CHAPTER IV: AUXILIARY PRODUCTION.
§ 741. As thus far considered production has been conceived as comprehending the making of those things only which, in themselves, satisfy certain of the desires. But a large part of the things men produce are not included among these, and come under the head of auxiliary productions—productions which have no values in themselves but have values only as aiding men to make things that yield immediate satisfactions.
Production and auxiliary production take their rise simultaneously. Flint-scrapers, valueless in themselves, were useful only for shaping wood or cleaning skins; and pointed sticks employed for digging up roots were of worth only as aids to sustentation. Hence, as here understood, the making of flint-scrapers or pointed sticks was a process of auxiliary production. And so with the bows and arrows, the bone fish-hooks, &c., which each savage made for himself.
But the auxiliary production now to be contemplated does not exist so long as the producer and the auxiliary producer are one. It originates only when a separate kind of worker, no longer a producer in the primary sense, becomes a producer in the secondary sense, by occupying himself in making one or other aid to production.
§ 742. The rise of the auxiliary producer is obviously in part coincident with the rise of the division of labour; and Edition: current; Page: [370] the implied kind of division of labour begins very early. Schoolcraft writes:—
“There was, according to Chippewa tradition, a particular class of men among our northern tribes, before the introduction of fire-arms, who were called makers of arrow-heads. They selected proper stones, and devoted themselves to this art, and took in exchange from the warriors for their flint-heads, the skins, and flesh of animals.”
So was it, he argues, with earthenware utensils.
“That pottery was a fixed art, and the business of a particular class of society, amongst the ancient Floridian and other American tribes, is thought to be evident from the preceding facts.”
And Kolben tells us that among the Hottentots, the rich, being too lazy to make armour for themselves, a poor man will make a set, which he will dispose of for cattle. But the clearest illustration is that furnished by blacksmiths as existing in slightly civilized societies, like those of Africa and parts of Asia. For evidently most of the blacksmith’s products, or at least all those used for industrial purposes, do not yield direct satisfactions; but are merely aids in producing things which do so: he is an auxiliary producer.
§ 743. Early civilized life supplies, here and there, evidence of such differentiations. Writing of the Carolingian period, Levasseur says:—
“The goldsmith . . . cast and alloyed the metals; laminated them; made the substance of the article; chiselled or graved the ornaments; applied the enamel; set the stones; and polished or burnished them with his own hands . . . He had also to know how to make all his own implements.”
Evidently in those days the number of tools required for goldsmiths’ work, and kindred work, was not sufficient to develop the making of them into a separate business. It became a separate business only when the demand for such tools became great. The goldsmith remaining a producer, the maker of his tools and other such tools became an auxiliary producer.
Like steps have been made during the growth of every Edition: current; Page: [371] considerable manufacture. In England, early in the 16th century, the clothing districts witnessed such a development.
“Employment was given to considerable numbers of artificers and workmen in making the instruments and implements which were necessary in the various processes of converting wool into cloth.”
So has it been with carpenters and cabinet-makers. They are dependent for their saws, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, &c., on various auxiliary producers. As with tools so with materials. Furnished by auxiliary producers, the bricks, slates, sawn timbers, lime, and the many things put together to form a house, down even to the hasps and locks and latches, none of them directly yield satisfactions; but they yield satisfactions when combined by the builder.
How large a part auxiliary production now plays, we are shown by the numerous implements used by the farmer. In addition to the plough, harrow, scythe, rake, fork, and flail; he employs the steam-plough, scuffler, mechanical drill, horse-hoe, mowing machine, reaping and binding machine, elevator, threshing machine, as well as sundry new dairy appliances. Whole towns are now devoted to auxiliary production; as Sheffield, where multiplied kinds of cutting instruments, &c., are manufactured; or as Birmingham, whence come, among other kinds of hardware, the screws and nails needed for carpentry and furniture, or the buttons and the hooks-and-eyes which hold clothes together.
§ 744. But the most striking development remains. The making of appliances to facilitate production has been followed by the making of appliances for the making of appliances.
A lathe, as ordinarily employed for turning articles of domestic use, is the most familiar example. A lathe employed for shaping parts of other lathes, and parts of other machines, is an example much more striking. And a planing machine which, turning out perfectly straight bars and Edition: current; Page: [372] perfectly flat beds for various purposes, serves also for producing true lathe-beds, is an appliance one step further back behind appliances. A steam-hammer still better illustrates these relations. It is useless for the immediate satisfaction of any human want. It is useless for the direct production of things that immediately help to satisfy human wants. But the vast masses of iron which it pounds into approximately fit shapes, will presently be made into parts of machines. And even these machines will subserve human wants only in an indirect way, when helping to make things which help to subserve human wants.
Any one who takes up a trades’ directory, or such a periodical as The Ironmonger, and in this last glances through the illustrated advertisements, will be astonished at the extent to which production is now dependent upon auxiliary production of one, two, or three stages of remoteness from the ultimate products wanted.