to its end. Just as we saw, when the primitive savage left off doing
everything for himself and took to building huts for the rest of the
community, that the huts became much more water-tight and comfortable,
so the process goes still further, and building becomes very much more
rapid and very much more cheap and efficient when a large number of
specialists are set to work on the various very different processes
required for the construction of a house. The consequence is that the
production of goods is very greatly cheapened and made much more rapid,
but at the same time the worker tends to become an artisan instead of a
craftsman, and his work is likely to be much more monotonous and much
more trying. Instead of seeing his product grow under his hand from its
beginning to its end, with constant changes in the nature of its call on
his energy and care, he is employed during the whole of his working time
on some mechanical process, with the result that he himself becomes
something very like a machine. What he has gained in the power to make
and acquire commodities cheaply and quickly is offset to a certain
extent by the less interesting and varied nature of his work.

It also follows that as the worker becomes a specialist he becomes
dependent upon other members of the community for the supply to him of a
large number of things which he requires for his own existence. If he
spends his life in making one commodity or in making part of one
commodity, it is clear that his requirements of all the things that are
necessary for life apart from what he makes himself can only be
satisfied by the willingness of the community to take the commodity that
he makes in payment for those which it produces and of which he is in
need. When he works for himself, he only makes things that he knows
himself to need; when he works to sell to others, he has to speculate on
the hope that the others will want what he makes.

Commerce thus not only shows the unity of mankind by being a universal
feature of his existence, but increases that unity by making each
individual dependent upon the exertions of his fellows, and on their
willingness to take from him stuff which he is turning out; but if
commerce thus promotes unity, it also tends to create a certain amount
of friction and disagreement between one man and another when
differences of opinion arise concerning the value of the product which
each man is making, that is to say, concerning the am