CHAPTER XVI 
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDUSTRY 
PART 1 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR 
§ 1. Since industry is a great cooperative process for the 
mutual aid of members of society, it is well that the fact should 
be held in the consciousness and will of individuals as clearly as 
possible. For this conscious realisation of the meaning of in- 
dustry will have a helpful influence on their intelligence and 
feelings. 
Now there are general related tendencies in modern industry 
which are powerful obstacles to this realisation of the social 
meaning of industry. 
The first is the growing subdivision of labour with the related 
expansion of markets. When a man made a watch or a pair of 
shoes and sold them to a neighbour, or known customer, his 
work had for him a distinct human significance. For, making 
the whole of a thing, he realised its nature and utility, while, 
seeing the man who wore his watch or shoes, he realised the 
human value of his work. Now he performs one of some ninety 
processes which go to make many watches, or he trims the heels 
of innumerable shoes. The other processes he cannot do, and 
does not accurately know how they are done. His separate con- 
tribution has no clear utility, and yet it solely occupies his 
attention. Not only does he thus lose grasp of the meaning of 
his work, but he has no opportunity of realising its consumptive 
utility. For he cannot know or care anything about the un- 
known person in some distant part of the world who shall wear 
the boots or watch he helped to make. The social sympathy of 
cooperative industry is thus atrophied by the conditions of his 
work. Division of labour, in its first intent, thus divides each 
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