THE WEALTH OK NATIONS.

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which the same division of labour has probably given occa-sion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, makeone pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. Butin the way in which this business is now carried on, not onlythe whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into anumber of branches, of which the greater part are likewisepeculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, anotherstraights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grindsit at the top for receiving the head; to make the head re-quires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a pe-culiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even atrade by itself to put them into the paper; and the impor-tant business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided intoabout eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufac-tories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in othersthe same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten menonly were employed, and where some of them consequentlyperformed two or three distinct operations. But thoughthey were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accom-modated with the necessary machinery, they could, whenthey exerted themselves, make among them about twelvepounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards offour thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons,therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eightthousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making atenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be consideredas making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. Butif they had all wrought separately and independently, andwithout any of them having been educated to this peculiarbusiness, they certainly could not each of them have madetwenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, notthe two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousandeight hundredth part of what they are at present capable ofperforming, in consequence of a proper division and com-bination of their different operations.

In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the di-vision of labour are similar to what they are in this verytrifling one; though in many of them, the labour can neitherbe so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicityof operation. The division of labour, however, so far as itcan be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionableincrease of the productive powers of labour. The separation