An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations | Page 7

silk, does not so well suit the climate of England as that of
France. But the hardware and the coarse woollens of England are beyond all comparison
superior to those of France, and much cheaper, too, in the same degree of goodness. In
Poland there are said to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those coarser
household manufactures excepted, without which no country can well subsist.
This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the division of
labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different
circumstances ; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman ; secondly,
to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to
another ; and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and
abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.
First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workmen, necessarily increases the quantity
of the work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every man's business
to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his
life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman. A common smith,
who, though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been used to make nails, if,
upon some particular occasion, he is obliged to attempt it, will scarce, I am assured, be
able to make above two or three hundred nails in a day, and those, too, very bad ones. A
smith who has been accustomed to make nails, but whose sole or principal business has
not been that of a nailer, can seldom, with his utmost diligence, make more than eight
hundred or a thousand nails in a day. I have seen several boys, under twenty years of age,
who had never exercised any other trade but that of making nails, and who, when they
exerted themselves, could make, each of them, upwards of two thousand three hundred

nails in a day. The making of a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest
operations. The same person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is
occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head, too, he is
obliged to change his tools. The different operations into which the making of a pin, or of
a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity of the
person, of whose life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much
greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are
performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, he
supposed capable of acquiring.
Secondly, The advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly lost in passing
from one sort of work to another, is much greater than we should at first view be apt to
imagine it. It is impossible to pass very quickly from one kind of work to another, that is
carried on in a different place, and with quite different tools. A country weaver, who
cultivates a small farm, must loose a good deal of time in passing from his loom to the
field, and from the field to his loom. When the two trades can be carried on in the same
workhouse, the loss of time is, no doubt, much less. It is, even in this case, however, very
considerable. A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of
employment to another. When he first begins the new work, he is seldom very keen and
hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some time he rather trifles than
applies to good purpose. The habit of sauntering, and of indolent careless application,
which is naturally, or rather necessarily, acquired by every country workman who is
obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty
different ways almost every day of his life, renders him almost always slothful and lazy,
and incapable of any vigorous application, even on the most pressing occasions.
Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must
always reduce considerably the quantity of work which he is capable of performing.
Thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and
abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is unnecessary to give any example. I
shall only observe, therefore, that the invention of all those machines by which labour is
to much facilitated and abridged, seems to have been originally owing to