to the superiority of labour and expense.
In agriculture, the labour of the rich
country is not always much more productive
than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never
so much more productive, as it commonly is
in manufactures. The corn of the rich country,
therefore, will not always, in the same
degree of goodness, come cheaper to market
than that of the poor. The corn of Poland,
in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as
that of France, notwithstanding the superior
opulence and improvement of the latter country.
The corn of France is, in the corn-provinces,
fully as good, and in most years nearly
about the same price with the corn of England,
though, in opulence and improvement,
France in perhaps inferior to England. The
corn-lands of England, however, are better
cultivated than those of France, and the corn-lands
of France are said to be much better
cultivated than those of Poland. But though
the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority
of its cultivation, can, in some measure,
rival the rich in the cheapness and goodness
of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition
in its manufactures, at least if those
manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation,
of the rich country. The silks of France
are better and cheaper than those of England,
because the silk manufacture, at least under
the present high duties upon the importation
of raw silk, does not so well suit the climate
of England as that of France. But the hardware
and the coarse woollens of England are
beyond all comparison superior to those of
France, and much cheaper, too, in the same
degree of goodness. In Poland there are said
to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a
few of those coarser household manufactures
excepted, without which no country can well
subsist.
This great increase in the quantity of work,
which, in consequence of the division of labour,
the same number of people are capable
of performing, is owing to three different circumstances;
first, to the increase of dexterity
in every particular workman; secondly, to the
saving of the time which is commonly lost in
passing from one species of work to another;
and, lastly, to the invention of a great number
of machines which facilitate and abridge
labour, and enable one man to do the work
of many.
First, the improvement of the dexterity of
the workmen, necessarily increases the quantity
of the work he can perform; and the division
of labour, by reducing every man's
business to some one simple operation, and
by making this operation the sole employment
of his life, necessarily increases very much the
dexterity of the workman. A common smith,
who, though accustomed to handle the hammer,
has never been used to make nails, if,
upon some particular occasion, he is obliged
to attempt it, will scarce, I am assured, be
able to make above two or three hundred
nails in a day, and those, too, very bad ones.
A smith who has been accustomed to make
nails, but whose sole or principal business has
not been that of a nailer, can seldom, with his
utmost diligence, make more than eight hundred
or a thousand nails in a day. I have
seen several boys, under twenty years of age,
who had never exercised any other trade but
that of making nails, and who, when they exerted
themselves, could make, each of them,
upwards of two thousand three hundred nails
in a day. The making of a nail, however, is
by no means one of the simplest operations.
The same person blows the bellows, stirs or
mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the
iron, and forges every part of the nail: in
forging the head, too, he in obliged to change
his tools. The different operations into which
the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is
subdivided, are all of them much more simple,
and the dexterity of the person, of whose life
it has been the sole business to perform them,
is usually much greater. The rapidity with
which some of the operations of those manufactures
are performed, exceeds what the human
hand could, by those who had never seen
them, be supposed capable of acquiring.
Secondly, The advantage which is gained
by saving the time commonly lost in passing
from one sort of work to another, is much
greater than we should at first view be apt to
imagine it. It is impossible to pass very
quickly from one kind of work to another,
that is carried on in a different place, and
with quite different tools. A country weaver,
who cultivates a small farm, must loose a good
deal of time in passing from his loom to the
field, and from the field to his loom. When
the two trades can be carried on in the same
workhouse, the loss of time is, no doubt,
much less. It is, even in this case, however,
very considerable. A man commonly saunters
a little in turning his hand from one sort
of employment to another. When he first
begins the new work, he is seldom very keen
and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not
go to it, and for some time he rather trifles
than applies to good purpose. The habit of
sauntering, and of indolent careless application,
which is naturally, or rather necessarily,
acquired by every country workman who is
obliged to change his work and his tools every
half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty
different ways almost every day of his life,
renders him almost always slothful and lazy,
and incapable of any vigorous application,
even on the most pressing occasions. Independent,
therefore, of his deficiency in point
of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce
considerably the quantity of work which
he is capable of performing.
Thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible
how much labour is facilitated and abridged
by the application of proper machinery.