h-creating and wealth-consuming processes of
uncivilized peoples, and even of isolated individuals who have no
dealings with each other. They are truths of Economics in the
unrestricted sense, and we have now to study the special truths of
_Political_ Economy. When production goes on by division of labor, as
when one man works at one occupation and another at another, phenomena
appear that do not appear in more primitive life; and still others
appear when, within each occupation, there is a division of functions
between the laborer and the capitalist, as is the case whenever one
set of men furnish tools of production and another set do the work.
The special laws of this highly developed economic system require far
more extended study than do those more general laws which are common
to it and simpler systems. We now continue to recognize the universal
and basic truths which have been stated in the foregoing chapters and
proceed to the study of the special principles which apply only to
organized economic life.

[1] We use this term in a broad sense, including agriculture
and commerce as well as manufacturing.

_Specialized Production the Means of Diversified Consumption._--As the
kinds of goods that we individually make become fewer, the things
which we get and use become more numerous and varied--such is the law
of economic specialization. Society as a whole produces an infinite
variety of things, and the individual member of it secures for himself
goods of very many kinds. The typical modern worker is, in his
production, a very narrow specialist, but in his consumption he is far
less a specialist than was the rude hunter who was able to enjoy only
the few goods which he himself produced. The modern worker's tastes
are omnivorous, for he has developed an immense variety of wants and,
through social organization, he has acquired the means of satisfying
many of them.

_The Position of Individuals in the Producing Organism._--When we say
that production has been socialized, we mean something very
far-reaching. We mean that an organization has grown up in which men
are members or parts of members, and that this great organization has
undertaken to do the productive work for all the individuals that
compose it. For the first time we now recognize a sociological fact
among the premises of economic science. When men, whose predecessors
may have lived in isolated families or in a society organized for
defense or for