courtesy of the trade, as it is termed, often restrains one house from issuing a rival edition of a work unprotected by copyright before the edition published by another, who first risked the enterprise, is exhausted. So, also, as Mr. Mill remarks, "all professional remuneration is regulated by custom. The fees of physicians, surgeons, and barristers, the charges of attorneys, are nearly invariable. Not certainly for want of abundant competition in those professions; but because the competition operates by diminishing each competitor's chance of fees, not by lowering the fees themselves."

But competition is the general rule; and the effect of unrestrained competition is to distribute the value of a product equally among its various producers, leaving neither to any of them, nor to the consumer, any just ground of complaint. Each receives in exact proportion to the labor which he has bestowed; the labor of all was equally necessary to present the article in its finished state; and he who finally consumes it, therefore, justly pays all by rendering an equivalent amount of labor. Monopolies and scarcityvalues exist only when competition is barred out by a patented invention or a secret process, and occasion a temporary enhancement of price and inequality of distribution. But these exceptions, in modern times, are of limited duration and moderate amount. The patent soon expires, the secret process soon becomes known, and equality of distribution is then restored.

I place stress upon this point, because the effect of sharp competition is, in some measure, to blind our eyes to the fact, that we are indebted to the friendly co-operation of labor for all the necessaries, all the comforts, all the luxuries, which we enjoy. This co-operation and mutual dependence of all the arts and trades, all the branches of industry, all ranks and professions, is one of the most valuable lessons of Political Economy; and the fair rivalry which causes the distribution of values among them, in proportion to their respective industry and skill, ought not to create feelings of mutual jealousy and dislike, ought not to give rise to the cry that one class is taking more than its due share of the common product. It is impossible that any class, as a class, should be unduly favored. Individual cases there may be, where fortune, or singularly propitious circumstances, may swell one's gains beyond the common standard. But as a general rule, competition, if unfettered, must tend to reduce them to an equality. The

manufacturer is no more dependent upon the agriculturist than the agriculturist is upon the manufacturer. The merchant is equally dependent upon both, and both depend equally upon him. Even the common laborer is as much indebted to his employer as his employer is to him; each rendering a peculiar service, without which the finished product could not be placed in the market or exchanged for other products.

The prejudice which prevents this truth from being generally recognized is the very natural one, which considers the value of the finished product to reside chiefly in the raw material, and, when that is bulky and cheap, to believe that the great enhancement of its price, which takes place as it passes through the hands of the manufacturer and merchant, is a needless and arbitrary thing, an injury both to the farmer and the consumer. But it is not so in either case, a modification of the article is effected, and the difficulty which the consumer finds in obtaining it in a form fit for use is lessened; and it is easy to show that all the modifications which it successively undergoes conduce to that end. We cannot consume or use raw cotton, corn in the husk, or unground wheat. The transformations effected by art are as necessary preliminaries to use, and therefore produce wealth just as much, as the transformations effected by nature.

"The industry which prepares," says Torrens, "is, necessarily, in the order of time, secondary to that which appropriates the gifts of nature. But though man must originally have lived by merely availing himself of nature's spontaneous gifts, yet the very first, or, at most, the very second step towards knowledge and improvement, must have led him to the attempt of superadding to these gifts some rude species of preparation. Almost the whole. of the productions of nature are presented to us in a new or rude state, and, if it were not for the application of labor to the preparing and forming of them, would be absolutely without utility. Without manufacturing or adaptive industry, therefore, our wealth would be necessarily limited to that scanty supply of necessaries which nature presents in a state fit for immediate consumption. Man would be reduced to a more destitute and helpless state than that in which he has ever yet been found, even in the most barbarous and savage countries."

Commerce, moreover, as a source of wealth, is equally produc

tive with manufacturing and appropriative industry. The most precious fruits of the earth cease to constitute wealth when there is a superabundance of them, and when they no longer find wants to satisfy. Commerce comes to restore utility to them, to replace them among the articles of wealth, by transporting them to places where they are wanted. Of what avail is it for me to know, that there is tea enough in China, and coffee enough in the West Indies,

that there is cotton to spare in Carolina, and a surplus of wheat in Ohio, if some kind person will not intervene to bring these articles to my doors, and offer to me the precise quantity of each which I need, in exchange for other articles, of which I may have a superabundance? To accomplish this transportation and distribution, — each individual being accommodated with what he wants, as much as he wants, and where he wants it, —a large apparatus of means is necessary. Ships must be built and appointed, warehouses must be stocked, correspondence must be arranged, and the supplies must be nicely adapted to the wants and means of each locality which is to be provided for. 'Roads, railways, canals, post-offices, mints, exchanges, banks, horses, carriages, the professions of bankers, merchants, brokers, factors, carriers, merchant-seamen, and many more, may be regarded as parts of the immense, complicated, and most costly apparatus of exchange." The problem already mentioned, that of supplying a large city with all its necessaries and comforts, must be solved in every part, in all its complex details. Commerce is what renders possible that vast division of labor, to which the industry of civilized man owes nearly all its superior efficiency over that of the savage. He who devotes a lifetime to the manufacture of one small article needles, for instance must accumulate an immense store of them; and the quantity needed by any one family is so small that, if he would find purchasers for his whole stock, without the help of professed traders, he must give two thirds of his time to seeking purchasers of what he manufactures in the other third. The merchant takes up his whole stock at once, giving him its full value in whatever he most needs in return. It is a mere truism to say, that whoever converts an idle and superfluous thing into a highly useful one creates wealth. The merchant does this, by making one man's, or one country's, superfluity supply another's wants; he does it by exchanging superfluities, and thus equalizing the bounties of Prov

idence. By his instrumentality, the hard and rugged soil of Massachusetts, with its long winter, yields to its industrious cultivator all the fruits of the tropics, all the productions of the most favored climes.

The merchant equalizes the gifts of nature in another manner, by transportation in time, as well as in space. The surplus from an unusually abundant harvest he stores up in reserve against the possible deficiency of the next season. He gives the alarm, when there is the slightest reason to fear that the next crop may be a failure, by raising the price of the stock already on hand, and thus renders the people economical in its consumption. Through all these methods, his agency in the production of wealth is so important that he richly earns the portion of it which falls to his lot in the general distribution of values.

There is a common opinion, that the mere exchange of one article for another cannot create any additional value, and hence, that whatever may be gained by one party to the transaction must necessarily be lost by the other. But it is not so: Mr. Babbage has clearly illustrated the truth that both parties may be equally profited by the mere interchange of their commodities.

"It is found by experience," he says, "that the upper leather of boots made in France is better and more durable than the upper leather manufactured in England. On the other hand, it is found that the leather prepared in England for the soles of boots is less permeable by water, and more durable, than that made in France. Let us suppose that, in each country, a pair of boots will endure twelve months' continual wear, after which time they are thrown aside. In England, the destruction of the boots will arise from that of the upper leather; whilst in France, it will be caused by that of the sole. Let us also suppose that the upper leather of France will wear three months longer than the French soles, and, reciprocally, that the soles of England will wear three months longer than the English upper leather. Under these circumstances, it is clear that, if the inhabitants of each country insist on making their boots entirely with the produce of their own tanneries, the average duration of a pair of boots, both in France and England, will be twelve mouths. Let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that in each country the upper leather and the soles have the same value. Then it is equally clear, if England were

to give to France a million pair of soles in exchange for a million pair of French upper leathers, that one million of the inhabitants of each nation would find their boots last during fifteen instead of twelve months."

The sum of the two commodities so exchanged evidently has a greater value after the exchange than before; and the question may be asked, Whence has the profit arisen? France and England having both been benefited, is there any third party at whose expense their joint profit has been acquired? Mr. Babbage rightly answers, that "the advantage is most frequently won by industry and knowledge from nature herself. The superior natural advantages of England-say, better bark, water, climate, etc. for producing soles, and the superior natural advantages of France for producing upper leathers, instead of being confined to the natives of each country separately, are now, after the exchange, enjoyed equally by both.”

CHAPTER III.

THE DIVISION OF LABOR: ITS BENEFICIAL AND INJURIOUS CONSEQUENCES: EFFECTS OF THE INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY.

THE analysis of the nature of value, and of the distribution of wealth among its producers, has already brought us to the conclusion, that the co-operation of many laborers with each other is one great cause of the efficiency or productiveness of labor. Labor is divided in two ways. First, by allotting different portions of a process to different hands, all co-operating with each other in the production of one article; as when eighteen workmen are employed in one pin-manufactory, each devoting himself exclusively to one of the eighteen distinct operations into which the making of a pin is divided. The second kind of division takes place by the separation of employments, the several sets of laborers being employed at different times and places, and in distinct pursuits, so that their co-operation with each other, though real, is not so obvious as in the former case. These two modes of the division of labor, says Mr. Wakefield, may be termed Simple Co-operation and Complex Co-operation. The Co-operation of distinct trades, and the Co