In the enumeration of the circumstances which promote the productiveness of labor, we have left one untouched, which is co-operation, or the combined action of numbers. Of this great aid to production, a single department, known by the name of Division of Labor, has engaged a large share of the attention of political economists; most deservedly, indeed, but to the exclusion of other cases and exemplifications of the same comprehensive law. In the lifting of heavy weights, for example, in the felling of trees, in the sawing of timber, in the gathering of much hay or corn during a short period of fine weather, in draining a large extent of land during the short season when such a work may be properly conducted, in the pulling of ropes on board ship, in the rowing of large boats, in some mining operations, in the erection of a scaffolding for building, and in the breaking of stones for the repair of a road, so that the whole of the road shall always be kept in good order: in all these simple operations, and thousands more, it is absolutely necessary that many persons should work together, at the same time, in the same place, and in the same way. [But] in the present state of society, the breeding and feeding of sheep is the occupation of one set of people; dressing the wool to prepare it for the spinner is that of another; spinning it into thread, of a third; weaving the thread into broadcloth, of a fourth; dyeing the cloth, of a fifth; making it into a coat, of a sixth; without counting the multitude of carriers, merchants, factors, and retailers put in requisition at the successive stages of this progress. Without some separation of employments, very few things would be produced at all. Suppose a set of persons, or a number of families, all employed precisely in the same manner; each family settled on a piece of its own land, on which it grows by its labor the food required for its own sustenance, and, as there are no persons to buy any surplus produce where all are producers, each family has to produce within itself whatever other articles it consumes. In such circumstances, if the soil was tolerably fertile, and population did not tread too closely on the heels of subsistence, there would be, no doubt, some kind of domestic manufactures; clothing for the family might, perhaps, be spun and woven within it, by the labor, probably, of the women (a first step in the separation of employments); and a dwelling of some sort would be erected and kept in repair by their united labor. But beyond simple food (precarious, too, from the variations of the seasons), coarse clothing, and very imperfect lodging, it would be scarcely possible that the family should produce anything more.