answer cannot be reached yet. BOOK IV. industry, and the part which they play in governing the CH. VIII. supply of material wealth: but a final judgment as to their though its good and evil effects must be deferred until we are able to take a broader survey. Many important elements of the problem, in particular those connected with the fluctuations of trade, and the inconstancy of employment, depending as they do upon the influence of foreign competition, and of changes in the money market, lie beyond the sphere of those elementary inquiries as to the methods of production which we are to make in the following chapters. C CHAPTER IX. INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION, CONTINUED. DIVISION OF LABOUR. THE INFLUENCE OF MACHINERY. CH. IX. the two following § 1. THE first condition of an efficient organization of BOOK IV. industry is that it should keep everyone employed at such work as his abilities and training fit him to do well, and The course of inquiry should equip him with the best machinery and other appli- in this and ances for his work. We shall leave on one side for the present the distribution of functions between those who carry out chapters the details of production on the one hand, and those who manage its general arrangement and undertake its risk on the other; and confine ourselves to the division of labour between different classes of operations, with special reference to the influence of machinery. In the following chapter we shall consider the reciprocal effects of division of labour and localization of industry; in a third chapter we shall inquire how far the advantages of division of labour depend upon the aggregation of large capitals into the hands of single individuals or firms, or, as is commonly said, on production on a large scale; and lastly, we shall examine the growing specialization of the work of business management. L fect. Everyone is familiar with the fact that "practice makes Practice perfect," that it enables an operation, which at first seemed makes perdifficult, to be done after a time with comparatively little exertion, and yet much better than before; and physiology in some measure explains this fact. For it gives reasons for Physiobelieving that the change is due to the gradual growth of planation. new habits of more or less "reflex" or automatic action. Perfectly reflex actions, such as that of breathing during sleep, are performed by the responsibility of the local nerve CH. IX. BOOK IV. centres without any reference to the supreme central authority of the thinking power, which is supposed to reside in the cerebrum. But all deliberate movements require the attention of the chief central authority: it receives information from the nerve centres or local authorities and perhaps in some cases direct from the sentient nerves, and sends back detailed and complex instructions to the local authorities, or in some cases direct to the muscular nerves, and so coordinates their action as to bring about the required results'. Knowledge The physiological basis of purely mental work is not yet and intellectual well understood; but what little we do know of the growth ability. of brain structure seems to indicate that practice in any kind of thinking develops new connections between different parts of the brain. Anyhow we know for a fact that practice will 1 For instance, the first time a man attempts to skate he must give his whole attention to keeping his balance, his cerebrum has to exercise a direct control over every movement, and he has not much mental energy left for other things. But after a good deal of practice the action becomes semi-automatic, the local nerve centres undertake nearly all the work of regulating the muscles, the cerebrum is set free, and the man can carry on an independent train of thought; he can even alter his course to avoid an obstacle in his path, or recover his balance, after it has been disturbed by a slight unevenness, without in any way interrupting the course of his thoughts. It seems that the exercise of nerve force under the immediate direction of the thinking power residing in the cerebrum has gradually built up a set of connections, involving probably distinct physical change, between the nerves and nerve centres concerned; and these new connections may be regarded as a sort of capital of nerve force. There is probably something like an organized bureaucracy of the local nerve centres: the medulla, the spinal axis, and the larger ganglia generally acting the part of provincial authorities, and being able after a time to regulate the district and village authorities without troubling the supreme government. Very likely they send up messages as to what is going on: but if nothing much out of the way has happened, these are very little attended to. When however a new feat has to be accomplished, as for instance learning to skate backwards, the whole thinking force will be called into requisition for the time; and will now be able by aid of the special skating-organization of the nerves and nerve centres to do what would have been altogether impossible without such aid. To take a higher instance: when an artist is painting at his best, his cerebrum is fully occupied with his work: his whole mental force is thrown into it, and the strain is too great to be kept up for a long time together. In a few hours of happy inspiration he may give utterance to thoughts that exert a perceptible influence on the character of coming generations; but his power of expression had been earned by numberless hours of plodding work in which he had gradually built up an intimate connection between eye and hand, sufficient to enable him to make good rough sketches of things with which he is tolerably familiar, even while he is engaged in an engrossing conversation and is scarcely conscious that he has a pencil in his hand. SPECIALIZATION IN MENTAL WORK. 311 CH. IX. enable a person to solve quickly, and without any consider- BOOK IV. able exertion, questions which he could have dealt with but very imperfectly a little while before, even by the greatest effort. The mind of the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, and the man of science, becomes gradually equipped with a store of knowledge and a faculty of intuition, which can be obtained in no other way than by the continual application of the best efforts of a powerful thinker for many years together to one more or less narrow class of questions. Of course the mind cannot work hard for many hours a day in one direction: and a hard-worked man will sometimes find recreation in work that does not belong to his business, but would be fatiguing enough to a person who had to do it all day long. Some social reformers have indeed maintained that those who do the most important brain work might do a fair share of manual work also, without diminishing their power of acquiring knowledge or thinking out hard questions. But experience seems to show that the best relief from overstrain is in occupations taken up to suit the mood of the moment and stopped when the mood is passed, that is, in what popular instinct classes as "relaxation." Any occupation which is so far business-like that a person must sometimes force himself by an effort of the will to go on with it, draws on his nervous force and is not perfect relaxation: and therefore it is not economical from the point of view of the community unless its value is sufficient to outweigh a considerable injury to his main work'. L § 2. It is a difficult and unsettled question how far In the specialization should be carried in the highest branches of grades of work. higher In science it seems to be a sound rule that the work 1 J. S. Mill went so far as to maintain that his occupations at the India Office did not interfere with his pursuit of philosophical inquiries. But it seems probable that this diversion of his freshest powers lowered the quality of his best thought more than he was aware; and though it may have diminished but little his remarkable usefulness in his own generation, it probably affected very much his power of doing that kind of work which influences the course of thought in future generations. It was by husbanding every atom of his small physical strength that Darwin was enabled to do so much work of just that kind: and a social reformer who had succeeded in exploiting Darwin's leisure hours in useful work on behalf of the community, would have done a very bad piece of business for it. 17 CH. IX. extreme specializa not always increase BOOK IV. area of study should be broad during youth, and should gradually be narrowed as years go on. A medical man who has always given his attention exclusively to one class tion does of diseases, may perhaps give less wise advice even in his special subject than another who, having learnt by wider efficiency. experience to think of those diseases in relation to general health, gradually concentrates his study more and more on them, and accumulates a vast store of special experiences and subtle instincts. But there is no doubt that greatly increased efficiency can be attained through division of labour in those occupations in which there is much demand for mere manual skill. But it is easy to acquire a high manual skill in a narrow range of work. Adam Smith pointed out that a lad who had made nothing but nails all his life could make them twice as quickly as a firstrate smith who only took to nail-making occasionally. Anyone who has to perform exactly the same set of operations day after day on things of exactly the same shape, gradually learns to move his fingers exactly as they are wanted, by almost automatic action and with greater rapidity than would be possible if every movement had to wait for a deliberate instruction of the will. One familiar instance is seen in the tying of threads by children in a cotton mill. Again, in a clothing or a boot factory, a person who sews, whether by hand or machinery, just the same seam on a piece of leather or cloth of just the same size, hour after hour, day after day, is able to do it with far less effort and far more quickly than a worker with much greater quickness eye and hand, and of a much higher order of general skill, who was accustomed to make the whole of a coat or the whole of a boot1. of 1 The best and most expensive clothes are made by highly skilled and highly paid tailors, each of whom works right through first one garment and then another while the cheapest and worst clothes are made for starvation wages by unskilled women who take the cloth to their own homes and do every part of the sewing themselves. But clothes of intermediate qualities are made in workshops or factories, in which the division and subdivision of labour are carried as far as the size of the staff will permit; and this method is rapidly gaining ground at both ends at the expense of the rival method. (See Miss Beatrice Potter's article on East London Labour in The Nineteenth Century for August, 1888.) Very much the same account may be given of the present condition of the boot trade; in very large American boot-factories, more than ninety distinct classes of workers are |