ent trades, every person can choose
that trade for which he is best suited--the strong healthy man becomes a
blacksmith; the weaker one works a loom or makes shoes; the skilful man
learns to be a watchmaker; the most ignorant and unskilful can find work
in breaking stones or mending the hedges. Each man will generally work
at the trade in which he can get the best wages, and it is an evident
loss of skill if the artisan should break stones or sweep the streets.
Now, the greater the division of labour and the more extensive factories
become, the better chance there is for finding an employment just suited
to each person's powers; clever workmen do the work which no one else
can do; they have common labourers to help them in things which require
no skill; foremen plan out the work, and allot it to the artisans;
clerks, who are quick at accounts, keep the books, and pay and receive
money; the manager of the factory is an ingenious experienced man, who
can give his whole attention to directing the work, to making good
bargains, or to inventing improvements in the business. Every one is
thus occupied in the way in which his labour will be most productive and
useful to other people, and at the same time most profitable to himself.

#30. Local Adaptation.# Lastly, the division of labour allows of local
adaptation--that is, it allows every kind of work to be done in the
place most suitable for it. We have already learnt (sec. 22, p. 29) that
each kind of labour should be carried on where it is most productive;
but this cannot be done unless there be division of labour--so that
while the French grow wine, weave silk, or make _articles de Paris_,
they buy the cottons of Manchester, the beer of Burton-on-Trent, or the
coals of Newcastle. When trade is free, and the division of labour is
perfect, each town or district learns to make some commodity better than
other places: watches are made in Clerkenwell; steel pens in Birmingham;
needles at Redditch; cutlery at Sheffield; pottery at Stoke; ribbons at
Coventry; glass at St. Helen's; straw bonnets at Luton; and so forth.

It is not always possible to say exactly why certain goods are made
better in one place--for instance, silks in Lyons--than anywhere else;
but so it often is, and people should be left as free as possible to buy
the goods they like best. Commodities are manufactured in order that
they may produce pleasure and be useful, not, as we shall see, in order
that labourers