To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,

And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick
A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,

These shades are all my own. The timorous hare,
Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarm'd
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends

His long love-ditty for my near approach.
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollow'd deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play :
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,

Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks
his brush,

And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.

COWPER.

DIVISION OF LABOUR.

1. How DIVISION OF LABOUR ARISES.

WHEN a number of workmen are engaged on any work, we find that each man usually takes one part of the work, and leaves other parts of the work to his mates.

People by degrees arrange themselves into different trades, so that the whole work done in any place is divided into many employments or crafts. This division of labour is found in all civilized countries, and more or less in all states of society which are not merely

barbarous. In every village there is the butcher and the baker, and the blacksmith and the carpenter. Even in a single family there is division of labour: the husband ploughs, or cuts timber; the wife cooks, manages the house, and spins or weaves; the sons hunt or tend

F

sheep; the daughters employ themselves as milkmaids. There is a popular couplet which says--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?

It seems to express the fact that this division of labour existed in very early times, before there were any gentlemen.

In modern times the division of labour is immensely complicated not only has every town and village its different tradespeople, and artisans and men in different posts and employments, but each district has its peculiar manufactures. In one place cotton goods are produced; in another, woollen goods; in other parts of the country flax, jute, silk, are manufactured. Iron is made in Staffordshire, Cleveland, South Wales, and Scotland; copper is smelted in South Wales; crockery is baked in the potteries; hosiery is manufactured in Nottingham and Leicester; linens are sewed in the North of Ireland;

and so on. In every separate factory, again, there is

division of labour; there is the manager, the chief clerk, the assistant clerks; the foremen of different departments, the timekeeper, the engine-tender, and stokers, the common labourers, the carters, errand boys, porters, &c., all in addition to the actual mechanics of different kinds and ranks who do the principal work. Thus the division of labour spreads itself throughout the whole of society, from the Queen and her Ministers, down to the errand boy, or the street scavenger.

2. ADVANTAGES OF DIVISION OF LABOUR.

There are many ways in which we gain by the division of labour, but Adam Smith has treated the subject so excellently that we had better, in the first place, consider his view of the matter. There are, as he thought, three ways in which advantage arises from the division of labour, namely

(1.) Increase of dexterity in every particular work

man.

(2.) Saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one kind of work to another.

(3.) The invention of a great number of machines, which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

There can be no doubt as to the increase of dexterity which arises from practice. Any one who has tried to imitate a juggler, or to play the piano, without having learned to do it, knows how absurdly he fails. Nobody could possibly do the work of a glass-blower without long practice. Even when a man can do a job in some sort of way, he will do it much more quickly if he does it often. Adam Smith states that if a blacksmith had to make nails without having been accustomed to the work, he would not make above 200 or 300 bad nails in a day. With practice he might learn to make 800 or 1,000 nails in a day; but boys who are brought up to the nailer's trade can turn out 2,300 nails of the same kind in the same time. But there is no need of many examples: everything that we see well or