Читать книгу Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life - Geo. T. Fairchild - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Simple association.—While the absolute equality of individuals referred to in the preceding chapter is practically impossible, the community of interests as civilization advances becomes much closer through various plans of association of individuals in common work. Indeed, the community is a community because a multitude of individuals work together. The simplest form of association is seen where men work in gangs, all acting alike, as in lifting a log or a rock, hoeing the field, or in building an embankment by shoveling. Among farmers the habit of exchanging work, so common in pioneer settlements, illustrates the advantage of combination. This may be called simple association, by which many hands make light work.

Complex association.—A more complex association is found in even the rudest settlement when one man undertakes a particular kind of labor for all his neighbors, they in turn doing a different kind of work for him. A farmer in a new settlement found the children of himself and neighbors without a school, and agreed for several winters to teach a school as many days as his neighbors would chop in his clearing. This association cleared the land and supplied the school. Such [pg 056] exchanges of labor develop rapidly in every growing community and form the basis of a most extensive commerce. When “Adam delved and Eve span” the family was far better provided for than if both had undertaken to delve and spin. The fair exchange of products makes each man's product more useful to both himself and his neighborhood. Such association is less noticeable in a community of farmers, where all are seeking essentially the same products, than in almost any other community. Yet the presence of the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the wagonmaker and the tailor contribute very largely to the comfort of all concerned.

One chief disadvantage of farms remote from villages is the want of ready exchange, or association by different employments. The part which such exchange plays in the accumulation and distribution of the wealth of the world is so great that several chapters will be needed to present its importance. The study of exchanges is sometimes thought to cover the whole question of wealth. It is often treated as separate from production. But its advantages and disadvantages are most easily seen by considering all its bearings upon the increased product of a multitude of workers.

Compound association.—A still closer association, sometimes called compound association, is found where several workers combine efforts of different kinds in a single finished product. It is easily illustrated in an ordinary dairy, where one of the family drives up the cows, another does the milking, another sets the milk and cares for the purity of all utensils, another perhaps skims the milk and churns the butter, and still another [pg 057] works and packs it. All this labor of many hands has its importance represented in the butter packed for use. The particular advantages of this division of labor will be treated in a future chapter.

Aggregation of forces.—A still further advance in association appears when many laborers in many ways, with multitudes of tools and machinery, are combined in a huge establishment in such a way as to employ all efficiently. This is illustrated in the so-called bonanza farms of the west, but more distinctly appears in the great manufactories, or in any extensive coöperation or great enterprise. A study of these will also require a future chapter.

While all these methods of association blend with and into each other in every kind of community, a careful analysis of each is necessary to a full understanding of their relation to welfare. For this reason it is best to analyze and illustrate each by itself. The succeeding chapters will take up all the intricacies of exchange before presenting the special advantages and disadvantages of technical division of labor and of great corporations.

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