The Significance Of Labour

The division of labour has been the chief cause of improvement in the productiveness of labour. For instance, the making of a single pin involves eighteen separate operations, which are entrusted to eighteen separate workmen; and the result is, that whereas one man working alone could make perhaps only twenty pins in a day, several men working together, on the principle of division of labour, can make several thousands of pins per man in one day. Division of labour, in a highly developed state of society, is carried into almost every practical art; and its great benefits depend upon the increase of dexterity in each workman, upon the saving of time otherwise lost in passing from one kind of work to another and, finally, upon the use of many labour-saving machines.

This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom which foresees and intends the opulence to which it gives rise; it is rather the gradual result of the propensity in human nature to barter and exchange one thing for another. The power of exchanging their respective produce makes it possible for one man to produce only bread, and for another to produce only clothing.

The extent to which the division of labour can be carried is, therefore, limited by the extent of the market. There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere but in a great town–a porter, for example, cannot find employment and subsistence in a village. In the highlands of Scotland every farmer must be butcher, baker and brewer for his own family. Read more of this post