SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 229 



as they could working separately. They have now combined their 

 efforts, which before were merely added together. The combination 

 has brought forth a new and enlarged result. It has increased the 

 result geometrically. By uniting and helping each other, they have 

 gained a better living than they could possibly have got by working 

 separately. 



This way of uniting human effort let us call combination. But we 

 need not enter into any quibble as to the precise place to draw the line 

 between aggregation and combination. If anybody chooses to confuse 

 the two, no economic argument will be affected one way or the other. 

 If the distinction does not beget clearness of thought, it will have 

 served no purpose whatever, and may be ignored ; for, henceforth, 

 we shall mostly be thinking about combination, and very seldom of 

 mere pooling or aggregation of effort. 



1. The simplest form of combination is where two or more men 

 carry a burden too heavy for either alone, but which can not be di- 

 vided. Pall-bearers, or the bearers of a sedan-chair, or track-layers 

 on a railroad, or the builders of a log-house, illustrate this extremely 

 simple and direct form of the combination of human effort to bring 

 about a result unattainable by separate effort. Even in this simple 

 form of mutual helpfulness it is plainly seen that two and two do not 

 make four they make five, or ten, or a hundred. 



2. The next most simple form of combination is where two or more 

 persons are working at the same undertaking in the same place, or un- 

 der the same management, but attending to different parts of it. Every 

 factory, mill, shop, store, or jobbing-house, illustrates this form. There 

 are division and diversity of work, but the product is one. So it is 

 with the players in a play. Their parts are diverse, but the play is a 

 unit, and they all work together. Here it is plainer than ever that ten 

 or fifteen human beings, by combining their efforts, can do for us in 

 three hours what one person could not do in a lifetime. 



3. One step more in the direction of complexity, and we reach a 

 form of combination wherein all still contribute to the production of a 

 single article or result, but work in different places, different factories, 

 different countries, perhaps, and especially under different management 

 or conditions. A striking example of this is the cotton-grower, whose 

 immediate product is of extremely little use until it has been trans- 

 ported many miles and been worked upon by another set of human 

 beings, generally of a different race and color. But this is only one 

 example, though perhaps the most striking, of the third form of com- 

 bination of human effort, in which persons widely separated by space 

 as well as by diversity of gifts and employments, jointly contribute to 

 a single and strictly unified product or result. 



It is often a business question with the leader of an enterprise 

 whether he shall adopt the second or third form of combination ; and 

 still oftener how far he shall follow one and how far the other. In 



