Now, if all these operations were to be performed by each laborer, only the six-shilling workmen could be employed, as they alone could do certain parts of the work. All the others would be shut out, the best workmen would get lower wages, and the cost of the product would be enhanced from five to ten fold.

5. There is also the advantage which comes from the multiplication of services. The express-companies, devoting themselves to the carrying of parcels and packages of goods, can carry a hundred or a thousand of these with many times less labor than all who have goods to send would have to expend did each carry his own.

6. The multiplication of copies, as is done by a printingpress, or in founderies, or by means of dies, is another example. To copy out by hand a thousand copies of the Bible or of Shakspeare, would cost five hundred or a thousand times as much as to have them printed where several copies are struck off from the same type.

5. But there are certain limitations to the divisions of labor. 1. One of these is the nature of the employment. Some occupations admit of only a certain number of divisions. In watch-making, it is said, there are more than a hundred distinct branches: in some other trades, only three or four are possible. Others still, while capable of manifold division, are such that the different kinds of work must be done at different seasons of the year, so that, if one made a speciality of any of these, he would needs be idle a good part of the time of this kind is agriculture.

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2. A second limitation is found in the demand for the product. A blacksmith setting up his forge in a sparsely settled neighborhood, the patronage of which will furnish occupation for only one man, must do all the different parts of the work himself. If the community increases, he may

employ an apprentice; and continued growth may furnish occasion for a journeyman, and perhaps more than one, and the divisions take place accordingly.

3. Another limitation is in the amount of capital employed in the business. Where there is but little capital, the proprietor can employ but few workmen. He can purchase but a small stock of material, and his supply of tools and apparatus must necessarily be small. He can in such case set only a limited number of men to work, even if he could advance the amount necessary for their wages. Consequently, there can be but a small division of labor.

While this is not uniThere is the constant body, and none upon

6. There are some disadvantages as well as advantages in the division of labor. 1. Such subdivisions of employment have a tendency to impair physical health. They afford too little variety of muscular exertion. versally the case, it is too often so. pressure upon certain portions of the others. There is a want of balance. There are also certain processes which require an unnatural position, which, if long continued, is likely to induce deformity and perhaps disease. This liability, though perhaps less than it is sometimes made to seem, is still actual, and demands consideration.

2. It diminishes the self-reliance of laborers. It is apt to generate a feeling of dependence, since the worker may acquire the habit of expecting others to do almost every thing for him. One comes to regard one's self as only an element in a great system, a small portion of a machine, which, as a whole, produces certain results. There are, doubtless, exceptional instances, in which separation of employment develops individuality; but it oftener has the opposite effect.

Closely connected with this is the consequence that the number of those who do business on their own account is

diminished. It is not well that the proprietors in a community should be few. Ownership, responsibility, the conciousness of being one's own master, foster manliness, and tend to the development of character. It is true, if all men were proprietors, the interests of industry might suffer; but if only a very few were such, it would suffer still more. We should seek as far as possible to avoid the evils incident to either extreme.

3. A third disadvantage, though closely connected with the second, is more serious than either of the others. In the minute subdivisions which characterize our modern industry, there is a hinderance to mental growth, a contracting and belittling influence hard to resist. When a workman works all day, and day after day, boring holes or turning spindles, or cutting the same patterns with a jig-saw, it requires much effort both in and out of work-hours to keep the mind from a deterioration of which it is sad to think. I can scarcely conceive how any man of even moderate intelligence can be content to confine himself for any considerable time to such sterile operations. It is true, that, under the conditions which such division of labor implies, there are found certain compensations. First, by this means, men are brought into communication with one another more than they would otherwise be. Information is thus gained, inquiries suggested, and thought excited. All this is every way wholesome. Secondly, the very fact that many of these minute operations can be performed with but little draught on the mind, and some of them almost automatically, implies mental leisure in which thought can go on simultaneously with work. If the vacant hours be only moderately improved, culture and development need not be wholly wanting.

CHAPTER VII.

CONDITIONS OF HIGHEST PRODUCTION (continued).

1. CLOSELY Connected with the subject of combination and division of labor, is that of the diversification of industry. Upon this depends to no small extent the measure of the productiveness of a community. There is a somewhat prevalent doctrine which is antagonistic to this. It is, that the principle of the division of labor should apply to separate communities, as well as to the different individuals of the same community. This doctrine is more frequently implied than explicitly stated.

It is obvious enough, that each community should devote itself to such industries as it can on the whole pursue to the best advantage; that it should not cherish those which it cannot thus pursue. In other words, no industry should be supported merely for the sake of the industry. But neither, on the other hand, should distribution of industries to different communities be practised for the sake of this distribution. It is obvious, that, in proportion as such a distribution takes place, there must be a diminution of the diversity in each several community. If each society should confine itself to the production of two or three commodities, it must depend on other societies to furnish it with most of the articles which it may need. It has already been shown that the association, combination, and commerce, so essential to

the prosperity if not to the existence of a community, can exist only where there are differences; and that these differences must exist in part in modes and forms of production. Hence to locate the differing individuals in separate communities, and to cultivate a similarity in each, would be to put commerce at a disadvantage, and to rob men of the vast benefits of one chief element of their constitution.

2. In every considerable community there are a great number of diverse tastes and aptitudes, many of which cannot be easily adjusted except to particular employments; and unless these exist, a large proportion of the labor-force will be either unapplied, or so applied as to lose much of its legitimate effect.

It is not only that more and better work will be done, and therefore that greater productiveness will ensue, but there are a thousand things done which would otherwise fail of accomplishment, and a thousand things utilized which would otherwise be wasted. A manufacturing community in the midst of an agricultural region not only furnishes immediate exchange which must otherwise be sought at great expense of time and transportation, but it furnishes a market for scores of commodities which, remote from such a community, would be substantially valueless. Few are aware how great is the number of objects which at a distance from towns and cities are comparatively useless, but which in their immediate vicinity would constitute a source of wealth.

Agriculture, in an extended section where it is nearly the exclusive business, is ever an employment of diminishing profit. The land wears out, and the waste both of labor and capital is prodigious. It is a remarkable fact, that famines are more frequent and more appalling in exclusively or chiefly agricultural regions than anywhere else. We can hardly conceive of a famine as possible in our Eastern States