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.[348] In 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:[349] every 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.[351] In 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,[352] cotton 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;[353] but 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:
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.[355] Here belongs especially the possibility of turning every kind of labor-power to greatest account. Even children[356] and 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]