour. The separation of different
  trades and employments from one another, seems to have taken place in
  consequence of this advantage. This separation, too, is generally carried
  furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and
  improvement; what is the work of one man, in a rude state of society,
  being generally that of several in an improved one. In every improved
  society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer,
  nothing but a manufacturer. The labour, too, which is necessary to produce
  any one complete manufacture, is almost always divided among a great
  number of hands. How many different trades are employed in each branch of
  the linen and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the
  wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and
  dressers of the cloth! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit
  of so many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one
  business from another, as manufactures. It is impossible to separate so
  entirely the business of the grazier from that of the corn-farmer, as the
  trade of the carpenter is commonly separated from that of the smith. The
  spinner is almost always a distinct person from the weaver; but the
  ploughman, the harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the
  corn, are often the same. The occasions for those different sorts of
  labour returning with the different seasons of the year, it is impossible
  that one man should be constantly employed in any one of them. This
  impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all the
  different branches of labour employed in agriculture, is perhaps the
  reason why the improvement of the productive powers of labour, in this
  art, does not always keep pace with their improvement in manufactures. The
  most opulent nations, indeed, generally excel all their neighbours in
  agriculture as well as in manufactures; but they are commonly more
  distinguished by their superiority in the latter than in the former. Their
  lands are in general better cultivated, and having more labour and expense
  bestowed upon them, produce more in proportion to the extent and natural
  fertility of the ground. But this superiority of produce is seldom much
  more than in proportion to the superiority of labour and expense. In
  agriculture, the labour of the rich country is not always much more
  productive than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so much more
  productive, as it commonly is in manufactures. The corn of the rich
  country, therefore, will not always, in the same degree of goodness, come
  cheaper to market than that of the poor. The corn of Poland, in the same
  degree of goodness, is as cheap as that of France, notwithstanding the
  superior opulence and improvement of the latter country. The corn of
  France is, in the corn-provinces, fully as good, and in most years nearly
  about the same price with the corn of England, though, in opulence and
  improvement, France is perhaps inferior to England. The corn-lands of
  England, however, are better cultivated than those of France, and the
  corn-lands of France are said to be much better cultivated than those of
  Poland. But though the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority of
  its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and
  goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its
  manufactures, at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and
  situation, of the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper
  than those of England, because the silk manufacture, at least under the
  present high duties upon the importation of raw silk, does not so well
  suit the climate of England as that of France. But the hardware and the
  coarse woollens of England are beyond all comparison superior to those of
  France, and much cheaper, too, in the same degree of goodness. In Poland
  there are said to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those
  coarser household manufactures excepted, without which no country can well
  subsist.

  This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the
  division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing,
  is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of
  dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time
  which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another;
  and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which
  facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

  First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workmen, necessarily
  increases the quantity of the work he can perform; and the division of
  labour, by reducing every man’s business to some one simple operation, and
  by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily
  increases very much the dexterity of the workman. A common smith, who,
  though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been used to make nails,
  if, upon some particular occasion, he is obliged to attempt it, will
  scarce, I am assured, be able to make above two or three hundred nails in
  a day, and those, too, very bad ones. A smith who has been accustomed to
  make nails, but whose sole or principal business has not been that of a
  nailer, can seldom, with his utmost diligence, make more than eight
  hundred or a thousand nails in a day. I have seen several boys, under
  twenty years of age, who had never exercised any other trade but that of
  making nails, and who, when they exerted themselves, could make, each of
  them, upwards of two thousand three hundred nails in a day. The making of
  a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest operations. The same
  person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion,
  heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head,
  too, he is obliged to change his tools. The different operations into
  which the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of
  them much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it
  has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. The
  rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are
  performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen
  them, be supposed capable of acquiring.

  Secondly, the advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly lost
  in passing from one sort of work to another, is much greater than we
  should at first view be apt to imagine it. It is impossible to pass very
  quickly from one kind of work to another, that is carried on in a
  different place, and with quite different tools. A country weaver, who
  cultivates a small farm, must lose a good deal of time in passing from
  his loom to the field, and from the field to his loom. When the two trades
  can be carried on in the same workhouse, the loss of time is, no doubt,
  much less. It is, even in this case, however, very considerable. A man
  commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment
  to another. When he first begins the new work, he is seldom very keen and
  hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some time he
  rather trifles than applies to good purpose. The habit of sauntering, and
  of indolent careless application, which is naturally, or rather
  necessarily, acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change
  his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty
  different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always
  slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application, even on the
  most pressing occasions. Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in
  point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the
  quantity of work which he is capable of performing.

  Thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible how much labour is
  facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is
  unnecessary to give any example. I shall only observe, therefore, that the
  invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and
  abridged, seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour.
  Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of
  attaining any object, when the whole attention of their minds is directed
  towards that single object, than when it is dissipated among a great
  variety of things. But, in consequence of the division of labour, the
  whole of every man’s attention comes naturally to be directed towards some
  one very simple object. It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that
  some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of
  labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their
  own particular work, whenever the nature of it admits of such improvement.
  A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which
  labour is most subdivided, were originally the invention of common
  workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation,
  naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier
  methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such
  manufactures, must frequently have been shewn very pretty machines, which
  were the inventions of such workmen, in order to facilitate and quicken
  their own particular part of the work. In the first fire engines {this was
  the current designation for steam engines}, a boy was constantly employed
  to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the
  cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of
  those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying
  a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to
  another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his
  assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his
  play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon
  this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the
  discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.

  All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the
  inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many
  improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the
  machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and
  some by that of those who are called philosophers, or men of speculation,
  whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing, and
  who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers
  of the most distant and dissimilar objects in the progress of society,
  philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the
  principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens.
  Like every other employment, too, it is subdivided into a great number of
  different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe
  or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in
  philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and
  saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar
  branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is
  considerably increased by it.

  It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different
  arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a
  well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the
  lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own
  work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every
  other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to
  exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity or, what
  comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He
  supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they
  accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general
  plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society.

  Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer in a
  civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of
  people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been
  employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The
  woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and
  rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great
  multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the
  wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver,
  the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different
  arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants
  and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the
  materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very
  distant part of the country? How much commerce and navigation in
  particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers,
  must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs
  made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the
  world? What a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the
  tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated
  machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the
  loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is
  requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which
  the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for
  smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to
  be made use of in the smelting-house, the brickmaker, the bricklayer, the
  workmen who attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith,
  must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were
  we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress
  and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his
  skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all
  the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he
  prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose,
  dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him, perhaps, by a long
  sea and a long land-carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all
  the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter
  plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different
  hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which
  lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with
  all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy
  invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce
  have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of
  all the different workmen employed in producing those different
  conveniencies; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a
  variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible
  that, without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very
  meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even
  according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in
  which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with the more
  extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear
  extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the
  accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of
  an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter
  exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives
  and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.