---
id: book-1-chapter-01
title: "OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR."
book: "1"
chapter: 1
artifact_type: content
---

CHAPTER I.
OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.



      The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the
      greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is
      anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the
      division of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general
      business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in
      what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly
      supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps
      that it really is carried further in them than in others of more
      importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to
      supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number
      of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every
      different branch of the work can often be collected into the same
      workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator.

      In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply
      the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of
      the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to
      collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one
      time, than those employed in one single branch. Though in such
      manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much
      greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the
      division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less
      observed.

      To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one
      in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the
      trade of a pin-maker: a workman not educated to this business (which the
      division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the
      use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same
      division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps,
      with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not
      make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not
      only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number
      of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One
      man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth
      points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make
      the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a
      peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by
      itself to 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
      forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth
      part of forty-eight 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, 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 with quite different tools. A country weaver, who
      cultivates a small farm, must lose 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 so 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 that, by tying
      a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to
      another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his
      assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his
      play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon
      this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the
      discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.

      All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the
      inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many
      improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the
      machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and
      some by that of those who are called philosophers, or men of speculation,
      whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing, and
      who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers
      of the most distant and dissimilar objects in the progress of society,
      philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the
      principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens.
      Like every other employment, too, it is subdivided into a great number of
      different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe
      or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in
      philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and
      saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar
      branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is
      considerably increased by it.

      It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different
      arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a
      well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the
      lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own
      work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every
      other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to
      exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity or, what
      comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He
      supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they
      accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general
      plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society.

      Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer in a
      civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of
      people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been
      employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The
      woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and
      rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great
      multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the
      wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver,
      the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different
      arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants
      and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the
      materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very
      distant part of the country? How much commerce and navigation in
      particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers,
      must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs
      made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the
      world? What a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the
      tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated
      machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the
      loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is
      requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which
      the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for
      smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to
      be made use of in the smelting-house, the brickmaker, the bricklayer, the
      workmen who attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith,
      must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were
      we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress
      and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his
      skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all
      the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he
      prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose,
      dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him, perhaps, by a long
      sea and a long land-carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all
      the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter
      plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different
      hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which
      lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with
      all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy
      invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce
      have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of
      all the different workmen employed in producing those different
      conveniencies; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a
      variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible
      that, without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very
      meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even
      according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in
      which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with the more
      extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear
      extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the
      accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of
      an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter
      exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives
      and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.
