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 loose 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, improve 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.