An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

11

Adam Smith

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 col-

lected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the

view of the spectator.

In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are des-

tined 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 num-

ber of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is

not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed.

To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture,

but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken

notice of, the trade of a pin-maker: a workman not educated to

this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct

trade, nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in

it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has prob-

ably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost in-

dustry, 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 there-

fore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machin-

ery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them

about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound up-

wards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten per-

sons, 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

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12

The Wealth of Nations

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.

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 advan-

tage. This separation, too, is generally carried furthest in those

countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improve-

ment; what is the work of one man, in a rude state of society,

being generally that of several in an improved one. In every im-

proved 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 great number of hands. How many dif-

ferent 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 impossi-

bility 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 improve-

ment in manufactures. The most opulent nations, indeed, gener-

ally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as in manufac-

tures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superi-

ority in the latter than in the former. Their lands are in general

better cultivated, and having more labour and expense bestowed

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