tion of the present large outlay upon wages of superintendence, which, as above explained, so seriously diminish the productiveness both of labour and capital.
As yet only the general causes on which the productiveness of land, labour, and capital depend have been mentioned. Some of the more special means by which the efficiency of the three agents of production may be increased must now be considered. As a first example we will refer to the striking illustrations employed by Adam Smith, which demonstrate the advantages derived from the division of labour. A pin passes through about eighteen processes. Division of labour increases its efficiency,The metal has to be drawn into wire, the wire has to be cut a proper length, the end sharpened, the head must be made and fastened to the pin, the pin must be burnished and then properly packed. The most skilled workman could not make more than twenty pins per day if he had himself to attend to all the processes through which the pin passes. But when the labour of pin-making is divided, the various processes being performed by different workmen, ten workmen will make 50,000 pins in a day. Without division of labour the ten workmen would only make 200 pins per day, and thus it would appear that in this case a proper division of labour increases its productiveness more than two hundredfold. Other examples, even more striking than the one just quoted, might be readily selected. M. Say says that, in the manufacture of playing cards, there are seventy-two distinct operations. When these operations are appropriated to different workmen, 15,500 cards have been made in a day by thirty workmen; but if a single workman had to perform all the operations himself, he would not make more than one or two cards per day. The increased efficiency which is thus conferred upon labour is, according to Adam Smith, due to three causes:
for three reasons.1. The increase of dexterity in every particular workman.
2. The saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species 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.
