#26. Adam Smith on the Division of Labour.# There are many ways in which
we gain by the division of labour, but Adam Smith has treated the
subject so excellently that we had better, in the first place, consider
his view of the matter. There are, as he thought, three ways in which
advantage arises from the division of labour, namely--

(1.) Increase of dexterity in every particular workman.

(2.) Saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one kind
of work to another.

(3.) The invention of a great number of machines, which facilitate and
abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

There can be no doubt as to the #increase of dexterity#, which arises
from practice. Any one who has tried to imitate a juggler, or to play
the piano, without having learned to do it, knows how absurdly he fails.
Nobody could possibly do the work of a glass-blower without long
practice. Even when a man can do a job in some sort of way, he will do
it much more quickly if he does it often. Adam Smith states that if a
blacksmith had to make nails without having been accustomed to the work,
he would not make above 200 or 300 bad nails in a day. With practice he
might learn to make 800 or 1000 nails in a day; but boys who are brought
up to the nailer's trade can turn out 2300 nails of the same kind in the
same time. But there is no need of many examples: everything that we see
well or quickly made has been made by men who have spent a great deal of
time and trouble in learning and practising the work.

Secondly, there is #a great deal of time lost when a man changes from
one kind of work to another# many times in the day. Before you can make
a thing you must get all the right tools and materials around you; when
you have finished one box, for instance, you are all ready to make
another with less trouble than the first; but if you have to go off and
do something quite different, such as to mend a pair of shoes or write a
letter, a different set of implements have to be got ready. A man, as
Adam Smith thought, saunters a little in turning his hand from one kind
of employment to another, and if this happens frequently, he is likely
to become lazy.

In the third place, Smith asserted that #the division of labour leads to
the invention of machines# which abridge labour, because men, he
thought, were much more likely to discover easy methods of attaining an
object when their whole attention is directed to that o