Page:Manual of Political Economy.djvu/109

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Manual of Political Economy.

example, to show how various are the different classes of labourers who assist in the production of even a simple commodity. manufacture of cotton cloth.We are led into endless ramifications in attempting to trace the different kinds of labour, either directly or indirectly brought into requisition, from the time that the cotton seed is planted in the swamps of Georgia until the cloth is woven in the looms of Manchester. There are distinct sets of labourers employed in tilling the cotton fields, in carrying the cotton to the port, in navigating the vessel in which it is shipped, in unloading the cotton at Liverpool, and then in transporting it to the mills of Manchester. All these different classes of labourers have been directly engaged in bringing the cotton to the place where it is wanted by the manufacturer. It would be vain to attempt a complete enumeration of all the different labourers who have indirectly assisted in bringing the cotton to market. There are the shipwrights who have built the ships, the labourers who have constructed the roads along which the cotton is carried, and the artisans who have made the tools with which the cotton fields are cultivated.

Bearing of the principle of combination of labour upon colonisation.There is, as it were, a tacit compact between each individual and society in general, that the commodities which he consumes will be produced for him by other classes of labourers. If there were not confidence that such a compact would be realised, society would return to its primitive type; for each man would have to live on his own plot of land, and every commodity which he consumed would have to be produced by himself. If this is done in any country to a large extent, the country must be poor and backward. Mr. Wakefield pointed out the important bearing of such considerations upon colonisation. The English Government had frequently encouraged a system of colonisation which tended to impoverish a colony, by impeding this complex cooperation of labour. In order to stimulate emigration, each family obtained from the Government a certain area of land in fee-simple, and thus a new colony was dotted over with the isolated settlements of a great number of distinct families, who lived so widely scattered that they could hold but slight intercourse with each other. Each family had, therefore, to produce for itself almost every-