groups working together in an
orderly way not only produce the consumers' wealth that society needs,
but produce the different kinds of consumers' goods in nicely adjusted
proportions. Unless the general order of the group system is
disturbed, there is a normal amount of A''' put on the market and also
normal amounts of B''' and C'''. This result is attained by influences
that run through the productive organism and bring about an adjustment
of the comparative amounts of labor in the different occupations. If
competition worked quite freely, this adjustment would be so nice that
no military apportionment of forces among different brigades,
regiments, etc., made consciously and by the most intelligent
commanding officer, could surpass the perfection of it. There would be
also an equally fine adjustment of the comparative amounts of capital
devoted to different industries. In the actual productive organism
each man goes where he will--capitalist, laborer, and employer of
capital and labor alike. Each man acts in this respect as though there
were no such thing as coercion, and as though he might, with unchecked
freedom, do solely what is good in his own sight. By reason of the
fact that all are seeking to produce what they can in order that they
may get what they can, there comes into operation an organic law which
brings the groups and subgroups into a delicate balance, in point of
size and output, whereby the grand total of force that society
commands is prevented from making too much of one product and too
little of another, and is made to do its utmost in getting a large sum
total of wealth for the benefit of its various members.

_What the "Division of Labor" Involves._--This is the real
signification of what it has been common to call the division of
labor. It is the socialization of labor, or the gathering of isolated
laborers into a great organism that, entirely without coercion,
determines in some way what each one shall do, and not only makes the
product of the whole a myriadfold greater than without any
organization it could be, but causes this product to take certain
well-adjusted shapes which, as we shall later see, serve consumers
better than they could be served by products in misadjusted
proportions.

_Capital as well as Labor Apportioned._--As we have said, there is a
corresponding division of capital or an assignment of different parts
of the total fund to different employments; and this is made in the