INCREASING INFLUENCE OF CAPITAL 615 
production. The opening chapter of the Wealth of Nations AD Ans 
calls attention to the important improvement which is known ’ 
as the division of processes. Adam Smith there points out division of 
that an employer can organise production, and assign each *"*****" 
man his own particular task in such a way, that there shall 
be a saving of time and of skill. There will also be other 
advantages, such as an increase of deftness, from the acquired 
facility in doing some one operation rapidly and well. The 
division of processes is sure to arise under any capitalist 
system of control ; in some districts of the cloth trade, it had 
been carried out to a very considerable extent for centuries, 
and it is true to say that increased subdivision has facili- 
tated the invention of machinery. None the less is it 
also true that the adoption of mechanical appliances has 
led to the development of new forms of specialised labour, 
and has tended to confine men more exclusively to particular 
departments of work. 
The invention of machinery, as well as the introduction of and to the 
v ny shifting of 
new processes, brought about a considerable shifting of labour. lat 
The employment of coal for smelting iron tended to the disuse 
of charcoal burning, and caused an increased demand for 
hewers in coal-mines; whether there was less employment or 
more, in connection with the production of a ton of suitable 
fuel, it was employment of a different kind. The adoption of 
machinery in the textile trades also caused an extraordinary 
shifting of labour; for children were quite competent to tend 
machines which carried on work that had hitherto occupied 
adults. On the whole, machinery rendered it possible in 
many departments of industry to substitute unskilled for 
skilled labour. 
The tendency, which had been observable during the early as well as 
. . to the 
part of the century, for manufactures to migrate to particular migration 
districts, was enormously accelerated by the introduction of industry 
machinery. So far as the cloth trade was concerned, the ties where 
trend appears to have been due to the facilities which water- available. 
power afforded for fulling-mills; and as one invention after 
another was introduced, it became not merely advantageous, 
but necessary for the manufacturer to establish his business 
at some place where power was available. We have in con- 
sequence the rapid concentration of industries in the West