360 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



one frontier hostile tribes exist, while in another direction 

 there are no enemies; hence population spreads there. On 

 this side lies a fertile tract while on that a barren tract lies; 

 and the resistances to living being in these directions rela 

 tively great or relatively small, the social mass increases 

 where it is relatively small. Again, one part of the habitat 

 is malarious while another is salubrious, and the lower rate 

 of mortality in the last determines multiplication of the 

 inhabitants there. 



The topical division of labour presents us with kindred 

 causes and results. Sea-side people, close to a store of food, 

 find it easier to subsist by getting this out of the water than 

 by going inland to compete with those who plough; and if 

 fish are plentiful and the inland demand great, the fishing 

 population grows. So with wheat-growing and sheep- 

 farming : the nature of each district renders it easier for its 

 inhabitants to subsist by one of these than by the other, and 

 their efforts follow the lines of least resistance. When, in 

 any region, there has taken place that adaptation of nature 

 which the appropriate occupation produces, there is resist 

 ance to alteration of function ; as, for example, there would 

 be if the body of Lancashire weavers had to become coal- 

 miners. Even a change in the topical division of labour, 

 such as migration of most of the woollen manufacture from 

 Gloucestershire to Yorkshire, illustrates the same influence ; 

 since, by the proximity to a wool-importing place, and by the 

 presence of abundant coal, serving as a better source of power 

 than water, the resistance to the production of cloth as 

 measured in cost of freight, labour, and fuel (severally re 

 presenting so much human effort) is less than it was in the 

 original seat of the industry. 



In the local division of labour, analogous causes operate 

 and work analogous effects. As political economists have 

 pointed out, each choice of a business is determined by the 

 totality of incentives and deterrents, and the business chosen 

 is that which offers the least resistance to the gratification 



