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Summary Adam Smith Fragments Book 1 & V
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Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes ofthe Wealth of Nations
Book I
Of the Causes of Improvement in the productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order
according to which its Produce is naturally distributed among the different Ranks of
the People
Book I, Chapter I
Of the Division of Labor
I.1.1
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the
greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where
directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
I.1.2
The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will
be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some
particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in
some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than
in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are
destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole
number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every
different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse,
and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great
manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of
the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so
great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the
same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in
one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may
really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more
trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been
much less observed.
I.1.3
To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in
which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the
pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of
labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the
machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour
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, has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry,
make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in
which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar
trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are
likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a
third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head;
to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a
peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put
them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this
manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some
manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same
man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small
manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some
of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though
they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the
necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among
them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of
four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make
among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person,
therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be
considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they
had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having
been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them
have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two
hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of
what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper
division and combination of their different operations.
I.1.4
In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour are
similar to what they are in this very trifling one; though, in many of them, the
labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicity
of operation. The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced,
occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of
labour. The separation of different trades and employments from one another,
seems to have taken place, in consequence of this advantage. This separation
too is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest
degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man in a rude
state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one. In every
improved society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the
manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer. The labour too which is necessary to
produce any one complete manufacture, is almost always divided among a
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, great number of hands. How many different trades are employed in each
branch of the linen and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and
the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and
dressers of the cloth! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so
many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one business
from another, as manufactures. It is impossible to separate so entirely, the
business of the grazier from that of the corn-farmer, as the trade of the
carpenter is commonly separated from that of the smith. The spinner is almost
always a distinct person from the weaver; but the ploughman, the harrower, the
sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often the same. The occasions
for those different sorts of labour returning with the different seasons of the
year, it is impossible that one man should be constantly employed in any one of
them. This impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all
the different branches of labour employed in agriculture, is perhaps the reason
why the improvement of the productive powers of labour in this art, does not
always keep pace with their improvement in manufactures. The most opulent
nations, indeed, generally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as in
manufactures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority
in the latter than in the former. Their lands are in general better cultivated, and
having more labour and expence bestowed upon them, produce more in
proportion to the extent and natural fertility of the ground. But this superiority
of produce is seldom much more than in proportion to the superiority of labour
and expence. In agriculture, the labour of the rich country is not always much
more productive than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so much more
productive, as it commonly is in manufactures. The corn of the rich country,
therefore, will not always, in the same degree of goodness, come cheaper to
market than that of the poor. The corn of Poland, in the same degree of
goodness, is as cheap as that of France, notwithstanding the superior opulence
and improvement of the latter country. The corn of France is, in the corn
provinces, fully as good, and in most years nearly about the same price with the
corn of England, though, in opulence and improvement, France is perhaps
inferior to England. The corn-lands of England, however, are better cultivated
than those of France, and the corn-lands of France are said to be much better
cultivated than those of Poland. But though the poor country, notwithstanding
the inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the
cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its
manufactures; at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation
of the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper than those of
England, because the silk manufacture, at least under the present high duties
upon the importation of raw silk, does not so well suit the climate of England as
that of France. But the hard-ware and the coarse woollens of England are
beyond all comparison superior to those of France, and much cheaper too in the
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