If we regard manufacturing occupations as a whole, it must beevident at the first glance that they develop and bring into actionan incomparably greater variety and higher type of mental qualitiesand abilities than agriculture does.Adam Smith certainly expressedone of those paradoxical opinions which (according to DugaldStewart, his biographer) he was very fond of, when he maintainedthat agriculture requires more skill than manufactures andcommerce.Without entering into the investigation whether theconstruction of a clock requires more skill than the management ofa farm, we have merely to observe that all agricultural occupationsare of the same kind, while in manufactures a thousand fold varietyexists.It must also not be forgotten, that for the purpose of thepresent comparison, agriculture must be regarded as it exists inthe primitive state, and not as it has been improved by theinfluence of manufactures.If the condition of Englishagriculturists appeared to Adam Smith much nobler than thecondition of English manufacturers, he had forgotten that thecondition of the former has been thus ennobled through theinfluence of manufactures and commerce.
It is evident that by agriculture merely personal qualities ofthe same kind are put into requisition, and merely those whichcombine bodily power and perseverance in executing raw and manuallabour with the simple idea of order; while manufactures require athousand fold variety of mental ability skill, and experience.Thedemand for such a variety of talents makes it easy for everyindividual in a manufacturing State to find an occupation andvocation corresponding with his individual abilities and taste,while in an agricultural State but little choice exists.In theformer mental gifts are infinitely more prized than in the latter,where as a rule the usefulness of a man is determined according tohis bodily strength.The labour of the weak and the cripple in theformer is not unfrequently valued at a much higher rate than thatof the strongest man is in the latter.Every power, even thesmallest, that of children and women, of cripples and old men,finds in manufactures employment and remuneration.
Manufactures are at once the offspring, and at the same timethe supporters and the nurses, of science and the arts.We mayobserve how little the condition of raw agriculture puts sciencesand arts into requisition, how little of either is necessary toprepare the rude implements which it employs.It is true thatagriculture at first had, by yielding rents of land, made itpossible for men to devote themselves to science and art; butwithout manufactures they have always remained private treasures,and have only extended their beneficial effects in a very slightdegree to the masses.In the manufacturing State the industry ofthe masses is enlightened by science, and the sciences and arts aresupported by the industry of the masses.There scarcely exists amanufacturing business which has not relations to physics,mechanics, chemistry, mathematics, or to the art of design, &c.Noprogress, no new discoveries and inventions, can be made in thesesciences by which a hundred industries and processes could not beimproved or altered.In the manufacturing State, therefore,sciences and arts must necessarily become popular.The necessityfor education and instruction, through writings and lectures by anumber of persons who have to bring into practice the results ofscientific investigations, induces men of special talents to devotethemselves to instruction and authorship.The competition of suchtalents, owing to the large demand for their efforts, creates botha division and co-operation of scientific activity, which has amost beneficial influence not merely on the further progress ofscience itself, but also on the further perfection of the arts andof industries.The effects of these improvements are soonafterwards extended even to agriculture.Nowhere can more perfectagricultural machines and implements be found, nowhere isagriculture carried on with so much intelligence, as in countrieswhere industry flourishes.Under the influence of manufactures,agriculture itself is raised to a skilled industry, an art, ascience.
The sciences and industry in combination have produced thatgreat material power which in the new state of society has replacedwith tenfold benefits the slave labour of ancient times, and whichis destined to exercise on the condition of the masses, on thecivilisation of barbarous countries, on the peopling of uninhabitedlands, and on the power of the nations of primitive culture, suchan immeasurable influence-namely, the power of machinery.
A manufacturing nation has a hundred times more opportunitiesof applying the power of machinery than an agricultural nation.Acripple can accomplish by directing a steam engine a hundred timesmore than the strongest man can with his mere hand.
The power of machinery, combined with the perfection oftransport facilities in modern times, affords to the manufacturingState an immense superiority over the mere agricultural State.Itis evident that canals, railways, and steam navigation are calledinto existence only by means of the manufacturing power, and canonly by means of it be extended over the whole surface of thecountry.In the mere agricultural State, where everybody producesfor himself the greater part of what he requires, and consumeshimself the greater part of what he produces, where the individualsamong themselves can only carry on a small amount of goods andpassenger traffic, it is impossible that a sufficiently largetraffic in either goods or passengers can take place to defray thecosts of the erection and maintenance of the machinery oftransport.