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A machine-factory, says Ure, --displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workman in the order of skill. ? (P. 21. )
This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture, produced in its turn machines. It is they that sweep away the handicraftsman's work as the regulating principle of social production. Thus, on the one hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman to a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away.
1 To give a more modern instance: The silk spinning and weaving of Lyon and Ni^mes --est toute patriarcale; elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d'enfants, mais sans les e? puiser ni les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leur belles valises de la Dro^me, du Var, de l'Ise`re, de Vaucluse, pour y e? lever des vers et de? vider leurs cocons; jamais elle n'entre dans une ve? ritable fabrique. Pour e^tre aussi bien observe? . . . le principe de la division du travail s'y reve^t d'un caracte`re spe? cial. Il y a bien des de? videuses, des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encolleurs, puis des tisserands; mais ils ne sont pas re? unis dans un me^me e? tablissement, ne de? pendent pas d'un me^me mai^tre, tous ils sont inde? pendants? [. . . is entirely patriarchal; it employs a large number of women and children, but without exhausting or ruining them; it allows them to stay in their beautiful valleys of the Dro^me, the Var, the Ise`re, the Vaucluse, cultuvating their silkworms and unwinding their cocoons; it never becomes a true factory industry. However, the principle of the division of labour takes on a special character here. There do indeed exist winders, throwsters. dyers, sizers, and finally weavers; but they are not assembled in the same workshop, nor are they dependent on a single master; they are all independent] (A. Blanqui: --Cours, d'Econ. Industrielle. ? Recueilli par A. Blaise. Paris, 1838-39, p. 79. ) Since Blanqui wrote this, the various independent labourers have, to some extent, been united in factories. [And since Marx wrote the above, the power-loom has invaded these factories, and is now 1886 rapidly superseding the hand- loom. (Added in the 4th German edition. The Krefeld silk industry also has its tale to tell anent this subject. ) F. E. ]
2 The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition, with less loss of time and labour. ? (--The Advantages of the East India Trade,? Lond. , 1720, p. 71. )
3 --Easy labour is transmitted skill. ? (Th. Hodgskin, --Popular Political Economy,? p. 48. )
4 --The arts also have . . . in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection. For it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in their clan. . . . In other countries it is found that
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tradesmen divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture, at another they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies of the people. . . . In Egypt, on the contrary, every artificer is severely punished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling. . . . Moreover, since, they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh advantages? (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist. I. 1. c. , 74. )
5 --Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c. ,? by Hugh Murray and James Wilson, &c. , Edinburgh 1832, v. II. , p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i. e. , the warp is stretched vertically.
6 Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with reference to the natural organs of plants and animals: --So long as one and the same organ has different kinds of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may possibly be found in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small variation of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things, may, on the whole, be of one shape; but an implement destined to be used exclusively in one way must have a different shape for every different use. ?
7 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the Canton of Neufcha^tel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva. From 1850-61 Geneva produced 720,000 watches. See --Report from Geneva on the Watch Trade? in --Reports by H. M. 's Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c. , No. 6, 1863. ? The want of connexion alone, between the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a branch of modem industry carried on by machinery; but in the case of a watch there are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such, that in the best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year. The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has been employed with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of size and form.
8 In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may study with great accuracy the above-mentioned differentiation and specialisation of the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts.
9 --In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be less. ? (--The Advantages of the East India Trade,? p. 106. )
10 --The isolation of the different stages of manufacture, consequent upon the employment of manual labour, adds immensely to the cost of production, the loss mainly arising from the mere removals from one process to another. ? (--The Industry of Nations. ? Lond. , 1855, Part II, p. 200. )
11 --It (the division of labour) produces also an economy of time by separating the work into its different branches, all of which may be carried on into execution at the same moment. . . . By carrying on all the different processes at once, which an individual must have executed separately, it becomes possible to produce a multitude of pins completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have been either cut or pointed. ? (Dugald Stewart, l. c. , p. 319. )
12 --The more variety of artists to every manufacture. . . the greater the order and regularity of every work, the same must needs be done in less time, the labour must be less. ? (--The Advantages,? &c. , p. 68. )
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13 Nevertheless, the manufacturing system, in many branches of industry, attains this result but very imperfectly, because it knows not how to control with certainty the general chemical and physical conditions of the process of production.
14 --When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the number of processes into which it is most advantageous to divide it is ascertained, as well as the number of individuals to be employed, then all other manufactories which do not employ a direct multiple of this number will produce the article at a greater cost. . . . Hence arises one of the causes of the great size of manufacturing establishments. ? (C. Babbage. --On the Economy of Machinery,? 1st ed. London. 1832. Ch. xxi, pp. 172-73. )
15 In England, the melting-furnace is distinct from the glass-furnace in which the glass is manipulated. In Belgium, one and the same furnace serves for both processes.
16 This can be seen from W. Petty, John Bellers, Andrew Yarranton, --The Advantages of the East India Trade,? and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others.
17 Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France for pounding and washing ores.
18 The whole history of the development of machinery can be traced in the history of the corn mill. The factory in England is still a --mill. ? In German technological works of the first decade of this century, the term --Mu? hle? is still found in use, not only for all machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for all manufactures where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied.
19 As will be seen more in detail in the fourth book of this work, Adam Smith has not established a single new proposition relating to division of labour. What, however, characterises him as the political economist par excellence of the period of Manufacture, is the stress he lays on division of labour. The subordinate part which he assigns to machinery gave occasion in the early days of modern mechanical industry to the polemic of Lauderdale, and, at a later period, to that of Ure. A. Smith also confounds differentiation of the instruments of labour, in which the detail labourers themselves took an active part, with the invention of machinery; in this latter, it is not the workmen in manufactories, but learned men, handicraftsman, and even peasants (Brindley), who play a part.
20 --The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious of the operations into which the article is divided. ? (Ch. Babbage, l. c. , ch. xix. )
21 For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c.
22 The question put by one of the Inquiry Commissioners, How the young persons are kept steadily to their work, is very correctly answered by Mr. Wm. Marshall, the general manager of a glass manufactory: --They cannot well neglect their work; when they once begin, they must go on; they are just the same as parts of a machine. ? (--Children's Empl. Comm. ,? 4th Rep. , 1865, p. 247. )
23 Dr.
Ure, in his apotheosis of Modern Mechanical Industry, brings out the peculiar character of manufacture more sharply than previous economists, who had not his polemical interest in the matter, and more sharply even than his contemporaries Babbage, e. g. , who, though much his superior as a mathematician and mechanician, treated mechanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says, --This appropriation . . . to each, a workman of appropriate value and cost was naturally assigned, forms the very essence of division of labour. ? On the other hand, he describes this division as --adaptation of labour to the different talents of men,? and lastly, characterises the whole manufacturing system as --a system for the division or gradation of labour,? as --the division of labour into degrees of skill,? &c. (Ure, l. c. , pp. 19-23 passim. )
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24 --Each handicraftsman being . . . enabled to perfect himself by practice in one point, became . . . a cheaper workman. ? (Ure, l. c. , p. 19. )
25 --Division of labour proceeds from the separation of professions the most widely different to that division, where several labourers divide between them the preparation of one and the same product, as in manufacture. ? (Storch: --Cours d'Econ. Pol. ,? Paris Edn. t. I. , p. 173. ) --Nous rencontrons chez les peuples parvenus a` un certain degre? de civilisation trois genres de divisions d'industrie: la premie`re, que nous nommerons ge? ne? rale, ame`ne la distinction des producteurs en agriculteurs, manufacturiers et commerc? ants, elle se rapporte aux trois principales branches d'industrie nationale; la seconde qu'on pourrait appeler spe? ciale, est la division de chaque genre d'industrie en espe`ces . . . la troisie`me division d'industrie, celle enfin qu'on devrait qualifier de division de la besogne on de travail proprement dit, est celle qui s'e? tablit dans les arts et les me? tiers se? pare? s . . . qui s'e? tablit dans la plupart des manufactures et des ateliers. ? [Among peoples which have reached a certain level of civilisation, we meet with three kinds of division of labour: the first, which we shall call general, brings about the division of the producers into agriculturalists, manufacturers, and traders, it corresponds to the three main branches of the nation's labour; the second, which one could call particular, is the division of labour of each branch into species. . . . The third division of labour, which one could designate as a division of tasks, or of labour properly so called, is that which grows up in the individual crafts and trades . . . which is established in the majority of the manufactories and workshops] (Skarbek, l. c. , pp. 84, 85. )
26 Note to the third edition. Subsequent very searching study of the primitive condition of man, led the author to the conclusion, that it was not the family that originally developed into the tribe, but that, on the contrary, the tribe was the primitive and spontaneously developed form of human association, on the basis of blood relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening of the tribal bonds, the many and various forms of the family were afterwards developed. [F. E. ]
27 Sir James Steuart is the economist who has handled this subject best. How little his book, which appeared ten years before the --Wealth of Nations,? is known, even at the present time, may be judged from the fact that the admirers of Malthus do not even know that the first edition of the latter's work on population contains, except in the purely declamatory part, very little but extracts from Steuart, and in a less degree, from Wallace and Townsend.
28 --There is a certain density of population which is convenient, both for social intercourse, and for that combination of powers by which the produce of labour is increased. ? (James Mill, l. c. , p. 50. ) --As the number of labourers increases, the productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multiplied by the effects of the division of labour. ? (Th. Hodgskin, l. c. , pp. 125, 126. )
29 In consequence of the great demand for cotton after 1861, the production of cotton, in some thickly populated districts of India, was extended at the expense of rice cultivation. In consequence there arose local famines, the defective means of communication not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated by importation from another.
30 Thus the fabrication of shuttles formed as early as the 17th century, a special branch of industry in Holland.
31 Whether the woollen manufacture of England is not divided into several parts or branches appropriated to particular places, where they are only or principally manufactured; fine cloths in Somersetshire, coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter, soies at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blankets at Whitney, and so forth. ? (Berkeley: --The Querist,? 1751, ? 520. )
32 A. Ferguson: --History of Civil Society. ? Edinburgh, 1767; Part iv, sect. ii. , p. 285.
33 In manufacture proper, he says, the division of labour appears to be greater, because --those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and
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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 . . . the division is not near so obvious. ? (A. Smith: --Wealth of Nations,? bk. i, ch. i. ) The celebrated passage in the same chapter that begins with the words, --Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilised and thriving country,? &c. , and then proceeds to depict what an enormous number and variety of industries contribute to the satisfaction of the wants of an ordinary labourer, is copied almost word for word from B. de Mandeville's Remarks to his --Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. ? (First ed. , without the remarks, 1706; with the remarks, 1714. )
34 --There is no longer anything which we can call the natural reward of individual labour. Each labourer produces only some part of a whole, and each part, having no value or utility in itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say: It is my product, this I will keep to myself. ? (--Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital. ? Lond. , 1825, p. 25. ) The author of this admirable work is the Th. Hodgskin I have already cited.
35 This distinction between division of labour in society and in manufacture, was practically illustrated to the Yankees. One of the new taxes devised at Washington during the civil war, was the duty of 6% --on all industrial products. ? Question: What is an industrial product? Answer of the legislature: A thing is produced --when it is made,? and it is made when it is ready for sale. Now, for one example out of many. The New York and Philadelphia manufacturers had previously been in the habit of --making? umbrellas with all their belongings. But since an umbrella is a mixtum compositum of very heterogeneous parts, by degrees these parts became the products of various separate industries, carried on independently in different places. They entered as separate commodities into the umbrella manufactory, where they were fitted together. The Yankees have given to articles thus fitted together, the name of --assembled articles,? a name they deserve, for being an assemblage of taxes. Thus the umbrella --assembles,? first, 6% on the price of each of its elements, and a further 6% on its own total price.
36 --On peut. . . e? tablir en re`gle ge? ne? rale, que moins l'autorite? pre? side a` la division du travail dans l'inte? rieur de la socie? te? , plus la division du travail se de? veloppe dans l'inte? rieur de l'atelier, et plus elle y est soumise a` l'autorite? d'un seul. Ainsi l'autorite? dans l'atelier et celle dans la socie? te? , par rapport a` la division du travail, sont en raison inverse l'une de l'autre. ? [It can . . . be laid down as a general rule that the less authority presides over the division of labour inside society, the more the division of labour develops inside the workshop, and the more it is subjected there to the authority of a single person. Thus authority in the workshop and authority in society in relation to the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each other] (Karl Marx, --Mise`re,? &c. , pp. 130-131. )
37 Lieut. -Col. Mark Wilks: --Historical Sketches of the South of India. ? Lond. , 1810-17, v. I. , pp. 118- 20. A good description of the various forms of the Indian communities is to be found in George Campbell's --Modern India. ? Lond. , 1852.
38 --Under this simple form . . . the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered; and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged. ? (Th. Stamford Raffles, late Lieut. Gov.