Part 2 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV.
DIVISION OF LABOUR.
#25. How Division of Labour Arises.# When a number of workmen are engaged on any work, we find that each man usually takes one part of the work, and leaves other parts of the work to his mates. People by degrees arrange themselves into different trades, so that the whole work done in any place is divided into many employments or crafts. This division of labour is found in all civilised countries, and more or less in all states of society, which are not merely barbarous. In every village there is the butcher and the baker, and the blacksmith and the carpenter. Even in a single family there is division of labour: the husband ploughs, or cuts timber; the wife cooks, manages the house, and spins or weaves; the sons hunt or tend sheep; the daughters employ themselves as milkmaids. There is a popular couplet which says-- ”When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?”
It seems to express the fact that this division of labour existed in very early times, before there were any gentlemen.
In modern times the division of labour is immensely complicated: not only has every town and village its different tradespeople, and artisans and men in different posts and employments, but each district has its peculiar manufactures. In one place cotton goods are produced; in another, woollen goods; in other parts of the country flax, jute, silk are manufactured. Iron is made in Staffords.h.i.+re, Cleveland, South Wales, and Scotland; copper is smelted in South Wales; crockery is baked in the potteries; hosiery is manufactured in Nottingham and Leicester; linens are sewed in the North of Ireland; and so on. In every separate factory, again, there is division of labour; there is the manager, the chief clerk, the a.s.sistant clerks; the foremen of different departments, the timekeeper, the engine-tenter, and stokers, the common labourers, the carters, errand boys, porters, &c., all in addition to the actual mechanics of different kinds and ranks who do the princ.i.p.al work. Thus the division of labour spreads itself throughout the whole of society, from the Queen and her Ministers, down to the errand boy, or the street scavenger.
#26. Adam Smith on the Division of Labour.# There are many ways in which we gain by the division of labour, but Adam Smith has treated the subject so excellently that we had better, in the first place, consider his view of the matter. There are, as he thought, three ways in which advantage arises from the division of labour, namely--
(1.) Increase of dexterity in every particular workman.
(2.) Saving of the time which is commonly lost in pa.s.sing from one kind of work to another.
(3.) The invention of a great number of machines, which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.
There can be no doubt as to the #increase of dexterity#, which arises from practice. Any one who has tried to imitate a juggler, or to play the piano, without having learned to do it, knows how absurdly he fails.
n.o.body could possibly do the work of a gla.s.s-blower without long practice. Even when a man can do a job in some sort of way, he will do it much more quickly if he does it often. Adam Smith states that if a blacksmith had to make nails without having been accustomed to the work, he would not make above 200 or 300 bad nails in a day. With practice he might learn to make 800 or 1000 nails in a day; but boys who are brought up to the nailer's trade can turn out 2300 nails of the same kind in the same time. But there is no need of many examples: everything that we see well or quickly made has been made by men who have spent a great deal of time and trouble in learning and practising the work.
Secondly, there is #a great deal of time lost when a man changes from one kind of work to another# many times in the day. Before you can make a thing you must get all the right tools and materials around you; when you have finished one box, for instance, you are all ready to make another with less trouble than the first; but if you have to go off and do something quite different, such as to mend a pair of shoes or write a letter, a different set of implements have to be got ready. A man, as Adam Smith thought, saunters a little in turning his hand from one kind of employment to another, and if this happens frequently, he is likely to become lazy.
In the third place, Smith a.s.serted that #the division of labour leads to the invention of machines# which abridge labour, because men, he thought, were much more likely to discover easy methods of attaining an object when their whole attention is directed to that object. But it seems doubtful how far this is correct. Workmen do occasionally invent some mode of lessening their labour, and a few important inventions have been made in this way. But, as a general rule, the division of labour leads to invention, because it enables ingenious men to make invention their profession. The greatest inventors, such as James Watt, Bramah, Fulton, Roberts, Nasmyth, Howe, Fairbairn, Whitworth, the Stephensons, Wheatstone, Bessemer, Siemens, have not been led to invention in the way described by Adam Smith, but have cultivated an original genius by careful study and long practice in mechanical construction. But the division of labour greatly a.s.sists invention, because it enables each factory to adopt particular kinds of machinery. In England the division of labour is continually becoming more and more minute, and it is not uncommon to find that the whole supply of some commodity is furnished from a single manufactory, which can then afford to have a set of machines invented on purpose to produce this one commodity. Such is even more the case in the large manufactories of the United States.
I will now describe four other ways in which great saving of labour arises from the division of labour, as follows:--
#27. The Multiplication of Services.# A great deal of labour is often saved by arranging work so that a labourer may serve many persons as easily as one. If a messenger is going to carry a letter to the post-office, he can as readily carry a score. Instead of twenty people each carrying their own letters, one messenger can do the whole work without more trouble. This explains why the post-office is able to forward a letter from any part of the kingdom to any other part for a penny or even a halfpenny. There are so many people sending and receiving letters, that a postman usually carries a great many, and often delivers half-a-dozen at once. But it would be quite impossible to send telegrams so cheaply, because every message has to be separately telegraphed along the wires, and then delivered at once by a special messenger, who can seldom carry more than one message at a time.
Archbishop Whately pointed out that when a party of travellers exploring a new country camp out at night, they naturally divide the work: one attends to the horses, another unpacks the stores, a third makes a fire and cooks the supper, a fourth goes for water, and so on. It would be quite absurd if a dozen travellers in one party were to light a dozen separate fires, and cook a dozen separate meals. The labour of lighting a fire and cooking for twelve persons is not much greater than doing the same for one or two. There are many things which, if once done, will serve for thousands or millions of people. If a person gets important information, as, for instance, that a storm is coming across the Atlantic Ocean, he can warn a whole nation by means of the newspapers.
It is a great benefit to have a meteorological office in London, where two or three men spend their labour in learning the weather all over the country by means of the telegraph, and thus enable us to judge, as far as possible, of the weather which is coming. This is a good case of the #multiplication of services#.
#28. The Multiplication of Copies# is also a means of increasing immensely the produce of labour. When the proper tools and models for making a thing are once provided, it is sometimes possible to go on multiplying copies with little further trouble. To cut the dies for striking a medal or coin is a very slow and costly work; but, when once good dies are finished, it is easy to strike a great many coins with them, and the cost of the striking is very small. The printing press, however, is the best case of multiplication of copies. To have the whole of Shakespeare's Plays copied out by a law stationer would cost more than two hundred pounds, and every new copy would cost as much as the first. Before the invention of printing, books used to be thus copied out, and ma.n.u.script books were therefore very expensive, besides being full of mistakes. The whole of Shakespeare's Plays can now be bought for a s.h.i.+lling; and any one of the Waverley Novels can be had for sixpence.
It may cost several hundred pounds to set up the type for a large book and stereotype it; but when this is once done, hundreds of thousands of copies can be struck off, and the cost of each copy is little more than that of the paper and the binding.
Almost all the common things we use now, such as ordinary chairs and tables, cups and saucers, teapots, spoons and forks, &c., are made by machinery, and are copies of an original pattern. A good chair can be bought for five s.h.i.+llings or less, but if you wanted to have a chair made of a new pattern, it would cost perhaps five or ten times as much.
#29. Personal Adaptation.# A further advantage of the division of labour is that, when there are many different trades, every person can choose that trade for which he is best suited--the strong healthy man becomes a blacksmith; the weaker one works a loom or makes shoes; the skilful man learns to be a watchmaker; the most ignorant and unskilful can find work in breaking stones or mending the hedges. Each man will generally work at the trade in which he can get the best wages, and it is an evident loss of skill if the artisan should break stones or sweep the streets.
Now, the greater the division of labour and the more extensive factories become, the better chance there is for finding an employment just suited to each person's powers; clever workmen do the work which no one else can do; they have common labourers to help them in things which require no skill; foremen plan out the work, and allot it to the artisans; clerks, who are quick at accounts, keep the books, and pay and receive money; the manager of the factory is an ingenious experienced man, who can give his whole attention to directing the work, to making good bargains, or to inventing improvements in the business. Every one is thus occupied in the way in which his labour will be most productive and useful to other people, and at the same time most profitable to himself.
#30. Local Adaptation.# Lastly, the division of labour allows of local adaptation--that is, it allows every kind of work to be done in the place most suitable for it. We have already learnt (sec. 22, p. 29) that each kind of labour should be carried on where it is most productive; but this cannot be done unless there be division of labour--so that while the French grow wine, weave silk, or make _articles de Paris_, they buy the cottons of Manchester, the beer of Burton-on-Trent, or the coals of Newcastle. When trade is free, and the division of labour is perfect, each town or district learns to make some commodity better than other places: watches are made in Clerkenwell; steel pens in Birmingham; needles at Redditch; cutlery at Sheffield; pottery at Stoke; ribbons at Coventry; gla.s.s at St. Helen's; straw bonnets at Luton; and so forth.
It is not always possible to say exactly why certain goods are made better in one place--for instance, silks in Lyons--than anywhere else; but so it often is, and people should be left as free as possible to buy the goods they like best. Commodities are manufactured in order that they may produce pleasure and be useful, not, as we shall see, in order that labourers may be kept hard at work. Now, when trade is left free it gives rise to division of labour, not only between town and town, county and county, but between the most distant nations of the earth. Thus is created what may be called #the territorial division of labour#.
Commerce between nation and nation is not only one of the best means of increasing wealth and saving labour, but it brings us nearer to the time when all nations will live in harmony, as if they were but one nation.
#31. The Combination of Labour.# We now see what great advantages arise from each man learning a single trade thoroughly. This is called the division of labour, because it divides up the work into a great many different operations; nevertheless, it leads men to a.s.sist each other, and to work together in manufacturing the same goods. Thus, in producing a book, a great many trades must a.s.sist each other: type-founders cast the type; mechanics make the printing press; the paper is manufactured at the paper works; printers' ink is prepared at other works; the publishers arrange the business; the author supplies the copy; the compositors set up the type; the reader corrects the proofs; the pressmen work off the printed sheets; then there are still the bookbinders, and the booksellers, besides a great many other small trades which supply the tools wanted by the princ.i.p.al trades. Thus, society is like a very complicated machine, in which there is a great number of wheels, and wheels within wheels; each part goes on attending to its own business, and doing the same work over and over again. There is what we should call a #complex organization# (Greek, organon, instrument), that is to say, different people and different trades work as instruments of each other, all a.s.sisting in the ultimate result.