shaken.
I believe that the return of these commercial panics is an endemic
disease of the democratic nations of our age. It may be rendered less
dangerous, but it cannot be cured; because it does not originate in
accidental circumstances, but in the temperament of these nations.

Chapter XX: That Aristocracy May Be Engendered By Manufactures

I have shown that democracy is favorable to the growth of manufactures,
and that it increases without limit the numbers of the manufacturing
classes: we shall now see by what side road manufacturers may possibly
in their turn bring men back to aristocracy. It is acknowledged that
when a workman is engaged every day upon the same detail, the whole
commodity is produced with greater ease, promptitude, and economy. It
is likewise acknowledged that the cost of the production of manufactured
goods is diminished by the extent of the establishment in which they are
made, and by the amount of capital employed or of credit. These truths
had long been imperfectly discerned, but in our time they have been
demonstrated. They have been already applied to many very important
kinds of manufactures, and the humblest will gradually be governed by
them. I know of nothing in politics which deserves to fix the attention
of the legislator more closely than these two new axioms of the science
of manufactures.

When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication
of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but
at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to
the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less
industrious; so that it may be said of him, that in proportion as the
workman improves the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who
has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? and to
what can that mighty human intelligence, which has so often stirred the
world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the best method of
making pins' heads? When a workman has spent a considerable portion
of his existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the
object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits,
which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to
himself, but to the calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws
and manners have been at the pains to level all barriers round such
a man, and to open to him on every side a thousand