Section LIX.. Conditions of the Division of Labor.

Conditions Of The Division Of Labor.

It is by its division, that labor, considered as a factor of production, is raised to the highest degree of efficiency. Its results in any given industry are, therefore, more important in proportion as the element labor predominates in it. Hence, these results are much smaller, in agriculture, for instance, than in the trades, or in personal services.(362) The most expert sower or harvester cannot be employed the whole year through in sowing or harvesting. Some kind of rotation of crops, some kind of combination of tillage and stock-raising is necessary to every agriculturist. On this depends the importance of the technic secondary industries of agriculture, which are, in principle, opposed to the division of labor. Hence, too, almost any person engaged in a trade, no matter of what kind, supposes a greater number of customers than a tiller of the land of the same rank.

The more labor is divided, the greater is the amount of capital necessary to it.(363) It may be even said, that all preparatory labor becomes capital in its relation to subsequent labor. If ten isolated workmen can produce ten dozen articles of any kind, daily, and, after the introduction of a more efficient division of labor, fifty dozen, the employer must provide them, in the latter case, not only with five times as much capital, but probably with fifty times as much, as then, five hundred dozen are making continually.