hone. No doubt it may be said
that all the greatest improvements in industry--most of what tends to
raise man above the condition of the brute animals--proceed from
science. The poet Virgil was right when he said, "#Happy is he who knows
the causes of things.#"

CHAPTER IV.

DIVISION OF LABOUR.

#25. 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 civilised 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 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-tenter, 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.