58. Smith says that the great increase of 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: 1st, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; 2ndly, 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 workman necessarily increases the quantity of 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 these, 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, 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 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 quite different tools. A country weaver who cultivates a small farm, must lose a 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 work-house, the loss of time is no doubt much less. It is even in this case something considerable. A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to another. When the 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 apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slowful 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."

Of these two causes, of which Smith attributes the enormous effects of the principle of the Division of Labour, the first is infinitely the more important. In almost every particular trade it takes an apprentice many years of industry to acquire a perfect mastery and it seems almost impossible for the same person to acquire the ideas and habits necessary to give perfection in more than one trade. Perfection in one trade often disqualifies the bodily organs for another. The rough work of a carpenter, or a mason, would injure the hand for the delicate operations of the watchmaker, the painter, or the musician. The rapidity of

manual execution which can be attained by long habit and devotion to one occupation is marvellous. The same is true, as Mill observes, of mental as of bodily operations. If a man were to learn several trades he would spend the greater part of his life in going through the necessary apprenticeship in each, and then the work in each would be very imperfectly done, from want of time for the necessary practice. How long would a person require to go through the 112 apprenticeships in watchmaking alone? And when 112 men had done that, how many complete watches could they make all working separately, compared to the same number each confined to his own separate department?

When we consider this principle carried out in all the ramifications of trade, we see how the actual quantity of produce obtained is infinitely augmented by the division of labour: and it also explains the doctrine that in an exchange both sides gain, which was long so mysterious a puzzle to the former schools of Economists.

Even supposing that the Quantity of Labour in each product is equal, as the Physiocrates and Ricardo maintain, each side gains, because the simple fact of each exchanging something he does not want for something he does want, is a gain. And even supposing the quantity of labour in each product equal, each obtains what he wants by a far less amount of labour than if he had to go through the trouble, labour, and expense of learning to make it for himself. He therefore obtains the result with a far less amount of labour than he otherwise would: and that itself is a gain. Each one by learning one trade thoroughly is as well off as if he had learnt every other, and that is an enormous gain to each member of the society. Hence we see the fallacy of the reasoning of the Physiocrates, who maintained that in an exchange neither side gains, because the quantity of labour in each product is equal; whereas the truth is that both sides gain, because each obtains the result he wishes, by infinitely less labour than he otherwise would.

59. But however excellent Smith's account of the effect of the division of labour may be in increasing the quantity of produce, his doctrines as to its effects on the intelligence and minds of the workers are most inaccurate. He says "Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many inferior branches of country labour, require much more skill and experience than the greater part of mechanic trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen works with instruments of which the health, strength, and temper are very different upon different occasions. The condition of the materials he works upon, too, is as variable as that of the instruments which he works with, and both require to be managed with much judgment and discretion. 1 Wealth of Nations, B. I., ch. 10.

The common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in judgment or discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanic who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to understand by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however, being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town is well known to every man whom business or curiosity has led to converse much with both."

And again" In the progress of the division of labour the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two. But the understanding of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects, too, are always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or taking a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and, consequently, of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been

1 Wealth of Nations, B. V., ch. 1.

bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless Government takes some pains to prevent it."

Other writers have repeated these lugubrious doctrines, but Say has pointed out that they are to be received with great qualifications: and McCulloch has very severely and justly controverted these assertions of Smith's as contrary to the plainest experience.— "There is no ground whatever for the notion that agricultural labourers are more intelligent than those employed in manufactures and commerce, or that the faculties of the latter are impaired in consequence of their being generally confined to particular callings. The fact is, indeed, completely and distinctly the reverse; the manufacturing population being uniformly better informed than the agricultural, and their intelligence having improved according to the increase of their numbers, and the greater subdivision of their employments. The notion that manufactures are hostile to the social and martial virtues of the workpeople engaged in carrying them on, is, if possible, still more erroneous. The cities and countries both in ancient and modern times that have been more distinguished by their proficiency in the arts and in commerce, have at the same time been the most distinguished by their patriotism and courage. But it is unnecessary to travel out of Great Britain for conclusive proofs of the entire fallacy of every assertion of Dr. Smith in this paragraph. Our manufactures have increased to an unprecedented extent during the last half century, and the division of employments is carried further in England than in any other country; but though Government has done nothing in the way of education, or otherwise, for their improvement, who will presume to say that the people employed in workshops have become 'stupid and ignorant'?-that they are less capable than the agriculturists of judging of the great and extensive interests of their country'?— or that they are incapable of defending it in war'? There is not, and there never was, so much as the shadow of a foundation for such imputations. His giving them credit is one of the few instances in which Dr. Smith has suffered his judgment to be swayed by ancient prejudices. He might have known that General Elliot's