a single generation, and embraces none of these interesting relations which obtain between individuals composing the gregarious tribes, such as the ant, the wasp, and the bee. Among these we trace a community of wants and desires, and a mutual intelligence and sympathy, which leads to the constant interchange of good offices, and which, by introducing a systematic division of labour, amidst a unity of design, lead to the execution of public works on a scale of astonishing magnitude."1

Among Mammalia the beaver is pre-eminently distinguished for the skill with which it constructs great engineering works for the defence and maintenance of its home. Nothing can better exemplify the advantage of co-operation of labour than the huge dams constructed by these animals to maintain the water at an uniform height. Having fixed upon the best situation, they begin to gnaw down one of the largest trees, they can find, taking care that if on the bank of a river it shall fall directly across the stream. As many as can conveniently sit around the chosen tree, continue to gnaw it about eighteen inches from the ground, until it begins to give way. While one party is thus employed another is employed in cutting down smaller trees, and a third in making mortar and soft clay, and drawing it to the edge of the river where the bridge or dam is to be."2 Many of these dams are of great size, being 200 or 300 yards in length, and 12 feet thick. They are made of the trunks of the trees which the beavers have felled, cut into lengths of about a yard, and they are constructed in such a form as is best adapted to meet the force of the stream, being straight when the stream is not strong, and convex when it is powerful.

The examples in which the principle of the division of labour is carried out among animals might be greatly extended, but they would be far beyond the limits of this work. It may probably be said with safety, that it exists more or less among all animals which live in society, and certainly where they carry on works of construction. Therefore, either Smith's doctrine that the division of labour is the result of reason and speech, is incorrect, or else reason and speech must be conceded to a considerable portion of the lower animals. The latter alternative would probably now be adopted by naturalists; speech, of course, including other Encyclo. Brit., Vol. IV., p. 376. Art.: Bees. Routledge's Every Boy's Annual, 1869, p. 117,

methods of communicating ideas and purposes besides articulate words.

55. This principle of the Division of Labour was long ago observed and acted upon. In Egypt Herodotus says1 that every medical man was compelled to confine himself strictly to one branch of the profession and no more.

Blanqui says that at Venice, in 1172, a tribunal was erected to superintend all manufactures, and a law was made which enacted that every workman should confine himself to a single employment in order to secure a better performance of the work: and the same law was enacted by Philip le Bel in France.

66

Beccaria also announces very clearly the doctrine of the Division of Labour 3-" From these families spring necessarily the arts, and the different occupations of men. Each one learns by experience by applying the hand and the mind always to the same kind of work and production he finds the results more easy, more abundant, and better, than those which each one would make if each one by himself made everything necessary for himself alone; whence some tend the flocks, some card the wool, some weave it; one cultivates the corn, another makes it into bread; another makes clothes; another builds for the husbandmen and workmen; the arts thus increasing and linking themselves together, and men in this manner dividing themselves into various classes and conditions to their public and private advantage."

66

Though the principle was recognised, certainly no one brought it into such prominent notice as Smith, and shewed its application so strikingly, in a particular case. His description may be quoted 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 these 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 these employed in every different branch of the 1 Hist., II., 84. 2 Histoire d'Economie Politique, ch. 20.

3 Elementi di Economia Publica, Part I., § 9.

Wealth of Nations, B. I., ch. 1.

M

work can often be collected into the same work-house, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In these great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the 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 work-house. 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 the 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 pin 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 almost eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in the 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 of pins upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. These 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 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 proportionate 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 cornfarmer, 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 these 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."

56. We may also quote from Say an instance equally striking, in which the division of labour is carried almost to a greater extent still, namely, that of playing cards "It is not the same workmen who prepare the paper of which the cards are made, nor the colours printed on them; and in giving attention to only one employment in this matter we shall find that a pack of cards is the result of several operations of which each one occupies a distinct series of workmen, or workwomen, who are always employed in the same operation. It is always different persons, but always the same set, who sift the packets and the swellings of the paper which injure the quality of its thickness: the same set of persons paste together the three leaves of which each card is formed, and put them in the press: the same set of persons colour the backs of the cards: the same set always print the outlines of the figures another set print the colours of the same figures: another set dry over the heater the cards when printed: another set polish them on both sides. It is a separate trade to cut them equally it is another to collect them and form them into packs: another to print the covers of the packs; and yet another to cover them without counting the duties of the persons employed in buying and selling them, in paying the workmen, and keeping their accounts. In short, those in the trade say that each card, that is, that each little piece of cardboard of the size of the hand, before being fit to be sold, goes through not less than seventy different operations, which are each the subject of a distinct trade. And if there are not seventy kinds of workmen in each manufactory of cards, it is because the division of labour is not carried so far as it might be, and because the same workman performs two, three, or four distinct operations.

man.

:

"The effect of this separation of employments is immense. I have seen a manufactory of cards in which thirty workmen produced every day 15,500 cards, that is, more than 500 cards per And it may be presumed that if each workman was obliged to perform each operation by himself, and supposing him skilful in his art, he would not complete more than two cards a day: and consequently the thirty workmen, instead of making 15,500, would only make 60.”

To give similar details of other trades would fill a volume. We will only give one. In watchmaking there are no less than 112 1 Cours d'Economie Politique, Part I., ch. 15.