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