It is unnecessary to give any example.
I shall only observe, therefore, that the invention
of all those machines by which labour is
to much facilitated and abridged, seems to
have been originally owing to the division of
labour. Men are much more likely to discover
easier and readier methods of attaining
any object, when the whole attention of their
minds is directed towards that single object,
than when it is dissipated among a great variety
of things. But, in consequence of the
division of labour, the whole of every man's
attention comes naturally to be directed towards
some one very simple object. It is
naturally to be expected, therefore, that some
one or other of those who are employed in
each particular branch of labour should soon
find out easier and readier methods of performing
their own particular work, wherever
the nature of it admits of such improvement.
A great part of the machines made use of in
those manufactures in which labour is most
subdivided, were originally the inventions of
common workmen, who, being each of them
employed in some very simple operation, naturally
turned their thoughts towards finding
out easier and readier methods of performing
it. Whoever has been much accustomed to
visit such manufactures, must frequently have
been shewn very pretty machines, which were
the inventions of such workmen, in order to
facilitate and quicken their own particular
part of the work. In the first fire engines, a
boy was constantly employed to open and
shut alternately the communication between
the boiler and the cylinder, according as the
piston either ascended or descended. One of
those boys, who loved to play with his companions,
observed that, by tying a string from
the handle of the valve which opened this
communication to another part of the machine,
the valve would open and shut without
his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert
himself with his play-fellows. One of
the greatest improvements that has been made
upon this machine, since it was first invented,
was in this manner the discovery of a boy
who wanted to save his own labour.
All the improvements in machinery, however,
have by no means been the inventions
of those who had occasion to use the machines.
Many improvements have been made by the
ingenuity of the makers of the machines,
when to make them became the business of a
peculiar trade; and some by that of those
who are called philosophers, or men of speculation,
whose trade it is not to do any thing,
but to observe every thing, and who, upon
that account, are often capable of combining
together the powers of the most distant and
dissimilar objects. In the progress of society,
philosophy or speculation becomes, like every
other employment, the principal or sole trade
and occupation of a particular class of citizens.
Like every other employment, too, it
is subdivided into a great number of different
branches, each of which affords occupation to
a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and
this subdivision of employment in philosophy,
as well as in every other business, improves
dexterity, and saves time. Each individual
becomes more expert in his own peculiar
branch, more work is done upon the whole,
and the quantity of science is considerably increased
by it.
It is the great multiplication of the productions
of all the different arts, in consequence
of the division of labour, which occasions, in
a well-governed society, that universal opulence
which extends itself to the lowest ranks
of the people. Every workman has a great
quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond
what he himself has occasion for; and every
other workman being exactly in the same situation,
he is enabled to exchange a great
quantity of his own goods for a great quantity
or, what comes to the same thing, for the price
of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies
them abundantly with what they have occasion
for, and they accommodate him as amply with
what he has occasion for, and a general plenty
diffuses itself through all the different ranks
of the society.
Observe the accommodation of the most
common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized
and thriving country, and you will perceive
that the number of people, of whose industry
a part, though but a small part, has been employed
in procuring him this accommodation,
exceeds all computation. The woollen coat,
for example, which covers the day-labourer,
as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the
produce of the joint labour of a great multitude
of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter
of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the
dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver,
the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must
all join their different arts in order to complete
even this homely production. How
many merchants and carriers, besides, must
have been employed in transporting the materials
from some of those workmen to others
who often live in a very distant part of the
country? How much commerce and navigation
in particular, how many ship-builders,
sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have
been employed in order to bring together the
different drugs made use of by the dyer, which
often come from the remotest corners of the
world? What a variety of labour, too, is necessary
in order to produce the tools of the
meanest of those workmen! To say nothing
of such complicated machines as the ship of
the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the
loom of the weaver, let us consider only what
a variety of labour is requisite in order to
form that very simple machine, the shears with
which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner,
the builder of the furnace for smelting
the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of