18 THE DECENTRALISATION 



" Division of labour " was its watchword. 

 And the division and subdivision the per- 

 manent subdivision of functions has been 

 pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes 

 which are almost as firmly established as those 

 of old India. We have, first, the broad division 

 into producers and consumers : little-consuming 

 producers on the one hand, little-producing 

 consumers on the other hand. Then, amidst the 

 former, a series of further subdivisions : the 

 manual worker and the intellectual worker, 

 sharply separated from one another to the 

 detriment of both ; the agricultural labourers 

 and the workers in the manufacture ; and, 

 amidst the mass of the latter, numberless sub- 

 divisions again so minute, indeed, that the 

 modern ideal of a workman seems to be a man or 

 a woman, or even a girl or a boy, without the 

 knowledge of any handicraft, without any con- 

 ception whatever of the industry he or she is 

 employed in, who is only capable of making 

 all day long and for a whole life the same infini- 

 tesimal part of something : who from the age of 

 thirteen to that of sixty pushes the coal cart at 

 a given spot of the mine or makes the spring 

 of a penknife, or " the eighteenth part of a pin." 

 Mere servants to some machine of a given de- 

 scription ; mere flesh-and-bone parts of some 

 immense machinery ; having no idea how and 



