THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue I, 30 April 1842, Page 32

THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENTS NOT DIVIBION

OP LABOUR.

The inhabitants of England, it may be presumed, obtain more and better food than the inhabitants of France ; yet all the food of England h said to be raised by the labour of less than one-third of the people, while more than two-thirds of the people of France are supposed to be engaged in raising food for the whole. If it be so, then, in France, only three people are supported by the labour of two cultivators, while, in England, the labour of two cultivators supports six people; English agriculture is twice as productive as French agriculture. To what are we to attribute this remarkable difference ? It has been attributed, and with much appearance of truth, to the French law of division, which, at the death of a French proprietor, separates his land into properties as numerous as his children, and which has thus established, in the greater part of France, a system of agriculture resembling that which is practised in the greater part of Ireland, where agricultural industry does not appear to be more productive than it is in France. In both countries, the greater part of the land is divided into very small farms, or rather separate fields. But this division of the land into small holdings does not in any degree affect its natural fertility; nay, the soils of France and Ireland are considered to be more fertile than the soil of England. In what way, then — by what process is it — that this division of the land into a great number of small holdings, has so injurious ah effect on the productiveness of agricultural labour in Ireland and France ? By means, it would appear, of dividing the greater part of the agricultural labour of those countries into fractions as numerous as the labourers. A small cultivator in France, like a cottier in Ireland, works by himself, or at most with no other assistance than that of his children. Not only is- his labour separated from that of all other workmen, but ' it is necessarily divided again amongst the several employments, few* though they be, which must be pursued before the scanty wants of his family can be supplied : he practises the very reverse Of the two great causes of improvement in the productiveness of labour, which are — combination of labour and division of employments; be divides labour into the smallest fraction into which, it can b« divided, vix., a single pair of hands; and he combines as many different employments as he has time to engage in. Only a portion of 'bis lalbour is bestowed

on agriculture ;i so that he wants the skill of dne, the whole of whose labour is applied, by means of the division of employments, to a single object; an" that portion ( of his unskilful labour, never being assisted by the labour of any other person, is always 1 as weak as possible. The result is, that he produces but little, if any more food, than* is sufficient for the support of his Own family, even according to the miserable way in which such families are generally supported/ In England, on the other hand, the greater part of the land ier held- in suefr large pieces, that the* cultivation of each piece requires the employment of a considerable number of hands. On an English farm, speaking generally, many labourers help each other, not only in those simple operations where all the work is alike, bnt in those complex ones which admit of division of employments. On an English farm, therefore, labour iff applied, not only with the maximum of power, but also with the maximum of skill ; and the quantity of food raised consequently is, in proportion to the number of labourers, as great as our present knowledge of agriculture permits. It is by means of cooperation — one cannot repeat it too often — that the agricultural labour of England is twice as productive as that of France or Ireland ; or, to reverse the proposition, it is by means of a minute division of labour that the agricultural labour of France or Ireland is but half as productive as that of England. Two-thirds of the people of France or Ireland being engaged in agriculture, only one-third is set free, as it were, to engage in other occupations ; whereas, in England, all the food of the people being produced by one-third of their number, two-thirds of the people may be occupied in pursuits not agricultural. The obvious superiority of England to France or Ireland, in respect to general wealth, is thus satisfactorily explained. This consideration also explains by what process it is that the foreign commerce of England — her power of exchanging objects of home production for useful or agreeable' objects which are produced in distant countries — is so very much greater, having regard to numbers in each country, than that of Ireland or France.

But what are the useful conclusions that we are here to draw from observing in France some of the bad effects of division of labour, and in England some of the admirable effects Of cooperation? They are, in the first place, that a constant misapplication of the term " division of labour" seems to have kept out of sight a more important principle than that of the division of employments ; and that the sooner we can learn to use the term *' division of labour " in its proper sense, the sooner shall we perceive all the value of the principle of co-operation. Secondly, that in one respect, at least, it is in the power, and seems to be within the province of legislation, to interfere with the operations of political economy ; in so far, that is, as to prevent or correct the hurtful effects on the production of national wealth, which arise, from a minute subdivision of landed property, whether held in fee or on lease.— Wbte to Ist chapter of the Wealth of Nations, by the Author of England and America.