Division of labor

“ the more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. ”

“ Interrogate facts, consult humanity: we can choose no better guide. After the oscillations of value, division of labor is the economic fact which influences most perceptibly profits and wages. It is the first stake driven by Providence into the soil of industry, the starting-point of the immense triangulation which finally must determine the right and duty of each and all. ”

“ Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society.; the direction of labor, State business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes. ”

“ Into this society of individual producers, of commodity-producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production. ”

“ As the division of labor advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things, must be accumulated beforehand. But the number of workmen in every branch of business generally increases with the division of labor in that branch, or rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and subdivide themselves in this manner. ”

“ Division of labor is undoubtedly very profitable and natural to people; but if people are free, division of labor is only possible up to a certain very limited extent, which has been far overstepped in our society. ”

“ The division of labor is also limited, in many cases, by the nature of the employment. Agriculture, for example, is not susceptible of so great a division of occupations as many branches of manufactures, because its different operations can not possibly be simultaneous. ”

“ The effect of the vocations and the division of labor is to produce, in the first instance, not social groups, but vocational types, the actor, the plumber, and the lumber-jack. The organizations, like the trade and labor unions, which men of the same trade or profession form are based on common interests. ”

“ The more highly the social life is developed, the more important becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite it becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength, talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is natural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely. ”

“ Some of the greatest economic restrictions are not legislative but are what have grown out of customs and practices, especially of labor unions. I shall not here discuss the effect of labor unions upon wages, except in a general way. Wages spring from production and represent the division thereof among capital, management and labor. The aggregate of their shares of the three parties can exceed 100 per cent by no possibility. The conditions of modern civilization are too complex to permit a division of produce in kind. ”

“ We see that now, as then, each laborer is endeavoring to obtain by his exertions the satisfaction of his own desires; we see that although the minute division of labor assigns to each producer the production of but a small part, or perhaps nothing at all, of the particular things he labors to get, yet, in aiding in the production of what other producers want, he is directing other labor to the production of the things he wants—in effect, producing them himself. ”

“ Combination and Division of Labor Increase Productiveness. In the enumeration of the circumstances which promote the productiveness of labor, we have left one untouched, which is co-operation, or the combined action of numbers. Of this great aid to production, a single department, known by the name of Division of Labor, has engaged a large share of the attention of political economists ”

“ As soon as a division of labor takes place and different kinds of production are carried on in the collective community, the necessity will arise to compare the relative values of certain kinds of labor, each useful in its way, but differing completely in every other respect. ”

“ The chief motive for subdivision of labor is given by the opportunity to hire unskilled, low-standard-of-living workers, at an extremely low wage. "Thus division of labor is, in the last analysis, nothing but one of those processes of adaptation that play so great a part in the evolutionary history of the whole inhabited world: adaptation of the tasks of labor to the variety of human powers, adaptation of individuals to the tasks to be performed, continued differentiation of the one and of the other." ”

“ While, on the one hand, the principle of the division of labor, without which human progress is inconceivable, restricts the functions of the individual within a comparatively narrow province: on the other hand, he only can wisely elect to labor in such a province, and can work the field profitably, who does not lack comprehensiveness. ”

“ That not, as in former times, the individual works alone and for his own account, but dozens, hundreds and thousands of men work together in shops, in mines, on huge farms and lands, coöperating according to the most efficient division of labor, while the fruits of this cööperative labor are not reaped by the workers themselves, but are in a great measure appropriated by the owners of the means of production. ”

“ Nor could the division of labor go further than the very rudest and almost imperceptible beginnings, nor the exchanges which make it possible extend beyond the nearest neighbors, unless a portion of the things produced were constantly kept in stock or in transit. ”

“ In its simpler form, division of labor merely meant that each workman confined himself to a simple occupation and carried through all the processes of production in that particular trade. The cloth-maker, the shoemaker, the implement-maker performed all the work of making cloth, shoes, or implements from start to finish. ”

“ The advantages resulting from the division of labor are evident. When the whole work in any art is executed by one person, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to perform the most laborious, of the processes; but by employing a division of labor several persons may be kept at work executing that part of the whole for which he is best fitted. ”

“ The addition of more labor power became desirable. It was furnished by war; the captured enemies were transformed into slaves. Under the given historical conditions, the first great division of social labor, by increasing the productivity of labor, adding to the wealth, and enlarging the field of productive activity, necessarily carried slavery in its wake. Out of the first great division of social labor arose the first great division of society into two classes: masters and servants, exploiters and exploited. ”

“ So far are they from pretending to solve the antinomy of division that all of them admit, as an essential condition of organization, the hierarchy of labor,—that is, the classification of laborers into parcellaires and generalizers or organizers,—and in all utopias the distinction of capacities, the basis or everlasting excuse for inequality of goods, is admitted as a pivot. ”

“ All this is due to a minute division [pg 182] of labor into as many tasks as there are different operations, each man having, if possible, but one distinct kind of motion. The saving is not only shown in the increased quantity of work, but in the uniform quality as well. All the workmanship is essentially perfect. These advantages appear more strikingly in the manufacturing arts, where the so-called factory system has brought division of labor to perfection. ”

“ And only in the course of recent times did there evolve the organizations under which the labors of hundreds and thousands of men receiving wages, are regulated by various orders of paid officials under a single or multiple head. These originally small, semi-socialistic, groups of producers, like the compound families or house-communities of early ages, slowly dissolved because they could not hold their ground: the larger establishments, with better subdivision of labor, succeeded because.they ministered to the wants of society more effectually. ”

“ The division of social labor [102] is a law of society. It is traceable back to the primitive household itself, and is a result of underlying differences. The great “cause which determines the manner by which work is divided is diversity of capacity.” ”

“ There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time it is threatened with breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery, as I have said, is lacking or worn out. The farmer or the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase. ”

“ For all improvements which add to productive power as282 civilization advances consist in, or necessitate, a still further subdivision of labor, and the efficiency of the whole body of laborers is increased at the expense of the independence of the constituents. ”

“ None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; ”

“ But to return to the earth, the workingman, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. The capitalist, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. When there is only so much of the same thing, and when two men want all they can get of the same thing, there is a conflict of interest between labor and capital. And it is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as workingmen and capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over the division. ”

“ If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the separation of social production into its main division or genera—viz., agriculture, industries, etc., as division of labour in general, and the splitting up of these families into species and sub-species, as division of labour in particular, and the division of labour within the workshop as division of labour in singular or in detail. ”

“ But there are yet other and higher phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the industrial organization of society. Long after considerable progress has been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers, there is still little or no division of labour among the widely separated parts of the community: the nation continues comparatively homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations are pursued. ”

“ Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed labourers are the material pre-requisites for division of labour in manufacture, so are the number and density of the population, which here correspond to the agglomeration in one workshop, a necessary condition for the division of labour in society. ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labor will be organized, similar to the arrangements we see to day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the government. Unnecessary work will be avoided and the reward for work done will be greater. ”

“ Factory hands and mine workers fit in more or less, but farm hands, small farmers, peddlers, little shop keepers, clerks, servants, soldiers, policemen, firemen slip out of the net. The tendency, when you are appealing to the "working class," is to fix your attention on two or three million more or less confirmed trade unionists, and treat them as Labor; the other seventeen or eighteen million, who might qualify statistically, are tacitly endowed with the point of view ascribed to the organized nucleus. ”

“ The industrial classes emerge from slavery and serfdom into a wage system, which in turn is modified in the direction of fair wages, short hours, and security of employment—fundamental conditions for personal development. ”

“ The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor. ”

“ The slight differences in conditions of life varying from country to country are not important. “The predominating fact everywhere, in all countries, is the division of society into two categories; the producer and the non-producer, the wage-earner and the employer.” ”

“ The labor organization is thus differentiated on the one hand from the strike—a temporary association—and on the other hand, from friendly societies and socialist organizations, which, though frequently recruited exclusively from the ranks of labor, are chiefly devoted to other ends than the improvement of the conditions of employment. Among labor organizations two distinct classes are discernible—those organized on the trade or occupational principle and those which transcend occupational bounds and attempt to amalgamate in a single, homogeneous organization, all classes of labor. ”