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," continues the same author, in reference to the third head above stated, "every body must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery."+ ""Tis an artificial force," says Mr Hamilton, "brought in aid of the natural force of man, and, to all the purpose of labour, is as an increase of hands; an accession of strength, unencumbered too with the expense of maintaining the labourer. "A man,” adds this writer, "occupied on a single object will have it more in his power, and will be more readily led to exert his imagination in devising methods to facilitate and abridge labour, than if he were perplexed by a variety of independent and dissimilar operations. Besides this, the fabrication of machines, in numerous instances becoming itself a distinct trade, the artist who follows it has all the advantages which have been enumerated for improvements in this particular art; and in both ways the invention and application of machinery are extended."§

To this very concise and distinct exposition and enumeration of the circumstances, or particular causes to which it is owing that the division of labour increases so very greatly the powers of production, there might perhaps be added as

• Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. 1. + Ibid.

Report mentioned above in note, p. 73, as quoted in a North Ame rican publication, entitled "Address of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry."

§ Report referred to in the preceding note.

another and fourth cause or circumstance, contributing to the same result, and of sufficient consequence to deserve a particular notice, that it sharpens the wits and ingenuity of those persons who are intrusted with or engaged in the business of direction and management, and gives room for the exercise of judgment in the proper arrangement and combination of the different processes of labour and efforts of the labourers. In an extensive manufactory the arrangement of the buildings and machinery, or plan of the work, is itself a highly important point; and where a great number of people are employed of diverse talents and dispositions, and of various degrees of skill or dexterity, and where also a multiplicity of different processes are going on, the opportunities and methods are innumerable, wherein, by a judicious arrangement of the different operations, and by placing every particular workman, as far as it can be done, in his proper situation, or in that post for which he is best adapted, the manager of a work, and even the subordinate managers, or foremen, in an extensive establishment, can very materially assist in producing the greatest effects with the smallest expenditure of human labour. But on this head it is unnecessary to enlarge after the previous detail. From that detail it cannot but have happened, that the minute causes or circumstances, whereunto it is owing that the division of labour increases so very greatly the powers of production, must have already appeared in a clear light. Still, however, I must add, from the author already so largely quoted, his celebrated example of the effects of the division of labour in the trade of the pin-maker, since it not only illustrates those effects more fully, and perhaps still more strikingly, than any of the passages we have before adduced, but will serve also to throw light on one more observation or two, without which this portion of our argument would be imperfectly stated.

"A workman," says Dr Smith, "not educated to this bus

iness (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. 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."*

The separation of different trades and employments from one another in the great business of a whole community, is analogous to this subdivision of labour in a particular manufactory, and produces a similar but vastly more extended influence in assisting and improving the powers of production, and increasing the quantity and abundance of wealth. By following a separate and distinct trade, every individual labourer acquires the capacity of performing a great quantity of work, or, in other words, of producing largely in his peculiar department; and every capital also produces largely by the same means. Every one has therefore a great quantity of the produce of his industry or capital to exchange against the produce of other people's industry or capital; and the whole society are in this way far more abundantly supplied with all commodities, than they could be if each attempted independently to supply the whole of his individual wants by his own isolated and unassisted labour.

Dr Smith continues:- "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

* Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. 1.

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!"*

Lastly, Dr Smith observes,-"The division of labour is commonly supposed to be carried farthest in some very trifling manufactures; not perhaps that it really is carried farther 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."+

Such then are the effects of the division of labour in assisting and improving the powers of the production, and in increasing the quantity or abundance of wealth.

* Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. 1. + Ibid.