Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill · en
As the second of the [general] causes of superior productiveness, we may
rank the greater energy of labor. By this is not to be understood
occasional, but regular and habitual energy. The third element which
determines the productiveness of the labor of a community is the skill and
knowledge therein existing, whether it be the skill and knowledge of the
laborers themselves or of those who direct their labor. That the
productiveness of the labor of a people is limited by their knowledge of
the arts of life is self-evident, and that any progress in those arts, any
improved application of the objects or powers of nature to industrial
uses, enables the same quantity and intensity of labor to raise a greater
produce. One principal department of these improvements consists in the
invention and use of tools and machinery.(114)
The deficiency of practical good sense, which renders the majority of the
laboring-class such bad calculators—which makes, for instance, their
domestic economy so improvident, lax, and irregular—must disqualify them
for any but a low grade of intelligent labor, and render their industry
far less productive than with equal energy it otherwise might be. The
moral qualities of the laborers are fully as important to the efficiency
and worth of their labor as the intellectual. Independently of the effects
of intemperance upon their bodily and mental faculties, and of flighty,
unsteady habits upon the energy and continuity of their work (points so
easily understood as not to require being insisted upon), it is well
worthy of meditation how much of the aggregate effect of their labor
depends on their trustworthiness.
Among the secondary causes which determine the productiveness of
productive agents, the most important is Security. By security I mean the
completeness of the protection which society affords to its members.
§ 2. Combination and Division of Labor Increase Productiveness.