An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

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 fortyeight thousand pins in a day. Each

person, therefore, making a tenth part of fortyeight 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, he 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 to 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