but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. As it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase, that we obtain from How the one another the greater part of those mutual good offices which we division of labor stand in need of, so it is this same trucking disposition which originally arises: gives occasion to the division of labor. In a tribe of hunters or shep- an example. herds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison, than if he himself went to the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer. Another excels in making the frames and covers of their little further huts or movable houses. He is accustomed to be of use in this examples. way to his neighbors, who reward him in the same manner, with cattle and venison, till at last he finds it to his interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and to become a sort of house-carpenter. In the same manner a third becomes a smith or a brazier; a fourth a tanner or dresser of hides or skins. . . . And thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labor, (which is over and above his own consumption), for such parts of the produce of other men's labor as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business. . 39. The productive methods of savages 1 Civilization is so vast and complicated a structure that it is dan- The division gerous to attribute its development to any one principle, of labor in its relation to any one group of principles. Nevertheless, the economist be- to civiliza tion. lieves that in an important sense civilization depends upon industrial efficiency, and, further, that industrial efficiency depends primarily or even 1 From Frederick Starr, Some First Steps in Human Progress. Chautauqua Assembly, Chicago, 1901; pp. 63-67. woman, upon the division of labor. It is true, as Adam Smith has pointed out, that the savage makes some use of the principle of the division of labor. And yet we shall see, by comparing the remaining selections in this chapter, that the division of labor among savages is relatively simple and inefficient. The primitive methods of production among some primitive peoples are described by Dr. Starr in the following selection: Some There is absolutely no agriculture among the Australians, who peoples do not even lay by a stock of the poor foods which niggard nature have no agriculture. gives them in that backward continent, but eat up all they find in one place and then migrate. Among the Bushmen and the Hottentots, also, there is no cultivation of the soil; with digging sticks weighted with heavy stone rings they dig up roots and tubers, but they plant no seeds that new roots and tubers may grow. The work There can be no question that it was the woman, left at home to of primitive tend the fire, who was the first agriculturist. .. While the man was hunting for game or fighting against his fellows, the woman by the fire, — trying to piece out the scanty fare with roots and stems, barks and leaves, which she could find about the home, – began the various peaceful industries of life. . . The In wanderings for roots and fruits she came upon some plant probable particularly noticed on account of its good promise; for fear some origin of agriculture. careless hunter might trample it under foot, or that some animal might steal or harm the fruit before it ripened, it would be protected by a few sticks set about it. That it might have a better chance to grow and bear its fruit the plants around it which prevented it getting full share of air and light would be cut away or plucked out. This was the beginning of the care of plants. Again, some young and sprouting plant distant from the fireside would be transplanted in order that it might be more accessible in time of need. Still later would come the idea of saving seed for planting, and with this idea the clearing of the soil and true agriculture. Agriculture Many people whom we are in the habit of considering mere wild in aborig hunters had some agriculture; there were few, if any, tribes in North inal America. America east of the Rocky Mountains and south of the limit of almost continuous winter who did not raise some crops. All early travellers tell of the gardens of the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes a along our eastern seaboard, and it is well known that the settlers of New England must have starved if they had not been helped from the supplies of the Indians. Among the southern tribes, such as the Creeks, agriculture was still more developed. In Mexico, Central America, and the Greater Antilles abundant crops were raised. ... The first and simplest agricultural tool was a sharpened stick for A simple tool. digging up roots. . . . This first simple tool is used not only as a digging stick, but also for drilling holes in which to plant seeds; such is its use in Nubia, Yucatan, the Antilles, Sweden, and many other places. Corn-planting in Central America was and is a very simple process; Planting a man going first with his drilling stick, makes a hole in the ground; time. his wife following after drops in a few seeds of maize; little people, following after these, with their feet cover the grain thus sown with the earth which was loosened by the stick. ... The first threshing must have been a very simple thing. The Harvesting wild rice. Indian women on the Illinois River, at an early day, simply bent the stalks of wild rice over the edge of their canoe and with flat paddles beat the heads until the seeds fell from them into the boat. Fire no doubt was used by [the] women of many primitive folk to get the useless husk off from the grain and seeds. After animals were tamed and reduced to use they would be brought into service; thus among the Pueblo Indians in the Southwest, threshing is performed as follows: A circular area some yards across is cleared and smoothed and Threshing covered with a firm floor of beaten or hard-trodden clay. This among the Pueblo floor is enclosed by a circle of poles set in the ground, and connected Indians. by means of ropes or cords. The grain to be threshed is cut and brought in from the fields; it is heaped up, upon the threshing floor; a drove of ponies is turned into the enclosure and kept running around and around by a man who stands in the center with a whip. Soon the motion of the many hoofs upon the straw shakes the grain from the husks. . . . Such is one form of primitive threshing. The The home stage in boot and shoe manufacture. 40. Division of labor in colonial manufactures : If we were to contrast the productive methods of savages with the methods employed in some of the largest and most efficient factories of modern times, it would appear that there is no comparison between the productivity of the savage and that of civilized man. And yet the highly effective methods of modern industry are only two or three centuries old. In some of the manufactures of colonial days, for example, there was not a sufficient application of the principle of the division of labor, and certainly not enough in the way of industrial efficiency, to warrant a contempt for the methods of the savage. The relatively unproductive methods of colonial times may be illustrated by the boot and shoe industry in early Massachusetts. The early stages of this industry are described by Miss Hazard as follows: During the home stage in the shoe industry in Massachusetts shoes were made only for human consumption. There was no market for them. ... The farmer and his older sons made up in winter around the kitchen hearth the year's supply of boots and shoes for the family, out of leather raised and tanned on his own or a neighbor's farm. . . . Each boy in turn stood on a piece of paper or on the bare floor, and had the length of his foot roughly marked off with chalk or charcoal. The shoemaker selected from among his meagre supply of lasts the one which came “somewhere near” that measure. There were only two styles, low shoes or brogans, and high boots. The second or handicraft stage came in the Massachusetts boot and shoe industry with easier times in each village in turn. It had been foreshadowed by the itinerant cobbler. Now the real shoemaker could stay in his own shop, working on his own or his customer's supply of leather. He dealt directly with his market in the first phase of this stage and made only ordered or “bespoke” work. ... The number of master workmen in any one town was comparatively small, of course, in this “direct market” or “town economy” period, dependent as they would be upon the possible orders of a single community. Their journeymen went to the frontier settlements 1 From Blanche E. Hazard, “The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875." Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XXVII. February, 1913; pp. 239-244. The handicraft stage. a or a to set up in the craft for themselves, leaving the supply of apprentices to fill their places in the future. . . There were times when the more advanced 'apprentices or even The manu facture of the journeymen spoiled a pair of shoes started for a definite customer, “extra” and these remained on the master's hands to be disposed of. Then “sale” shoes. there were slack times when the apprentices might fairly be expected to "eat their own heads off,” to the shoemaker's loss. In such a case the craftsman ventured to make up the stock on hand, to employ this otherwise wasting labor, and then tried to dispose of the shoes in the village grocery store. Since the market was uncertain and slow for this extra work, both stock and labor may frequently have been below the standard used in the custom-made shoes. In case the shoemakers lived in villages too far from Boston to The case of attract customers, but near enough to send in their surplus product, Quincy Reed of their attention to sale work would steadily grow. A seemingly typical Weymouth. case, with all its local flavor, can be followed in detail in the bills, letters, account books, and oral traditions of Quincy Reed of Weymouth. He expected to be a shoemaker just as his great-grandfather William, who landed in Weymouth in 1635, and his grandfather and father had been. In 1809 the father was a master with custom work and probably some sale work for local consumption. As Quincy tells the story: “My brother Harvey began it by taking chickens to Boston. His story. He had a pair of chaise wheels in the barn, and putting on a top piece, loaded her up and drove to town. He hung some shoes on the chaise and we sold them in Boston. All the shoes ... before we began business, were carried into Boston in saddle bags. ... "We hired a store of Uriah Cotting at 133 Broad Street and fitted it up. Then I used to keep a chest of shoes in a cellar near Dock Square and on Wednesday and Saturday would bring out the chest and sell. I got $15 and $20 a day by it in 1809. I was sixteen and my brother was eighteen years old then. We moved into the Broad Street store with two bushels of shoes. I used to cut out what would promise to be $100 worth a day. We couldn't have them made [as fast as that], but I could cut them. One day I cut 350 pair of boot fronts and tended store besides. Most of the shoes were made by people in South Weymouth. We had nearly every man there |