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FIRST FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 5 Lectures On Jurisprudence [1762]

Edition used:

Lectures On Jurisprudence, ed. R.. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein, vol. V of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


FIRST FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

| who, for an equal quantity of work, would have taken more time and consequentlya have required more wages, which must have been charged upon the goods. The philosopher, on the other hand, is of use to the porter; not only by being sometimes an occasional customer, like any other man who is not a porter, but in many other respects. If the speculations of the philosopher have been turned towards the improvement of the mechanic arts, the benefit of them may evidently descend to the meanest of the people. Whoever burns coals has them at a better bargain by means of the inventer of the fire–engine. Whoever eats bread receives a much greater advantage of the same kind from the inventers and improvers of wind and water mills. Even the speculations of those who neither invent nor improve any thing are not altogether useless. They serve, at least, to keep alive and deliver down to posterity the inventions and improvements which have been made before them. They explain the grounds and reasons upon which those discoveries were founded and do not suffer the quantity of useful science to diminish.

As it is the power ofb exchangingc whichd gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division will always be in proportion to the extent of that power.e Every species of industry will be carried on in a more or less perfect manner, that is, will be more or less accurately subdivided intof the different branches according tog which it is capable of being split, in proportion | to the extent of the market, which is evidently the same thing with the power of exchanging. When the market is very small it is altogether impossible that there can be that separation of one employment from another which naturally takes place when it is more extensive. In a country village, for example, it is altogether impossible that there should be such a trade as that of a porter. All the burdens which, in such a situation, there can be any occasion to carry from one house to another would not give full employment to a man for a week in the year. Such ah business can scarce bei perfectly separated from all others in a pretty large market town. For the same reason, in all the small villages which are at a great distance from any market town, each family must bake their own bread and brew their own beer, to their own great expence and inconveniency,j by the interruption which is thereby given to their respective employments, and by being obliged, on this account, to maintaink a greater number of servants than would otherwise be necessary. In mountainous and desart countries,l such as the greater part of the Highlands of Scotland, we cannot expect to find, in the same manner,m even a smith,n a carpenter, or a mason within less than twenty or thirty miles of another smith,o carpenter, or mason. The scattered families who live at ten or fifteen miles distance from the nearest of anyp of those threeq artisans, must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces of work for which, in more populous countries, they would readily have recourse to one or other of them,r whom they now can afford to send fors only upon very extraordinary occasions.t | In a savage tribe of North Americans, who are generally hunters, the greatest number who can subsist easily together seldom exceeds one hundred oru one hundred and fifty persons.v Each village is at so great a distance from every other, and it is so very difficult and dangerous to travel the country, that there is scarce any intercourse between the differentw villagesx even of the same nation except what war and mutual defence give occasion to. In such a country it is impossible that any one employment should be entirely separated from every other. One man, etc:y One man may excel all his companions in some particular piece of dexterity, but it is impossible that he can be wholly employed in it, for want of a market to take off and exchange for other commodities the greater part of the goods which he would, in this case, necessarily produce. Hence the poverty which must necessarily take place in such a society. In a tribe of Tartars, or wild Arabs, who are generally shepherds, a greater number can live conveniently in one place. They do not depend upon the precarious accidents of the chace for subsistence, but upon the milk and flesh of their herds and flocks, who graze in the fields adjoining to the village. The Hottentots near the Cape of Good–hope are the most barbarous nation of shepherds that is known in the world. One of their villages or Kraals, however, is said generally to consist of upwards of five hundred persons. A Hord of Tartars frequently consists of five, six, or even ten times that number. As among such nations, therefore, tho’ they have scarce any foreign commerce, the home market is somewhatz more extensive, we may expect to find something like the beginning of the division of labour.a Even in each village of Hottentots, therefore, according to Mr. Kolben,1 there areb suchc trades as those of a smith, a taylor, and even a phisician, and the persons who exercise them, tho’ they | are not entirely, are principally supported by those respective employments, by which too they are greatly distinguished from the rest of their fellow citizens. Among the Tartars and Arabs we find the faint commencementsd of a stille greater variety of employments. The Hottentots, therefore, may be regarded as a richer nation than the North Americans, and the Tartars and Arabs asf richer than the Hottentots. The compleat division of labour, however, is posteriour to the invention even of agriculture. By means of agriculture the same quantity of groundg not only produces corn but is made capable of supporting a much greater number of cattle than before. A much greater number of people, therefore, may easily subsist in the same place. The home market, in consequence,h becomes much more extensive. The smith, the mason, the carpenter, the weaver, and the taylor soon find it for their interest not to trouble themselves with cultivating the ground, but to exchange with the farmer the produces of their several employmentsi for the corn and cattle which they have occasion for. The farmer too veryj soon comes to find it equally for his interest not to interrupt his own business withk making cloaths for his family, with building or repairing his own house, with mending or making the different instruments of his trade, or the different parts of his houshold furniture, but to call in the assistance of other workmen for each of those purposes whom he rewards with corn and with cattle.l

[a]‘would’ deleted

[b]‘bartering and’ deleted

[c]‘which one thing for another’ deleted

[d]‘originally’ deleted

[e]‘The lar greater the market, the larger the commerce’ deleted

[f]Replaces ‘into according to’

[g]The last two words replace ‘into’

[h]‘buss’ deleted

[i]‘there’ deleted

[j]‘being obliged upon this account, not only frequently’ deleted

[k]‘on this account’ deleted

[l]‘in the same manner’ deleted

[m]The last four words replace ‘such as’

[n]‘or’ deleted

[o]‘or another’ deleted

[p]Replaces ‘either’

[q]Replaces ‘two’

[r]Replaces ‘those workmen’

[s]‘at much trouble and expence’ deleted

[t]‘It is the same | thing with the mason’ deleted

[u]‘one hundred and fifty men two hundred’ deleted

[v]‘They live’ deleted

[w]The last two words replace ‘one’

[x]‘and another’ deleted

[y]The words ‘One man, etc:’ and the three sentences which precede them are written in the margin. Indicators show that the three sentences are intended to replace the following passage, which has been deleted: ‘In a tribe of [‘savage’ deleted] hunters who perhaps do not among them make above a hundred or a hundred and fifty persons and who have no regular commerce or intercourse of any kind with any other tribe, except such as mutual hostility and war may give occasion to, it is scarce possible that any one employment of any kind should be compleatly separated from every other.’

[z]Replaces ‘a good deal’

[a]‘We find’ deleted

[1 ]Peter Kolben (or Kolb), The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope (German edn., 1719; English edn., London, 1731). Smith’s comments on the Hottentots in this section of the fragment were probably derived from p. 216 of vol. I of the English edn. (population of kraals); ch. xix passim (the smith and the tailor); and ch. xxv passim (the physician).

[b]Replaces ‘is’

[c]‘a’ deleted

[d]‘in the same manner’ deleted

[e]Replaces ‘much’

[f]Replaces ‘much’

[g]‘is made to support far’ deleted

[h]The last two words replace ‘therefore’

[i]‘with’ deleted

[j]The last two words replace ‘too’

[k]Replaces ‘in order to’

[l]The last thirteen words replace ‘for each of these purposes’