CHAPTER VIII 



THE DIVISION OF LABOUR, OR THE VILLAGE 

 ARTISAN 



In countries in which communications are imperfectly 

 developed every village or small aggregation of men 

 must of necessity be self-sufficing — that is to say, the 

 men in each village must be able to satisfy their wants 

 themselves, as they are not in a position to import 

 from elsewhere. In words which have a direct ap- 

 plication to the economic conditions of India, Adam 

 Smith illustrated this statement by an example from 

 Scotland in his day : ' In the lone houses and very 

 small villages which are scattered about in so desert 

 a country as the Highlands of Scotland every farmer 

 must be butcher, baker, and brewer for his own 

 family. In such situations we can scarce expect to 

 find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason within less 

 than twenty miles of another of the same trade. The 

 scattered families that live at eight or ten miles dis- 

 tance from the nearest of them must learn to perform 

 themselves a great number of little pieces of work for 

 which in more populous countries they would call in 

 the assistance of those workmen.' The type of society 

 described by Adam Smith still exists unimpaired in 

 the hilly districts of Kumaon, because in those moun- 

 tains one village may be cut off from another by snow 

 or tloods for several months of the year; and there- 

 fore a community would be reduced to starvation 

 which depended for its subsistence upon the products 



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