At all events, evolution toward large production does not proceed with equal rapidity in all fields of economic activity. It is far advanced in transportation, a trifle less so in manufactures, still less in commercial enterprises, while in agriculture it is scarcely perceptible. Certainly it cannot be said in any part of Europe that small farming is giving way to farming on a very large scale. Collectivists, to be sure, who agree in this point with most economists of the classical school, maintain that this is only an anomaly, an accident, a simple delay in evolution, due to the routine character of agriculture. They point particularly to the example of the United States, where agriculture in the West is practised on a large scale, and ask: Is not this the reason why American farmers defeat European competitors even in European markets?

But the example of the United States proves nothing against our thesis. The colossal farms of this country, although they have the advantage of producing wheat at a low cost, have the disadvantage of giving relatively small crops. Crops of wheat on the "bonanza" farms rarely exceed thirteen bushels an acre, whereas inferior land in France yields an average of twenty bushels.1 Extensive culture is made possible in the United States by the relative cheapness of land and the sparseness of population. But when the population will have become as dense as that of France it will be necessary to increase the crops by giving

utilized as possible, and there would be no proportionate gain in increasing any of these productive factors. In other words, it would be more profitable to duplicate the plant on another site than to double the present equipment.

A summary of the advantages and disadvantages of large-scale production is given by Bullock, "Introduction to the Study of Economics," §§ 100-103, and in Leroy-Beaulieu's "Économie Politique," Vol. I.

Production on a small scale, its present status and future prospect, are discussed from the standpoint of a Catholic reformer in Victor Brant's "La petite Industrie contemporaine," 2o édition, Paris, (Lecoffre), 1902.

1 The census of 1900, Vol. VI, p. 29, gives some interesting data regarding this point. The great western wheat-producing states employing large-scale methods of farming are Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota,

up the methods of extensive farming, and by concentrating labor and capital on smaller areas.1

The essential fact that should never be lost sight of is that although large farming involves some economy in general expenses and particularly an economy of labor, it has, on the other hand, the great twofold disadvantage of diminishing the number of producers, and, quite as often, of reducing the quantity of products when compared to the surface cultiKansas, and California. Intensive, small-scale methods, on the other hand, are used in the New England states, whose soil, moreover, is naturally less fertile than that of the western farms.

1 The census of 1850 reported 1,449,073 farms in the United States, and that of 1900 reported 5,739,657, -an addition of 4,290,584 in fifty years. The same period witnessed an increase in the national population from 23,191,876 to 76,303,387, and a growth in the cities (of over 8000 population) from 2,897,586 to 25,031,505. Notwithstanding this unprecedented growth in urban population, the increase in the number of farms was relatively greater than that of the total population, being in the ratio of 4 to 3.3. If we consider the population outside of cities, the following figures are obtained: In 1850 there was one farm for every 14 persons, and in 1900 one farm for every 8.9 persons.

As regards the average size of farms the official figures are as follows: In 1850, 202.6 acres; 1860, 199.2; 1870, 153.3; 1880, 133.7; 1890, 136.5; 1900, 146.6. But it must be observed that the very large farms are confined almost exclusively to the western and central states.

vated. It may give a greater net product, i.e. greater profit to the landowner, but it generally yields a smaller gross product, i.e. less food and less wages for the nation. Now in view of the increasing density of population in all civilized countries, the future will belong to the system of farming that can give the greatest quantity of food. Here we find another proof, and the explanation, of the law mentioned when we referred to the area required by various types of society to produce their food-supply, viz., that the necessary area is reduced as we proceed from the hunting stage to the pastoral, and from the pastoral to the agricultural. In the agricultural period itself, there is the same progress from "extensive" to "intensive" farming, and from intensive farming to garden-farming such as is practised to-day wherever population is most dense, i.e. in the suburbs of large cities. Garden-farming, in the vicinity of Paris, where fruit and vegetables are raised by hothouse processes that resemble the methods used for raising flowers, is said to yield from $2000 to $3000 worth of vegetables per acre, or enough to provide food for twenty or twenty-five persons. In China, a system of very elaborate intensive garden-farming enables the soil to nourish a very dense population. Here, then, are many reasons for thinking that the prophecies of the socialists and of some economists regarding this matter (the sole point upon which they agree) may be found wanting in accuracy. The future probably belongs to small farming rather than to large-scale agriculture. The earth will some day be covered with small garden-farms, and the philosophical maxim of Voltaire's Candide, "Everybody will cultivate his own garden," will be realized in the field of economics.1

1 One circumstance that gives rise to the illusion concerning the natural superiority of large-scale agriculture is the intellectual superiority almost always possessed by the administrators of large farms; the great farms are better kept, and exemplify the latest agricultural improvements. We consequently attribute to a difference of agricultural system what really is due only to the greater energy and intelligence of the persons in charge.

CHAPTER III-THE DIVISION OF LABOR

I. The Successive Forms of the Division of Labor

ASSOCIATION, of itself, means nothing more than the grouping of individual forces, each person performing the same operation; this may be called simple coöperation. But the term "division of labor " implies a distribution of the work among the associated persons in such a manner that each performs a different operation; this may be called complex coöperation. If the work to be done is very simple, — like digging, lifting, rowing, or wood-chopping,—it is difficult to divide the work into several operations; each person must execute the same movements. But whenever the task is more complex and comprises various operations, there is some advantage in splitting the work into as many fractional tasks as possible, and assigning a part of it to each of a number of

persons.

The earliest form of the division of labor was the division according to sex, the men doing one kind of work and the women another. The distinction of sex gave rise to a difference of economic functions, and the rudimentary division of tasks thus evolved coincided with the first phase of economic evolution, the phase which we have called the home or family economy. Yet this division of labor is far from corresponding to the modern conception of the peculiar province of the two sexes, viz., the idea that man should perform the hard work and woman the household duties. This is by no means the original view of the rôle of the sexes. Originally man took the noble occupations, such as hunting, fighting, the care of cattle, while woman did the base labor, including

not only the household work, weaving, etc., but also the labor of carrying goods like veritable beasts of burden. Cura agrorum feminis delegata, says Tacitus, in speaking of the Germans; we observe the same thing nowadays among all the tribes of Africa. Woman was really the first slave, and the first kind of slavery so-called, that of captives taken during intertribal warfare, was for her the first step toward emancipation, because it unburdened her of the heavier kinds of labor (such as grinding the grain or turning the millstone) which were transferred to the slaves.

The second phase-that of corporations or guilds - coincided with a more detailed division of labor, viz., the rise of separate trades. Each guild or trade organization performed only one kind of labor, and the rules of the guilds exerted a jealous care that each one was confined to its particular specialty. The specialization of trades kept pace with the gradual perfection of the guild system; industries were divided and subdivided into branches or groups that performed but one part of a trade. The wood-workers, for example, were divided into carpenters, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, etc. Even allied trades, such as the glovers, girdlers, pocket makers, skinners, white tawyers, and other workers in leather; or the fletchers (arrow-makers), the bowyers (makers of bows), and the stringers (makers of bowstrings), were organized into separate bodies. There were no fewer than a hundred craft-guilds in Paris in the middle of the thirteenth century, each of which was regarded as forming a separate trade organization.1

In the third phase, that of the workshop and domestic manufacturing, the division of labor attains the highest degree of perfection. It was in the workshop that the wonderful phenomenon of the division of labor first attracted the attention of Adam Smith, and led him to write those classical pages on the subject in his "Wealth of Nations" which have

1 The German statistics for 1882 enumerated 6459 different occupations, not including the liberal professions.