Section LVIII.. Advantages of the Division of Labor.

Advantages Of The Division Of Labor.

The advantages of all suitable division of labor, consequent upon the natural differences of human faculties and dispositions, are the following:

A. The greater skill of the workman. Even physically, many capacities are, by an indefinite number of repetitions of the same operation, enhanced to an extraordinary degree; which, however, renders the performance of other operations more difficult. Thus, the man who has developed his muscles and hardened his hands working in a smithy, renders himself incapable of becoming a violin-player or an operating oculist.(355) Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children(356) and old men may be made, in this way, to play a part in the production of goods. It becomes practicable, too, to relieve men endowed with superior faculties from common labor, and allow them to devote themselves exclusively to the development of the peculiar powers with which nature has gifted them.(357)

B. A great saving of time and trouble. The simpler the operation performed by a single workman, the more easily is it learned; the smaller is the price paid or apprenticeship, which depends on this, at least, that beginners perform poorer work and are paid more poorly. “The shortest way to the end is most easily found when the end itself is near, and can be kept continually in view.” (J. B. Say.) Where the same workman combines different operations, a great deal of time is lost in changing tools etc. Besides, it always takes some time for a workman to get rightly under way of his work. The person who changes thus frequently becomes more easily indolent. Lastly, there is a great number of operations which demand the same aggregate amount of effort, no matter what the number of objects on which they are performed. It is thus, for instance, with shepherds, mail-carriers etc.(358) The post carries a thousand letters with almost as much ease as one; and the entire life of a wholesale dealer would scarcely suffice to carry all the letters which he mails in a single day, to their place of destination. During the middle ages, every man was obliged to watch over his own personal safety and the maintenance of his own rights; while in 1850, in Great Britain, twenty-one million people are protected in their persons and property, in an infinitely more effectual manner, and at less cost, by fifteen thousand soldiers, and by a much smaller number of policemen, whose place it is to preserve public order. (Senior.) Something similar takes place among merchants, and it may be admitted as correct in principle, that every new intermediary, freely recognized by both sides in commerce,(359) makes labor better or less expensive.

C. As the land of a country is, in a sense, the natural extension of the national body, the international division of labor affords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.(360) If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea which they annually consume, it is possible that its whole agricultural population would not suffice to procure it; while, at present, it is obtained by the labor of forty-five thousand industrial workmen. (Senior.) Moreover, the division of labor increases not only the aptitude of the workman but also his incentive to productive labor, since it guarantees to every one the certainty of being able, by means of exchange, to enjoy the productions of every other person.(361)