To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.
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Recherche sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (1776), Livre I
Citations sur combinaison
Une collection de citations sur le thème de combinaison, pluie, tout, bien-être.
Citations sur combinaison
Citations par thèmes, Dialectique et principes, Contingence
Sur les contradictions entre sciences et superstitions.
Comment vaincre le fascisme, 1929-1933
L'homme et l'argent, 1953
Recueil de nouvelles, Le Musée noir, 1924, Le tombeau d'Aubrey Beardsley
La Belle France (1901)
Les Anormaux — Cours au Collège de France, 1974-1975, Cours du 15 janvier 1975
Bohème littéraire et Révolution, 1983, Le monde des libraires clandestins sous l'Ancien Régime
Recueils de nouvelles, Le Musée noir, 1924, Introduction
3 est multiplié 200 fois par lui-même.
Citations extraites de ses œuvres, Éloge de la différence, 1978
Opuscules physiques et chimiques
Une histoire d'amour et de ténèbres , 2002
Incipit
Le jeu du roi, 1976
“Ce n’est pas possible d’éplucher des pommes de terre et de gratter des carottes en combinaison.”
Tout Simenon, Tome 1: La fenêtre des Rouet / La fuite de Monsieur Monde / Trois Chambres à Manhattan / Au bout du rouleau / La pipe de Maigret/Maigret se fâche / Maigret à New-York / Lettre à mon juge / Le destin des Malou
The mathematical analysis of logic, 1847