Chapter II.

Chapter II.Co-Operation Of The Factors.Section XLVI.The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304Section XLVII.Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The Three Great Periods Of A Nation's Economy.The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310[pg 167]Section XLVIII.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311[pg 169]Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.[pg 170]Section XLIX.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313[pg 171]But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321Section L.The Same Subject Continued.Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328Section LI.The Same Subject Continued.The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.[pg 178]Section LII.Idea Of Productiveness.It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331[pg 179]Section LIII.The Same Subject Continued.In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336Section LIV.Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different Branches Of Productiveness.Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340[pg 183]We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343Section LV.The Degree Of Productiveness.Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345[pg 186]Chapter III.The Organization Of Labor.Section LVI.Development Of The Division Of Labor.The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347Section LVII.Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At Different Periods.In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350[pg 188]In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354Section LVIII.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:[pg 190]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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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.357B.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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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.361Section LIX.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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.Section LX.Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of Labor.But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369Section LXI.The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.Section LXII.The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.[pg 199]Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.Section LXIII.Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387Section LXIV.The Co-Operation Of Labor.The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.Section LXV.The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of Work.Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392Section LXVI.Advantage Of Large Enterprises.On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395[pg 207]

Chapter II.Co-Operation Of The Factors.Section XLVI.The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304Section XLVII.Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The Three Great Periods Of A Nation's Economy.The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310[pg 167]Section XLVIII.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311[pg 169]Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.[pg 170]Section XLIX.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313[pg 171]But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321Section L.The Same Subject Continued.Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328Section LI.The Same Subject Continued.The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.[pg 178]Section LII.Idea Of Productiveness.It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331[pg 179]Section LIII.The Same Subject Continued.In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336Section LIV.Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different Branches Of Productiveness.Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340[pg 183]We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343Section LV.The Degree Of Productiveness.Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345[pg 186]Chapter III.The Organization Of Labor.Section LVI.Development Of The Division Of Labor.The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347Section LVII.Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At Different Periods.In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350[pg 188]In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354Section LVIII.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:[pg 190]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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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.357B.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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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.361Section LIX.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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.Section LX.Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of Labor.But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369Section LXI.The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.Section LXII.The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.[pg 199]Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.Section LXIII.Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387Section LXIV.The Co-Operation Of Labor.The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.Section LXV.The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of Work.Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392Section LXVI.Advantage Of Large Enterprises.On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395[pg 207]

Chapter II.Co-Operation Of The Factors.Section XLVI.The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304Section XLVII.Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The Three Great Periods Of A Nation's Economy.The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310[pg 167]Section XLVIII.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311[pg 169]Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.[pg 170]Section XLIX.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313[pg 171]But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321Section L.The Same Subject Continued.Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328Section LI.The Same Subject Continued.The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.[pg 178]Section LII.Idea Of Productiveness.It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331[pg 179]Section LIII.The Same Subject Continued.In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336Section LIV.Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different Branches Of Productiveness.Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340[pg 183]We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343Section LV.The Degree Of Productiveness.Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345[pg 186]Chapter III.The Organization Of Labor.Section LVI.Development Of The Division Of Labor.The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347Section LVII.Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At Different Periods.In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350[pg 188]In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354Section LVIII.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:[pg 190]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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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.357B.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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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.361Section LIX.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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.Section LX.Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of Labor.But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369Section LXI.The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.Section LXII.The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.[pg 199]Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.Section LXIII.Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387Section LXIV.The Co-Operation Of Labor.The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.Section LXV.The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of Work.Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392Section LXVI.Advantage Of Large Enterprises.On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395[pg 207]

Chapter II.Co-Operation Of The Factors.Section XLVI.The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304Section XLVII.Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The Three Great Periods Of A Nation's Economy.The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310[pg 167]Section XLVIII.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311[pg 169]Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.[pg 170]Section XLIX.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313[pg 171]But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321Section L.The Same Subject Continued.Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328Section LI.The Same Subject Continued.The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.[pg 178]Section LII.Idea Of Productiveness.It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331[pg 179]Section LIII.The Same Subject Continued.In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336Section LIV.Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different Branches Of Productiveness.Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340[pg 183]We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343Section LV.The Degree Of Productiveness.Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345

Section XLVI.The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304

All economic production generally demands the coöperation of the three factors: external nature, labor and capital. But with the political economist, labor is the principal thing; and not merely because all capital presupposes labor, nor because every combination of the three factors is an act of labor;[pg 164]but, in general, because“the human mind's idea of means and ends makes all goods goods for the first time.”(Hufeland.)

Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. But how little can unassisted nature do to satisfy human wants! How much less to produce goods possessed of value in exchange! A virgin forest, for instance, sold in its natural state, has, indeed, value in exchange, but only because it is taken into account that it can be cleared, and that there are means of transportation already existing.301The greater part of the forces of nature are latent to nomads and nations of hunters. When labor develops, they are set free to assist it.302It is very seldom that any thing can be produced without capital. Even the poorest gatherer of wild berries needs a basket and must be clothed.303Were there no capital, every individual would have to begin at the very beginning every moment. Life would be possible only in a tropical climate. No man, since the days of Adam, has been able to labor, except on the condition that a considerable advance of capital had been made upon him. There is not a nail in all England, says Senior, which cannot directly or indirectly[pg 165]directly be traced back to savings made before the Norman conquest.304

Section XLVII.Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The Three Great Periods Of A Nation's Economy.The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310

The relation of the three factors to one another is necessarily very different in different branches of production. For instance, in the case of cattle-raising on a prairie, labor does very little, land almost everything. Hence an extensive, thinly populated country is best adapted to this species of production. But where land is scarce, as in wealthy and populous cities, human activity should be directed into those branches of industry which need capital and labor, as manufactures and the trades. (§ 198.)305

Looked at from this point of view, the history of the development of the public economy of every people may be divided into three great periods. In the earliest period, nature is the element that predominates everywhere. The woods, waters and meadows afford food almost spontaneously to a scanty population. This is the Saturnian or golden age of which the sagas tell. Wealth, properly speaking, does not exist here, and those who do not possess a piece of land run the risk of becoming completely dependent on, or even the slave of a land owner. In the second period, that through which all modern nations have passed since the later part of the middle ages, the element, labor, acquires an ever increasing importance. Labor favors the origin and development of cities as well as exclusive rights, the rights of boroughs and guilds by means of which labor is, so to speak, capitalized. A[pg 166]middle class is formed intermediate between the serfs and the owners of the soil. In the third period, capital, if we may so speak, gives tone to everything. The value of land is vastly increased by the expenditure of capital on it, and in manufactures, machine labor preponderates over the labor of the human hand.306The national wealth undergoes a daily increase; and it is the“capitalism”which first gives an independent existence to the economic activity of man; just in the same way that law is, as it were, emancipated from land-ownership, from the church and the family only in the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat).307But, during this period, the middle class with its moderate ease and solid culture may decrease in numbers, and colossal wealth be confronted with the most abject misery.308Although these three periods may be shown to exist in the history of all highly civilized countries, the nations of antiquity, relatively speaking, never advanced far beyond the second, even in their palmiest days. A great part of that which is accomplished among us by means of capital and of machines, the Greeks and Romans performed by the labor of slaves. Leaving Christianity out of the question, nearly all the minor differences between the public economy of the ancients and that of the moderns may be reduced to this fundamental distinction.309310

Section XLVIII.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311[pg 169]Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.

In this chapter, the dogma-historical (dogmengeschichtliche) part is of the utmost importance, because it treats of the connection[pg 168]between the deepest fundamental notions and the principal branches of practical life. It is clear that every political economist must construct his exposition of productiveness on his prior notions of goods and value. We must, therefore, draw a distinction between expositions which are logical but altogether too narrow, and wholly erroneous ones.311

Thus, the Mercantile System admits every mode of applying the three factors of production, but considers them really productive only in so far as they increase the quantity of the precious metals possessed by the nation, either through the agency of mining at home, or by means of foreign trade. This view stands and falls with the altogether too limited idea of national wealth before mentioned (§9), which this system advocated.312The majority of the followers of the Mercantile System ascribe more power to industry to attract gold and silver from foreign parts, than to agriculture, and to the finer kinds of industry than to the coarser; to active and direct trade, more than to passive and indirect trade.

Section XLIX.Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313[pg 171]But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321

The doctrine of the Physiocrates is to be explained in part by a very natural reaction from the narrow-heartedness of the Mercantile System, and at the same time, by a presentiment, misunderstood, of the true theory of rent. (§ 150 ff.). Of the six classes of labor mentioned above (§38), those only are called productive which increase the quantity of raw material useful for human ends. All the other classes, it matters not how useful, are called sterile, salaried, because they draw their income only from the superabundance of land-owners and the workers of the soil. Tradesmen, in the narrower sense of the term, produce only a change in the form of the material, the higher value of which depends on the quantity of other material consumed for the purposes of the tradesman's labor. If any of this material is saved, the value of their products sinks, although to the advantage of the economy of the whole nation. In any case, industry could create no wealth, but only make existing wealth more lasting. It might, so to speak, accumulate the value of the quantity of food consumed during the building of a house in the house itself.313

But if tradesmen really earned, in the value of their products, only what they had consumed during their labor, it would be difficult for them to find employers to provide them with capital. Everyone will acknowledge, that a Thorwaldsen and an ordinary stone-cutter, with the same block of marble, the same implements, the same food, would necessarily, after the same time, turn out exceedingly different values.314And, even in the case that industry should add to the raw material only precisely the same amount of value as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.315

Commerce, according to the theory of the Physiocrates, only transfers already existing wealth from one hand to another. What the merchants gain by it is at the cost of the nation. Hence, it is desirable that this loss should be as[pg 172]small as possible. Hence sterility!316But, the more important branches of business, especially wholesale trade, are connected with a transportation of goods (Verri), either from one place or from one period of time, into another. Here the genuine merchant speculates essentially on the difference of the values in use which are afterwards greater than before.317The ice shipped yearly from Boston to tropical lands met a much more urgent and wide-spread want there than it would if it had remained at home. And thus the storage of grain in large quantities after a bountiful harvest withdraws, indeed, an object of enjoyment from the consumption of the people; but its sale, after a bad harvest, undoubtedly increases their enjoyment in a much greater degree than it was before diminished. Besides, the condition of both parties to the contract is usually improved in all normal trade. (Condillac.)318No one parts with exchangeable goods unless they are of less use to him than the ones he receives in return.319And so, the value in use of a nation's resources is really increased by commerce. To the other attributes of goods it adds one of the principal conditions of all use, accessibility (Kudler), with which it either newly endows them, or which it increases in degree. To this end, the merchant makes use of tools, just as the manufacturer[pg 173]does. What spinning-wheels, looms and workshops are to the latter, ships, warehouses, cranes etc., are to the former. If production be not complete until the thing produced is made fit for its last end, consumption, commerce may be looked upon as the last link in the chain of productive labor. It, at the same time, constitutes a series of intermediate links; as without it no division of labor is possible, and without a division of labor, no higher economic productiveness.320How commerce may increase the value in exchange of goods, and without in any way injuring the purchaser, needs no further illustration.321

Section L.The Same Subject Continued.Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328

Even Adam Smith called services, in the narrower sense of the term (§3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the“frivolous”ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any[pg 174]particular object.322323But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violin-player is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease?

If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The field-guard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse[pg 175]enemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.324

Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another.325What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than themonumentum ære perenniusof a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the extent[pg 176]and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the“immaterial,”that man is most“creative.”(Lueder.)326Finally, neither should the greater indispensableness of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, toservicesbelong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with.327Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.328

Section LI.The Same Subject Continued.The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.

The greater number of recent writers329have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which ministers[pg 177]to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness.330But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed.

Section LII.Idea Of Productiveness.It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331

It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pin-heads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.331

Section LIII.The Same Subject Continued.In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336

In this matter, again, there is an important difference to be observed between private or individual economy and economy in its widest sense, in the sense of a world-economy. The productiveness of labor is estimated in the case of the former, according to the value in exchange of its result; in the case of the latter, according to its value in use. There is a great number of employments which are very remunerative to private individuals, but which are entirely unproductive, and even injurious, so far as mankind is concerned; for the reason that they take from others as much as, or even more than they procure to those engaged in them. Here belong, besides formal crimes against property, games of chance,332usurious speculations (§113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have[pg 180]cost the former.333In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.334Strictly speaking, only those employments should be called productive which increase the world's resources. Hence, the work of government should be called so, only in so far as its expenses are covered by the taxes paid willingly by the more reasonable portion of the citizens; and also only in so far as its work is really necessary to the attainment of its end.335The productiveness of an employment supposes, also, that it is not carried on at the cost of other employments which it is more difficult to do without. In a healthy nation we may, in this matter, rely, to a certain extent, on the judgment of public opinion, which knows how to appreciate, at their just value, professional gamblers, pettifoggers and the luxury of soldiers. The greater, freer and more cultivated a nation is, the more probable is it that the productiveness of private economy is also national-economical productiveness, and that national-economical productiveness is world-economical productiveness.336

Section LIV.Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different Branches Of Productiveness.Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340[pg 183]We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343

Much always depends on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous[pg 181]circumstances in the world,337because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on the interest of their capital; after which they, by way of preference, removed it into some other province, where they might be considered as among the nobility; or they withdrew into a monastery. Even in 1781, the Madrid Academy thought it incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis:“The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor.”338During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation.“Whoever wishes to make his fortune,”said Cervantes,“let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's palace.”Under Philip III., there were in Spain nine hundred and eighty-eight nunneries, and thirty-two thousand mendicant friars. The number of monasteries trebled between 1574 and 1624, and the number of monks increased in a yet greater ratio. A great many of its manufactories, much of its commerce, and not a few of its most important farms were controlled by foreigners, especially by Italians. There were, it seems, in 1610, one hundred and sixty thousand foreign tradesmen living in Castile. In 1787, there were still 188,625 priests, monks, nuns, etc.; 280,092 servants; 480,589 nobles; 964,571 day laborers; 987,187 peasants; 310,739 mechanics and manufacturers;[pg 182]34,339 merchants.339As a counterpart to this, the United States had, in 1840, about 77.5 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture, 16.8 in manufactures and mining, 4.2 in shipping and commerce, 1.3 in the learned professions.340

We might be tempted, in view of this contrast, to return once more to the unproductiveness of personal services. It is not, however, the direction given to the forces of production, but the squandering of them, that is injurious. When the Magyar, through mere vanity, drives a yoke of from four to six horses where two are enough; or when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain341produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability that a man will ruin himself by keeping too many servants is greater than that he[pg 184]will do the same by employing too many operatives.342And all the more, as there are many and especially important services which regulate their own remuneration: thus, as a rule, those of the statesman, those of the military in times of war, and those of the priest in the age of superstition.343

Section LV.The Degree Of Productiveness.Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345

Concerning the degree of productiveness, it may be remarked that that application of the factors of production is most productive, which, with the least expenditure of means, satisfies the greatest want in the economy of a people. Here, there is a continual change, corresponding precisely to the change in wants and faculties. After a bad harvest, for instance, the labor which procures grain from foreign countries or the supplies of former years, is most productive; and, after an earthquake which has destroyed a large city, the labor of the builder. Agriculture is, as a rule, the more productive[pg 185]labor of undeveloped nations, and industry of highly developed nations.344345

Chapter III.The Organization Of Labor.Section LVI.Development Of The Division Of Labor.The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347Section LVII.Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At Different Periods.In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350[pg 188]In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354Section LVIII.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:[pg 190]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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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.357B.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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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.361Section LIX.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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.Section LX.Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of Labor.But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369Section LXI.The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.Section LXII.The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.[pg 199]Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.Section LXIII.Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387Section LXIV.The Co-Operation Of Labor.The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.Section LXV.The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of Work.Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392Section LXVI.Advantage Of Large Enterprises.On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395

Section LVI.Development Of The Division Of Labor.The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347

The larger a tree grows to be, the more boughs and branches does it put forth. The more perfect any species of animal is, the more does it stand in need of a special organ for each special purpose. And thus the division of labor has developed and kept pace with the development of human society. While Crusoe was obliged to provide for all his wants by his own labor, we find that in the wildest Indian family the male is employed in war, the chase, in fishing, in the manufacture of arms and boats, and in the transportation of the latter during long marches; the female, on the other hand, in the preparation of food, in the hewing of wood, the curing of skins, the sewing of clothes, in the building and preservation of the wig-wam, the care of children, and the carriage of baggage when on the march.346These occupations, at first entirely domestic,[pg 187]became, by degrees, separate industries, which are constantly subject to further subdivision.347

Section LVII.Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At Different Periods.In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350[pg 188]In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354

In the middle age of a people, the division of labor is not carried to any great extent. The courtiers of King Frotho III. advised him to marry,“since otherwise his majesty's ragged linen would never be mended.”Saint Dunstan, although he occupied a high position in politics and in the Church, was an excellent blacksmith, bell-founder and designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.348In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron tools generally. But the peasant himself was the weaver, fuller, dyer, tanner, shoemaker etc. of his own family:349every man jack of all trades.350

In present England, on the other hand, the manufacture of watches is divided into one hundred and two branches which have to be specially learned; only the so-called“watch-finisher”carries on other branches besides. In Wolverhampton, it may happen that a man, employed in the manufacture of keys, may not be able to make a whole key after an apprenticeship of ten years, for the reason that during all that time he may have been engaged only in filing.351In English agriculture there are, according to German notions, very few complete wholes. A well-marked distinction exists there between the cultivators of corn and breeders of cattle; and the latter are again divided into breeders of young cattle, into fatteners of cattle etc. Its industries are, in large part, separated into provinces. Thus, linen manufactures are confined almost exclusively to Leeds and Dundee, woolen manufactures, to Leeds,352cotton manufactures, to Manchester,[pg 189]and Glasgow, pottery to Stafford, coarse iron to South Wales, hardwares to Birmingham, cutlery to Sheffield. And so in the different quarters of the city. Thus, in large towns, the banks, stores, offices etc., are found in one portion, with scarcely any intervening dwelling houses.

On the division of labor depends all differences of estate and class, and all human culture. It cannot be claimed that a division of labor does not exist among animals;353but those animals among which something analogous to a division of labor among men exists, are raised far above all others by their human-like economy and the relative importance of their achievements.354

Section LVIII.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:[pg 190]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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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.357B.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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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

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.355Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children356and 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[pg 191]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.358The 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,359makes 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 laboraffords an indirect means, but frequently an indispensable one, of procuring the products of foreign countries and climates.360If the English people wished to obtain themselves, and without having recourse to any intermediary, the quantity of tea[pg 192]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

Section LIX.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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.

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.362The 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,[pg 193]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.363It 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.

Section LX.Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of Labor.But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369

But it is the extent of the market especially which determines the limits of the division of labor; for there is a direct and necessary relation between the division of labor and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;364upon their[pg 194]smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.365Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried on by one person, which are divided among many in larger cities; and this is especially true in the case of businesses which have a chiefly local demand.366While, in small places, the barber is also frequently the physician, in larger ones there are dentists, oculists, accoucheurs, surgeons etc.367; and while, in the former, the tavern keeper is both dry goods merchant and grocer, there are, in the latter, tea merchants, cigar-dealers, dealers in mourning goods (in London childbed-linen warehouses) etc., and hotels for all the different classes of travelers. There can be a distinct class of porters, hack-men etc., only where commerce is very active.368And even in cities like Paris, where the costly industries that minister to luxury, that of the jeweler, for instance, admit of only a limited division of labor, this effect depends on the smallness of the market; a market, indeed,[pg 195]which geographically may extend over the whole earth, but which, in an economic sense, must always remain small, on account of the small number of customers who have the ability to pay for their products. The real wonders produced by the division of labor and the employment of machinery we must look for in the manufacture of the cheapest and commonest commodities.369

Section LXI.The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.

Whoever, therefore, would increase the division of labor among the people, must, first of all, extend their market; and this is done most efficiently by improving the means of communication. Even in our day, it is over the water-highroads that the heaviest articles are carried with the least expenditure of force;370but where civilization is not advanced, these highroads possess still greater advantages, because of their safety, convenience and priority. And here is the explanation of the intimate connection of the beginnings of all civilizations with the existence, near the scene of such beginnings, of good natural water-roads.“Even the wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the[pg 196]best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft.”(Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially the eastern portion, with the various peoples and products of its coasts, with its numerous islands, peninsulas and bays, its easy navigation, but little influenced by the tides or by ocean currents, was the principal seat of ancient civilization.371The literal meaning of Attica is coast-land. (Strabo.) The colonization of a new country is wont, where possible, to begin on the coast, especially on islands near the coast; and to follow the course of rivers into the interior. Even whole continents occupy, for the most part, in the history of the world, the position assigned them by their coast-development.372While it is hard to determine whether, in the case of the European continent, its limbs predominate or its trunk, Africa may be said to be a trunk without members. Its islands, most of them insignificant in themselves, are almost entirely cut off from it by ocean currents. This explains why Madagascar had not, by any means, the influence on African civilization which Crete, Sicily and Britain have had on the civilization of Europe. Asia occupies, in this respect, about a middle position between Europe and Africa. The trunk of that continent bears to its members about the proportion of 670,000 to 150,000 square miles. And what is worst of all, the middle of the whole is an almost insurmountable wall between north, south, east and west Asia. Hence the tenacious peculiarity and isolated development of the Chinese, Malayan, Indian and Arabic civilizations; while the three peninsulas of southern Europe, for instance, have affected one another so largely, and in so many different ways.373The northern hemisphere compared with the southern, presents[pg 197]a contrast similar to that between Europe and Africa, or of the rich coast-groups of the Atlantic compared with the poor ones of the Pacific.374But it is most especially, large, well-watered plains that are best adapted to the construction of roads, and thus to facilitate the division of labor. And while we find, in many countries, that the mountainous regions reached a certain stage of development earlier than any others, because they were more easily protected by military force, we find, too, that even here, plains, have, for the most part, had the largest share of power and of civilization (northern Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and[pg 198]north Germany). See §36.375We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues of trade.

Section LXII.The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.[pg 199]Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.

There are hardships often attending the highly developed division of labor, the dark and bright sides of which are most strikingly observable only in large cities. However, when it is charged with adding to the natural inequality of men, the accusation can be met only by the answer, that, without the division of labor, we should be all equally poor and equally coarse; for each one would be absorbed by the necessity of providing for his lower wants, and no one would be in a way to develop his higher faculties. Even the poorest man has more enjoyment in consequence of the division of labor, than he could have living in a state of isolation from his fellow men. The most wretched among us, the invalid without property of any kind, the father of a family with more children than he can support, would simply starve in the primeval forest.

Those socialists who never tire of preaching“association,”overlook for the most part, the great, free association which our needs, wants or tastes are ever changing, and which is given us, as of course, by the division of labor.376Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.377Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.378Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they work alone; but that when a great many of them work together, they become rapidly confused. The English, on the other hand, are slow to learn anything new, or to overcome unlooked for difficulties; but they have no equals as workmen in organized industries.379The difficulty experienced in seeking a new calling, where a high division of labor obtains, arises as much from the fact that each person here has received a more one-sided training, as from the necessity he is under of competing from the first with only consummate workers. Rousseau's school has laid too much stress on the tendency of higher civilization to diminish individual independence.Quand on sait creuser un canot, battre l'ennemi, construire une cabane, vivre de peu, faire cent lieues dans les forêts sans autre guide que le vent et le soleil, sans autre provision qu'un arc et des flêches; c'est[pg 200]alors qu'on est un homme!380We might reply that to build a steamship or a palace, and to travel around the world are far better. (Dunoyer.) Even physically, civilized man is superior to the savage, as might be inferred from the greater average duration of life of the former. Of course, extremes should not be compared, nor should we contrast the frame of a weaver or student with that of a savage chief.381

In a similar way, the one-sidedness of the international division of labor may be pregnant with great danger to national independence.

Section LXIII.Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And Loss.Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387

Where, indeed, the one-sidedness produced by the division of labor goes so far as to cause the degeneration382of the workman's personality, the human loss of the nation is greater than[pg 201]the material gain purchased by it. Thus the occupation of polishing metals or gilding, when continued for a long time without interruption, invariably ruins the health. What must be the aspect of the soul of a workman who, for forty years has done nothing but watch the moment when silver has reached the degree of fusion which precedes vaporization! who is blind to all else, but receives a good fat salary for his services.383Schleiermacher rightly declared all human action which is purely mechanical, through which man becomes a living tool (slave!) immoral. When the division of labor has reached this point, machines should take the place of men. The morality of a profession may be measured by the degree in which it corresponds with the universal calling of the race.384It is not, therefore, a piece of inconsistency but rather a deeply felt want, when, where civilization is at its highest, so many demands are made that the division of labor should take a retrograde path. The practice of gymnastic exercises by the sedentary classes, universal military duty, the participation of citizens in municipal government and in political affairs, of laymen in the government of the church, of the wealthy in the administration of charity; all these things are, from a materialistic stand-point, considered a great squandering of time. It may be, that, if the division of labor were more rigidly carried[pg 202]out, we might, by its means, obtain more perfect results with less economic expense. But the whole man is of more importance than the sum of his achievements and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found only among the proletarians. Hence there is nothing more ruinous than premature one-sided education in a single trade or profession—a thing which often happens from poverty before the foundations of the general education becoming a human being have been laid. The higher a man's position, the more should he, so to speak, be a representative of the whole human race. Who, for instance, would wish to see a ruler brought up as men are to a special branch of science or to a special profession?385386The best corrective for the one-sidedness[pg 203]produced by a high division of labor consists in the extension and many-sided employment of leisure time, both of which are made more easy by the same high civilization which always accompanies the division of labor.387

Section LXIV.The Co-Operation Of Labor.The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.

The coöperation or combination388of labor must, however, always correspond to the division of labor. Both are but different sides of the one idea of social labor; the separation of different kinds of labor, in so far as they would disturb one another, and the union or combination of them so far as they help one another.389The vintner or grower of flax would necessarily[pg 204]die of hunger if he could not certainly count on the grower of corn. The workman in a pin-factory, who prepares only the heads of pins, must be sure of his colleagues who sharpen the points, if his labor would not be entirely in vain. The labor of the merchant is not even thinkable without that of the different producers between whom he mediates. Where the production of a certain article depends on the services of six different kinds of labor, one of which, however, demands thrice the time, and another twice the time of the rest, it is clear, that, in order that the business may be properly carried on, so many workmen should be employed that their number divided by 9 should leave no remainder. (Rau.) The union or combination of different kinds of labor is most perfect when the workmen live nearest together; when, therefore, they are not separated by great difficulties of transportation; or in different countries, in which case, a war might tear all to pieces.

Section LXV.The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of Work.Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392

Coöperation in time is of equal importance: the principle of the stability, or of the continuity of labor. When a workman dies, it is necessary to be able to calculate on a substitute. It is well known that it is much harder to begin a business, than it is, afterwards, to improve and enlarge it; and this, the more complicated it is. A new enterprise will take root easily, only where there are several similar ones already in existence; a new manufacturing establishment, for instance, where by the existence of other such establishments, the requisite habits of the workmen, of capitalists and of the public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of[pg 205]the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.390Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best applications of the principle of the continuity of labor belong the church-building of the middle ages, the national canals, the street and fortification systems of modern times; all of which have been created only by the coöperation of several generations to the same end.391The most striking means by which such a coöperation has been advanced in modern times is public credit,“a draft on posterity;”yet, all saving is, in principle, the same. The most powerful element in the coöperation in time of labor is the economy in common of the family, although it differs in degree, according to the different kinds of family inheritance. Where, as among the English middle classes, it is customary to secure the business property of the family to one child by will, and to entrust the conduct of the business, during the life of the father, to the devisee, to provide for the other children by insurance, by savings etc., made from the surplus of the business, there may be old firms which remain always new, however; because they combine the experience of age with the energy of youth, and are never broken up by a division of the inheritance. But the[pg 206]compulsory equality of heirs, which actually obtains in France, compels almost every new generation to begin with a new firm. (See §85seq.)392

Section LXVI.Advantage Of Large Enterprises.On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395

On the results of the division and coöperation of labor rests the superior advantage of all great undertakings, and they are, therefore, smaller in agriculture than in industry.“It is harder to acquire the first thousand than the second million.”Abstraction made of the conditions of capital and of the market, the limit up to which the growing magnitude of an enterprise becomes more advantageous, lies in the increasing difficulty of superintendence. Numberless commercial improvements, such as the post-office, railroads, telegraphs, exchange, banks etc., have operated powerfully to extend these limits. It is frequently possible, even in small enterprises, to secure the advantages of large enterprises, by association among those concerned. They must, of course, possess the necessary capital. If they have not got it, as property, they must borrow it. It is, of course, peculiarly difficult here to preserve the necessary unity, without which the coöperation of labor becomes the confusion of labor. The more moral and intelligent the participants are and the simpler the business, the more extensive may it become, and the more probable will be its success. (§90.)393394395

Back to IndexNext