SUBORDINATE INDUSTRIES 175 



of its neighbours. It is only in mountainous or very 

 thinly-peopled countries that villages are completely 

 isolated ; but wherever the means of communication 

 are imperfect, it will be found that society distributes 

 itself in self-sufficing units. Until comparatively 

 recent years this was the condition of the villages in 

 these provinces. The natural waterways are few and 

 poor, and there were no metalled roads, and it was a 

 necessity of existence that every village should be so 

 constituted as to suffice for its own needs. While, 

 therefore, we may look upon every village as an 

 industrial unit engaged in extracting raw material 

 from the soil, we must remember that each of these 

 had to maintain a few petty and subordinate indus- 

 tries to supply the wants of the rural population. 



These minor industries are directly subordinate to 

 agriculture, and as long as the village is self-sufficing, 

 they cannot be developed further than is needed to 

 minister to the simple wants of a community of 

 peasants. It is the possibility of exchange that gives 

 occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this 

 division is limited by the extent of the possibility of 

 exchange, or, in other words, by the extent of the 

 market. Adam Smith's illustration of this is singu- 

 larly convincing. 



* It is impossible,' he said, ' that there should be 

 such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and 

 inland parts of the Highlands of Scotland. Such a 

 workman at the rate of 1,000 nails a day and 300 work- 

 ing days in the year will make 300,000 nails in the 

 year. But in such a situation it would be impossible 

 to dispose of 1,000 — that is, of one day's work in the 

 year.' The same holds true of the majority of villages 

 in India. The division of labour cannot be carried 

 beyond the limit fixed by the possibility of exchange, 

 and this limit for non- agricultural products is in- 

 evitably a narrow one as long as the village has so 

 little intercourse with the outside world. There is 



