Book I: Chapter 1

BOOK I.

OF THE CAUSES OF IMPROVEMENT IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF LABOUR, AND OF THE ORDER ACCORDING TO WHICH ITS PRODUCE IS NATURALLY DISTRlBUTED AMONG THE DIFFERENT RANKS OF THE PEOPLE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE DIVISlON OF LABOUR.

The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the
greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is
anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division
of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of
society, will be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it
operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be
carried furthest in some very trifling ones ; not perhaps that it really is
carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those
trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a
small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be
small ; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often
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