excitement) beyond the length of time to which he is accustomed. Women are usually (at least in their present social circumstances) of far greater versatility than men; and the present topic is an instance among multitudes, how little the ideas and experience of women have yet counted for, in forming the opinions of mankind. There are few women who would not reject the idea that work is made vigorous by being protracted, and is inefficient for some time after changing to a new thing. Even in this case, habit, I believe, much more than nature, is the cause of the difference. The occupations of nine out of every ten men are special, those of nine out of every ten women general, embracing a multitude of details, each of which requires very little time. Women are in the constant practice of passing quickly from one manual, and still more from one mental operation to another, which therefore rarely costs. them either effort or loss of time, while a man's occupation generally consists in working steadily for a long time at one thing, or one very limited class of things. But the situations are sometimes reversed, and with them the characters. Women are not found less efficient than men for the uniformity of factory work, or they would not so generally be employed for it; and a man who has cultivated the habit of turning his hand to many things, far from being the slothful and lazy person described by Adam Smith, is usually remarkably lively and active. It is true, however, that change of occupation may be too frequent even for the most versatile. Incessant variety is even more fatiguing than perpetual sameness.

The third advantage attributed by Adam Smith to the division of labor is, to a certain extent, real. Inventions tending to save labor in a particular operation, are more likely to occur to any one, in proportion as his thoughts are intensely directed to that occupation, and continually employed upon it. A person is not so likely to make practical

improvements in one department of things, whose attention is very much diverted to others. But, in this, much more depends on general intelligence and habitual activity of mind, than on exclusiveness of occupation, and if that exclusiveness is carried to a degree unfavorable to the cultivation of intelligence, there will be more lost, in this kind of advantage, than gained. We may add, that whatever may be the cause of making inventions, when they are once made, the increased efficiency of labor is owing to the invention itself, and not to the division of labor.

The greatest advantage (next to the dexterity of the workmen) derived from the minute division of labor which takes place in modern manufacturing industry, is probably one not mentioned by Adam Smith, but to which attention has been drawn by Mr. Babbage-the more economical distribution of labor, by classing the work-people according to their capacity. Different parts of the same series of operations require unequal degrees of skill and bodily strength; and those who have skill enough for the most difficult, or strength enough for the hardest parts of the labor, are made much more useful by being employed solely in them; the operations of which inferior workmen are capable, being left to those who are fit for no others. Production is most efficient when the precise quantity of skill and strength, which is required for each part of the process, is employed in it, and no more. The operation of pin-making requires, it seems, in its different parts, such different degrees of skill, that the wages earned by the persons employed vary from four-pence half-penny a day to six shillings; and if the workman who is paid at that highest rate had to perform the whole process, he would be working a part of his time with a waste per day equivalent to the difference between six shillings and four-pence half-penny. Without reference to the loss sustained in quantity of work done, and supposing even, that he could make a pound of pins in the same

time in which ten workmen combining their labor can make ten pounds, Mr. Babbage computes that they would cost, in making, three times and three quarters as much as they now do, by means of the division of labor. In needle-making, he adds, the difference would be still greater, for in that, the scale of remuneration for different parts of the process varies from sixpence to twenty shillings a day.

To the advantage which consists in extracting the greatest possible amount of utility from skill, may be added the analogous one, of extracting the utmost possible utility from tools. "If any man," says an able writer,* "had all the tools which many different occupations require, at least three fourths of them would constantly be idle and useless. It were clearly then better, were any society to exist where each man had all these tools, and alternately carried on each of these occupations, that the members of it should, if possible, divide them amongst them, each restricting himself to some particular employment. The advantages of the change to the whole community, and therefore to every individual in it, are great. In the first place, the various implements, being in constant employment, yield a better return for what has been laid out in procuring them. In consequence, their owners can afford to have them of better quality and more complete construction. The result of both events is, that a larger provision is made for the future wants of the whole society."

6. The division of labor, as all writers on the subject have remarked, is limited by the extent of the market. If, by the separation of pin-making into ten distinct employments, forty-eight thousand pins can be made in a day, this separation will only be advisable if the number of accessi

* Statement of some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy. By John Rae, (Boston, U. S.) p. 164.

ble consumers is such as to require, every day, something like forty-eight thousand pins. If there is only a demand for twenty-four thousand, the division of labor can only be advantageously carried to the extent which will every day produce that smaller number. This, therefore, is a further mode in which an accession of demand for a commodity tends to increase the efficiency of the labor employed in its production. The extent of the market may be limited by several causes: too small a population; the population too scattered and distant to be easily accessible; deficiency of roads and water carriage; or, finally, the population too poor, that is, their collective labor too little effective, to admit of their being large consumers. Indolence, want of skill, and want of combination of labor, among those who would otherwise be buyers of a commodity, limit, therefore, the practicable amount of combination of labor among its producers. In an early stage of civilization, when the demand of any particular locality was necessarily small, industry only flourished among those who, by their command of the sea-coast or of a navigable river, could have the whole world, or all that part of it which lay on coasts or navigable rivers, as a market for their productions. The increase of the general riches of the world, when accompanied with freedom of commercial intercourse, improvements in navigation, and inland communication by roads, canals, or railways, tends to give increased productiveness to the labor of every nation in particular, by enabling each locality to supply with its special products so much larger a market, that a great extension of the division of labor in their production is an ordinary consequence.

The division of labor is also limited, in many cases, by the nature of the employment. Agriculture, for example, is not susceptible of so great a division of occupations as many branches of manufactures, because its different operations cannot possibly be simultaneous. One man cannot be al

ways ploughing, another sowing, and another reaping. A workman who only practiced one agricultural operation would be idle eleven months of the year. The same person may perform them all in succession, and have, in almost every climate, a considerable amount of unoccupied time. The combination of labor, of which agricultural industry is susceptible, is chiefly that which Mr. Wakefield terms Simple Coöperation; many persons employed together in the same work. To execute a great agricultural improvement, it is often necessary that many laborers should work together; but in general, except the few whose business is superintendence, they all work in the same manner. A canal or railway embankment cannot be made without a combination of many laborers; but they are all excavators, except the engineer and his clerks.

CHAPTER IX.

OF PRODUCTION ON A LARGE, AND PRODUCTION ON A
SMALL SCALE.

§ 1. FROM the importance of combination of labor, it is an obvious conclusion, that there are many cases in which production is made much more effective by being conducted on a large scale. Whenever it is essential to the greatest efficiency of labor that many laborers should combine, even though only in the way of Simple Coöperation, the scale of the enterprise must be such as to bring many laborers together, and the capital must be large enough to maintain them. Still more needful is this, when the nature of the employment allows, and the extent of the possible market