SPECIALIZATION AND DIVISION OF LABOR. 353 



&quot;On rural estates the most diverse trades were often exercised 

 simultaneously : the same man was at once butcher, baker, shepherd, 

 weaver, &c. ... In the Middle Ages the castles made almost all the 

 articles used in them, particularly cloths, which were spun, woven, and 

 prepared by women even of the highest rank.&quot; 

 In those days of universal antagonism, it was requisite for 

 each group to be self-sufficing. The danger of being &quot; de 

 pendent on the foreigner/ so continually urged during our 

 Free-trade agitation, was a danger which in feudal days 

 existed within each nation, and made it needful for every 

 division to be a complete society. 



On local groups of other kinds relative isolation had in 

 early days the same effect. Speaking of the 12th century, 

 Prof. Cunningham says: 



&quot; There seems to have been a larger proportion of craftsmen in each 

 village than we should find amoDg the rural population now ; each 

 household, or at any rate each little group, had the requisite skill for 

 supplying the main articles of clothing and domestic use, so that the 

 villages were not so purely agricultural as they are to-day.&quot; 



At the same time tow r ns were comparatively independent 

 of villages. As says Prof. Cunningham in continuation : 



&quot;The townsmen had not entirely severed themselves from rural 

 pursuits; differentiation between town and country was incomplete, 

 indeed it would be more true to say that it had hardly begun.&quot; 

 Obviously, indeed, as towns were at first only larger villages, 

 this relation necessarily held. Within each there existed 

 more differentiation because they had not been rendered 

 mutually dependent by differentiation from one another. 



The extent to which local division of labour goes is in 

 large part determined by the size of the group. Where 

 there are but twenty persons there cannot be thirty trades. 

 Another pre-requisite is that the number in the group shall 

 be such that the demand falling upon each kind of worker 

 will duly cultivate his skill and pay for the appliances which 

 give him a superiority : other members of the group will else 

 find no advantage in employing him. In the third place 

 the amount of his business must be such as to yield him a 



