Adam Smith Comics: The Boy Loved To Play
Jason Meadows and Jeremy Lott
One of the major benefits of the division of labor is breaking down complex processes into simple ones, then regular people can find improvements in the system. And maybe even spend more time fishing.
One of the major benefits of the division of labor is breaking down complex processes into simple ones, then regular people can find improvements in the system. And maybe even spend more time fishing.
In this piece, artist Jason Meadows teams up with editor and script author Jeremy Lott to imagine how one of Adam Smith's famous characters from the first chapter of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations might have worked and lived.
Thirdly, and lastly, every body must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is unnecessary to give any example. I shall only observe, therefore, that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged, seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour. Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object, than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. But in consequence of the division of labour, the whole of every man’s attention comes naturally to be directed towards some one very simple object. It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it admits of such improvement. A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures, must frequently have been shewn very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen, in order to facilitate and quicken their own particular part of the work. In the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.
(bolding added, Wealth of Nations, Bk I, Chap. I)
Video: An Animal That Trades
Amy Willis' The Division of Labor: Early Examples in China and India
Michael Munger's Division of Labor, Part 2: A Beautiful Machine
Brianne Wolf's Why does the Division of Labor Matter?
Check out our other AdamSmithWorks comics:
Douglas Curtis and Jeremy Lott's Adam Smith Comics: The Invisible Hand, The Man of System, Science is the Great Antidote, and The Race.
Paula Richey and Jeremy Lott's AdamSmithComics: The Opening of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Butcher, The Baker, and the Brewer
Jason Meadows and Jeremy Lott's Adam Smith Comics: Trinkets of Frivolous Utility