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 Staffordshire, 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 assistant 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 principal 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 passing 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.
Nobody could possibly do the work of a glass-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 asserted 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 assists 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 manuscript books were therefore very expensive, besides being
full of mistakes. The whole of Shakespeare's Plays can now be bought for
a shilling; 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 shillings 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; glass 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 assist each other,
and to work together in manufacturing the same goods. Thus, in producing
a book, a great many trades must assist 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 principal 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 assisting in the ultimate
result.
But it is to be observed that nobody plans out these systems of divided
labour; indeed few people ever know how many trades there are, and how
they are connected together. There are said to be about thirty-six
distinct kinds of employment in making and putting together the parts of
a piano; there are about forty trades engaged in watchmaking; in the
cotton business there are more than a hundred occupations. But new
trades are frequently created, especially when any new discovery takes
place; thus, there are at least sixteen different trades occupied in
photography, or in making the things required by photographers; and
railways have produced whole series of employments which did not exist
fifty years ago. These trades arise without any Act of Parliament to
make them or allow them. There is no law to say how many trades there
shall be, nor how many people shall go into each trade, because nobody
can tell what will be wanted in future years. These things are arranged
by a kind of #social instinct#. Each person takes up the kind of work
which seems to suit him and to pay him best at the time.
Another and a totally different kind of combination of labour arises
when men arrange to assist each other in doing the same work. Thus,
sailors pulling at the same rope combine their labour together; other
instances are, carrying the same ladder, rowing the same boat, and so
forth. In this case there is said to be #simple combination of labour#,
because the men do the same sort of work. When the men have different
operations to perform, there is said to be #complex combination of
labour#, as when one man points a pin and another makes the head. On
board a ship there is both simple and complex combination. When several
men work at the same capstan the combination is simple, because one man
does exactly the same as the others. But the captain, mate, steersman,
carpenter, boatswain, and cook work together in complex combination,
since each attends to his own proper duties. Similarly, in a company of
soldiers the privates act together in simple combination, but the
officers of different ranks have distinct duties to perform, so that
the combination becomes complex. Men who thus assist each other are
usually able to do far more work than if they acted separately.
#32. Disadvantages of the Division of Labour.# There are certainly some
evils which arise out of the great division of labour now existing in
civilised countries. These evils are of no account compared with the
immense benefits which we receive; still it is well to notice them.
In the first place, #division of labour tends to make a man's power
narrow and restricted#; he does one kind of work so constantly, that he
has no time to learn and practice other kinds of work. A man becomes, as
it has been said, worth only the tenth part of a pin; that is, there are
men who know only how to make, for instance, the head of a pin. In the
time of the Romans it was said, _ne sutor ultra crepidam_, let not the
shoemaker go beyond his last. When a man accustomed only to making pins
or shoes goes into the far west states of America, he finds himself
unfitted for doing all the kinds of hard work required from a settler.
The poor peasant from Norway or Sweden, who seems at first sight a less
intelligent man, is able to build his own house, till the ground, tend
his horse, and in a rough way, make his own carts, implements, and
household furniture. Even the Red Indian is much better able to take
care of himself in a new country than the educated mechanic. The only
thing to be said is that the skilled shoemaker, or mechanic of whatever
sort, must endeavour to keep to the trade which he has learnt so well.
It is a misfortune both for himself and for other people if he is
obliged to undertake work which he cannot do so well.
A second disadvantage of the division of labour is that #trade becomes
very complicated, and when deranged the results are ruinous to some
people#. Each person learns to supply only a particular kind of goods,
and if change of fashion or any other cause leads to a falling off in
the demand for that kind of goods, the producer is left in poverty,
until he can learn another trade. At one time the making of crinoline
skirts for ladies was a large and profitable trade; now it has ceased
almost entirely, and those who learnt the business have had to seek
other employments. But each trade is generally well supplied with hands
perfectly trained to the work, and it is very difficult for fresh
workmen, especially when old, to learn the new work, and compete with
those who have long practised it. In some cases this has been
successfully done; thus the Cornish miners, when the mines in Cornwall
were no longer profitable, went into the collieries, where more hewers
of coal were much wanted. But, generally speaking, it is very difficult
to find a new employment in England, and this is a strong reason why
trades-unions should make no objection to new men entering a trade to
which they have not been brought up.
The colliers tried to keep the Cornish miners out of the coal pits. In
order to keep their own wages as high as possible they would let other
men starve. But this is a very selfish and hurtful way of acting. If
every trade were thus to try and keep all other people away, as if the
trade were their own property, there would constantly be a number of
unfortunate people brought to the workhouse through no fault of their
own. It is most important, therefore, to maintain a man's right to do
whatever kind of work he can get. It is one of the first and most
necessary rights of a labourer to labour in any honest way he finds most
profitable to himself. #Labour must be free.#