SUBSIDIARY RECORDS 177 



farmer, works ; he knows that the farmer cannot 

 repair complicated machinery himself, and that he 

 will not buy an implement which a slight accident 

 may make wholly useless to him. Agricultural 

 machinery is therefore all machine-made, with inter- 

 changeable parts ; and the American farmer far from 

 a manufacturing town can use a steam-plough or 

 reaping-machine with confidence, because he knows 

 that if an accident happens to any part of it he has 

 only to telegraph to the manufacturer the number of 

 the broken part, and he will receive the corresponding 

 part down by the next train. 



These are examples of the extent to which the 

 division of labour can be carried where the means of 

 transport are highly developed. Each part of the 

 industrial world is dependent upon the rest, and that 

 dependence is increased by every further division of 

 labour. But in India the old distribution of industry 

 still prevails ; the self-sufficiency of the village has 

 been only slightly impaired, and the division of labour 

 is only carried a very small way. In addition to the 

 population directly engaged in agriculture, almost 

 every village possesses a blacksmith, a carpenter, 

 a potter, a barber, and a washerman ; and most 

 villages retain the services of some sort of holy man 

 {parohit or faqir), whose blessing upon the fields is 

 necessary for a successful harvest. In larger villages 

 there will also be found a weaver, a cotton-carder, an 

 oil-man {i.e., one who manufactures oil from oil-seeds), 

 perhaps a petty jeweller, and a small shopkeeper. 

 Strictly speaking, the grain-dealer who combines the 

 purchase and sale of grain with money-lending ought 

 also to be included in this category, but the part he 

 plays in the village economy is so important as to 

 have earned for him the distinction of a separate 

 chapter. Further than this, the division of labour 

 cannot be carried in so small a community, and much 

 of the labour which is in Europe and America assigned 



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