if it did not produce a surplus of something or other which could be sold on an outside market, there would be no occasion for transporting goods outward. At the same time, the territorial division of labor is made possible by the transportation of goods and tends to grow in importance in proportion as transportation becomes cheaper and more efficient. A slight advantage in the exchange of products might easily be overcome by a heavy transportation cost. For example, even though New England cannot grow wheat so economically as Kansas or North Dakota can, yet if the cost of transporting it over the intervening distance and of transporting manufactured products back to pay for it were very high, New England might find it advantageous to grow her own wheat, and the states which now produce it might find it advantageous to do their own manufacturing.

The advantages of a territorial division of labor, where the transportation problem is solved, are similar to those which result from a division of labor among individuals in the same neighborhood. If it is profitable for each individual to specialize upon the work for which he is best fitted, it is equally profitable for each neighborhood to specialize. In almost any neighborhood, however, there is some diversity of soil and natural resources, as well as a diversity of talents among the people. Therefore it will seldom happen that a whole neighborhood, much less a whole region of considerable size, can profitably specialize upon a single product. It is more likely that a whole neighborhood or region will find it profitable to specialize upon a number of products. Thus, New England, the South, and the Corn Belt each produces a considerable variety of products, but each also finds it advantageous to import a considerable variety of other products. New England, for example, probably secures her bread and meat at less cost to herself by devoting most of her energy to manufacturing, and then exchanging her manufactured products for the wheat and beef of the West, than she would if she tried to grow these important food products on her own soil. Let us suppose that the labor of an average man

will produce in a year eight hundred dollars' worth of goods in an average New England factory, but only six hundred dollars' worth of wheat on an average New England farm. Let us assume that it costs twenty-five dollars to ship his goods west and seventy-five dollars to ship the wheat east. Let us assume, further, that in the wheat-growing sections of the West the labor of an average man will produce a thousand dollars' worth of wheat and only eight hundred dollars' worth of goods in a factory. It can easily be figured, so long as the conditions remain as we have assumed them to be, that the wheat section can get more manufactured products for its labor by growing wheat than by manufacturing, and that New England can get more wheat for her labor by manufacturing than by growing wheat.

International division of labor. When the territories considered are not different sections of the same country but different countries, we have what is known as the international division of labor. Were it not for certain uneconomic factors which enter into the problems of national life and existence, everything which can be said in favor of a territorial division of labor and freedom of exchange within a country could also be said, and with equal force, in favor of an international division of labor. The chief of these uneconomic factors is the possibility of war. War is the greatest disturber of normal economic activities, and until it can be eliminated every nation must calculate with reference to its possibility and be prepared for it. In case of war a nation which is not prepared to produce all the necessaries of life, as well as all military supplies, may find itself helpless before a foreign enemy. Its only other hope would be to keep open the channels of commerce which connect it with outside sources of supply, but this is one of the things which the enemy country would try to prevent. Nitrates, for example, are, in the present state of science, necessary both for fertilizers and for explosives. A country which could neither produce its own nitrates nor manage to get a supply from abroad could not wage war for a very long time.

In some animal societies, and especially in the colonies of certain insects such as bees and ants, there is an elaborate and admirable division of labor. Elaborate and admirable as it is, however, it is rudimentary as compared with that which is found in any highly developed industrial society. There are no such minute division of labor and extreme specialization as are found in a modern factory; there is no such detailed planning for the distant future; there is no such bringing together of materials from distant places; there is no such coördination of labor performed at such widely separated times and places; there is no such system of exchange as we see carried on all about us in our own communities. If you will study the various material objects on your dinner table and find out all about each of them, you will find that literally thousands of people, few of whom you ever saw or heard of, and few of whom ever saw or heard of one another, have had a part in the preparation of your meal and the table, dishes, knives, forks, and spoons which you use. It is through the system which we have called the division of labor that you, by doing a very few useful things and doing them well, find a considerable variety of objects on your table at the proper time without your having given much thought to any one of them.

No preconceived plan. This is sometimes called the organization of industry. The term "organization" may be a little misleading, though not necessarily so. It seems to imply that somebody thought it all out or planned it and then organized the system. It did not come about in that way. The process was more like the slow growth of an organism. Each individual looked about for something to do in order to earn a living and took what looked to him at the time like the most available opportunity. Wherever there was a scarcity of workers there was an opportunity for a new worker. Wherever there was an oversupply the opportunity did not look so good. By that simple process in which each individual chose to do that which he could do to his own greatest advantage the whole elaborate system was worked out.

Adam Smith's remarks, quoted earlier in this chapter, regarding the way in which the minute division of labor has aided in the invention and improvement of machinery, may be applied to the much greater problem of the development and improvement of a great and complex industrial system. When each workman spends all his time performing a single operation, it is much easier for him to devise a better way of doing it than it would be if he had to give his attention to many things. It is probable that no important and complicated machine was ever invented and made to work successfully without a great deal of trying out, modification, and general improvement. In actual use many weaknesses in the machine are revealed which no inventor, however wise, could have foreseen and prevented. What is sometimes called the heroic theory of invention does not actually work in practice. By the heroic theory is meant the theory that a great invention springs, a completed whole, from the mind of the inventor, as Athena sprang full-armed from the head of Zeus. The fact seem to be that no human mind is capable of inventing a complete and successful machine without many trials, failures, modifications, and detailed and piecemeal improvements. Even such a simple device as a bicycle passed through a long and interesting evolution before it reached a stage which made it generally useful and popular. The automobile is another illustration of gradual and detailed improvement after it was actually in use.

If it is impossible for any human intelligence to invent and construct at once a satisfactory automobile, it would have been obviously impossible to invent and organize a whole industrial system; that would present an infinitely more difficult problem than the invention and construction of any machine that was ever built. It has been by age-long trial and error, variation and selection, experiment and failure, that even a tolerably successful industrial system has been worked out. There are doubtless endless improvements yet to be made, but they certainly will be made by the same process of gradual and piecemeal adjustment. Anyone who thinks that he can devise

and organize a better system than the present shows, by the very fact that he thinks so, that he is unfitted for the task. He shows that he lacks the first element in fitness; namely, a knowledge of the vastness of the problem and the infinite number of difficulties to be overcome. It is different, however, with one who thinks of some detail in the present industrial system which might be improved. This presents a problem worthy of the greatest minds, and it also furnishes a possibility of genuine achievement.