of permanently underselling can only, generally speaking, be derived from increased effectiveness of labor; and this, when obtained by a more extended division of employment, or by a classification tending to a better economy of skill, always implies a greater produce from the same labor, and not merely the same produce from less labor; it increases not the surplus only, but the gross produce of industry. If an increased quantity of the particular article is not required, and part of the laborers in consequence lose their employment, the capital which maintained and employed them is also set at liberty, and the general produce of the country is increased by some other application of their labor.
A considerable part of the saving of labor effected by substituting the large system of production for the small, is the saving in the labor of the capitalists themselves. If a hundred producers with small capitals carry on separately the same business, the superintendence of each concern will probably require the whole attention of the person conducting it, sufficiently, at least, to hinder his time or thoughts from being disposable for anything else; while a single manufacturer possessing a capital equal to the sum of theirs, with ten or a dozen clerks, could conduct the whole of their amount of business, and have leisure, too, for other occupations.
Production on a large scale is greatly promoted by the practice of forming a large capital by the combination of many small contributions; or, in other words, by the formation of stock companies. The advantages of the principle are important, [since] (1) many undertakings require an amount of capital beyond the means of the richest individual or private partnership. [Of course] the Government can alone be looked to for any of those works for which a great combination of