Specialisation
The growth of agricultural specialisation for the increasing mass markets of towns
was gradual. In
early modern Europe it existed alongside and overlaid the agricultural subsistence base. The
preindustrial agricultural specialists concerned with the production of beef, mutton and lamb, kept
a
few acres for poultry and pigs to feed their own families and servants. To partake of the rewards
from a mass market economy the emphasis changed; a major concern was now to produce a
marketable commodity, and growing food for immediate and personal subsistence was only a
minor concern. Land began to be used to achieve maximum output, more livestock and crops were
tended by fewer people and in general productivy began to rise. The developed consumers'
economy of constructive groups comprising symbiotic urban and rural sectors is closely dependent
on the stability provided by organized political systems.
One of the distinctive features of producers' economies is that they
are organized to effect a
transfer of goods from one producer to another in unfinished form, as well as to govern transfers
between producers and consumers. A firm now acquires goods, subjects them to partial
preparation, and passes them on to other firms. Exchange enters into the regulation of the
productive process itself, and there is a circulation not merely of finished goods, but of all the
factors of production-land, labour, capital; and a single product is created in a number of different
productive stages which take place successively in different locations, and are carried out by
different firms. Production is serialized as well as specialized; and for each stage of production,
the
necessary materials and means are often assembled separately through exchange mechanisms.
The organization of production under a producers' economy differs from that under
a consumers'
economy. In the handicraft production associated with a consumers' economy, the technical basis
of working organization is the complete product. Each enterprise commands all the tools,
materials, and skills required to produce a given kind of article or a number of similar articles. Raw
materials are turned, within the shop, into the final product. Leatherworkers in such enterprises
may acquire raw hides which they clean, tan, dye, cut, fashion, and decorate to bring forth boots,
garments, or saddles ready for use. They often sell them in the shop.
The factory enterprises of producers' economies are typically organized not to turn
out a complete
product ready for the consumer, but to perform only a part of the operations that produce it—the
"job." A single factory may produce only the bolts that belong to a particular automobile
assembly,
or may only assemble pieces, already made elsewhere, into a toy. In many large enterprises, work
is allocated among a number of different shops, each of which executes one or a few of the many
operations that go to create the complex final product. An automobile factory, for instance, is a
compound of many such shops, and in addition relies upon small independent plants to furnish
certain of the parts it assembles.
Production is broken down into a series of many separate jobs, and the whole process
is spread
out among many agencies over some distance. Different equipment and facilities are assembled at
various points; all are connected by transport lines; and each is served by its own labour force.
Skillful organization of the movement of materials through the proper sequence replaces skilled
handiwork as the crucial element in production. Workers are readily trained, moved, discharged, or
hired, and men take and leave jobs with little concern; no social traditions exclude all but a few
groups from employment at a particular job, as is true with the crafts system. Equipment is not
made on the spot, but purchased from special enterprises which design and produce it according
to need. In some countries, the processes used in production are restricted to whatever enterprise
can acquire legal rights over them, but eventually they become common property. Equipment and
processes frequently change, personnel turns over rapidly, and even the nature of the product is
constantly developing.
Since exchange makes available to producers services and goods that are created by
other
producers expressly for their use, a supply of specialized means of production, inanimate energy,
component parts, and materials becomes accessible to any enterprise, regardless of its size. The
large aggregate demand for productive goods and services supports the growth of a large producers'
goods industry and of public utilities. A relatively high proportion of the factories and other
manufacturing plants is devoted to the production (more technically, the conversion) of energy to
operate other plants, to the production of materials—like pig-iron, sulphuric acid, and
lumber—that
are basic to other industries, and to the building of production equipment—like machine tools
and
chemical plants. A relatively small number of the manufacturing plants in operation under a
producers' economy actually turn out only finished consumers' goods.
The spatial order associated with factory production reflects the great diversity
of agencies
concerned not only in production, but in the service of other production, and recently also in the
service of urban populations employed in these activities. In the fully commercialized producers'
economy, the unparalleled volume of exchange upon which production rests, the intricate division of
tasks in manufacture, and the variety of services, all require an altogether unprecedented
development of artificial facilities.
Impact
The first impact of mechanisation was seen in agriculture when machines were invented
to replace
manual labour of hoeing, sowing and reaping. Eventually, the spread of mechanisation based upon
the internal combustion engine resulted in the pneumatic tyre replacing the wooden wheel, and
saddlers and blacksmiths have been replaced by the agaricultural engineers based in modern
premises with special equipment and tools.
Cooperation and interdependence between neighbouring farmers and craftsmen was an
essential
element in the tapestry of country life. The advent of corn binders did much to fragment the
cohesion of close-knit rural communities, by dispensing with the need for co- operative activities by
groups of neighbours at haymaking and shearing.
Movement of mass produced goods into the deep countryside from distant factories was
facilitated
by the transport revolution of the 19th century in the form of turnpike roads, canals, and more
importantly railways, which came in mid-century are commonly used. Almost all of the operations
of cultivation are performed by machines driven by motors or engines. The fields are like those of
Western plough agriculture, and the crops the same, except that there is an increasing
concentration on "industrial" crops like sugar beet, cotton, and oilseeds. Animals are raised
for
meat, milk, hides, and wool; and mechanical devices driven by inanimate power are often used in
their care.
Automatic power machines are just beginning to be used in cultivation. They are employed
on a
limited scale in hydroponic systems to control the physical and chemical properties of a solution
substituted for the soil. Automatic devices are also used to control atmospheres in greenhouses
and labouratories. In these forms of cultivation there is neither garden nor field, but a tank or soil-
bed. The plant is tended individually, at present, but perhaps this is only because this form of
cultivation is still largely experimental and a luxury specialty. The crops grown are chosen for
experimental purposes or for a high-priced market. Automatic cultivation is found in hundreds of
labouratories and experimental greenhouses, in some military bases and pioneering stations in
high latitudes, and in commercial hothouses that grow vegetables and flowers for market under
glass.
The use of animals for traction is standard under agriculture proper. Where power
agriculture has
arisen, parallel developments have taken place in animal care, and modern dairy men, for example,
in a highly industrialized country, tend to equip their farms with power-driven machines of many
kinds. Except in true agriculture, however, the raising of animals is not closely integrated with
cultivation. Large herds of animals were kept until very recent times by separate social, and even
national, groups peripheral to the agricultural populations—wandering as pastoral nomads
in lands
unsuited to cultivation. The nomad always had some relationship with the agriculturist. Indeed, a
great many pastoral groups were part-time farmers. The raising of animals remains a specialty in
certain types of country under power agriculture, and the growing of crops in places becomes
subservient to it.
Capital and nature
If we rank technical equipment and installations on a scale from simple implements
through
facilities, machines and power machines to automata, we may expect a commensurate increase at
each step in the power of man in nature. The more advanced his technical means, the more a
single individual can do to his surroundings; the wider his effect can extend itself in space; the
deeper into the earth, and the higher into the heavens his power will reach. The powers of society
also grow, in fact at a rate greater than the individual's; individuals working together in a systematic
way produce a greatly magnified effect.
When humans possess implements only, they can hardly scratch the surface of the ground.
If they
are cultivators, however, they may actually modify their surroundings to favour food production.
People having only implements are pitted little more than evenly against the beasts of the wild.
Missiles are as important to them as are implements in the hunt; they avoid dangerous close
contact with large predators, and can only reach more timid and less wary prey. Fire is their
greatest ally, but they can scarcely control it. Having no facilities or machines, such folk cannot
even produce very efficient tools, since they can only utilize materials which are already at hand,
easily worked, and which already possess the appropriate physical qualities for tools. Men can do
little clearing of the forests with rude stone axes, even when they are abetted by wild-running fires.
Generally, where men still have only simple equipment, the forest still stands. Wild game can be
driven with fire but probably cannot be exterminated with simple weapons, unless it is already on
the wane through other causes. The exploitation of mineral materials is confined to carrying off
what can be picked up from the surface or scraped out from shallow depth. Stones suitable for
projectile points and the like, salt, pigments, and bright pebbles and shells are available.
When facilities are constructed men can store foodstuffs. They can accumulate large
amounts of
seeds, roots and other products, and seeds may sprout or some shoots may grow from these
accumulations in the vicinity of dwellings or refuse heaps. Men drive game into prepared snares,
corrals, and pits, sometimes using fire. They may line springs, enlarge pools and may build or dig
aqueducts. Living sites are constructed having house platforms, palisades, squares and streets,
refuse heaps, and so on, though these facilities remain fairly primitive in many cases. An even
larger variety of facilities comes to be associated with cultivation.
Mine shafts can be sunk into the earth, and the subsurface is opened to exploitation.
Certain
peoples who do not practice cultivation but who can build facilities at this technical level produce
many ingenious fishing and hunting devices. The folk who build elabourate facilities, whether
cultivators or not, are capable of serious depletion of game and fish supplies; of intensive
modification of living sites and their immediate surroundings; and of some use of subsoil minerals.
They can sometimes effect great changes in native vegetations.
Peoples with machines are capable of proportionately greater effects, and correspondingly
larger
benefits therefrom. Not only the direct impact of their machines, but their widened needs for
materials and their improved means of communication play a telling part in changing the
environment. Some hunting peoples, as well as cultivators, use machines, and they have been very
effective predators, able to feed themselves in a specialized way from selected herds of ungulates
or from particular sea mammals. It was machine-using folk, too, who cleared the great woodlands
of middle latitudes, which could not be breached with simple implements. As long as the power to
drive machines must be furnished by animals or humans, however, the machine proper has
probably not been an instrument of wholesale destruction of vegetation or mineral deposits.
Machines used in cultivation do expose poorly protected soils to washing and gullying, and they do
allow men to modify greatly the soil surface. The use of machines in hunting also greatly increases
man's predatory pressure on animal life.
The capabilities conferred on man by power machines are prominently registered in
nature. There is
such a large literature of alarm on this topic that detailed comment is superfluous here. Man can
dig miles deep into the earth, plunge to the depths of the sea, soar far into the heavens and aspire
to reach the planets. With power machines men can chop mountains to pieces for ore, move hills,
force rivers to run backwards, crack the atomic nucleus with a flash and a mushroom cloud, and
attempt to create living matter in the labouratory. Nature is at the mercy of man, and man acts
blindly at his own peril. Great risks and great rewards await him.
The role of the automaton is still to be revealed. It may act mightily for destruction,
sucking up
insatiably the wealth of nature, or it may make possible a calculated adjustment to the natural
conditions impinging on man's life and work, which will reduce the hazard and the folly of
uncontrolled exploitation of nature. Automatic calculators are already being used to inform mankind
of the prudent course, and the automatic machines may someday manufacture goods (and
services) in ways so much more efficient, economical, and sparing of natural resources that man's
stewardship of earth may greatly improve as his power grows. The issue probably depends more
upon the ways in which societies and economies are organized than upon material technique itself.
Although the consequences of man's technical activity for the conditions of his life
in nature are the
subject of our discussion, only a sketch of the impact of techniques upon environment has been
possible here. We need to know how capital is fitted into man's environment and managed by his
societies before we can tell more of its effects.
Urbanisation
The degree of technological development and therefore the level of artificiality of
the human
environment is at its highest in communities where immense urban settlement have taken root.
These urban populations are supported by a continual supply of goods moving in a multitude of
ways from an ever-expanding array of resource sites. The relative concentration of human beings in
settlements is in fact a good index to artificiality. Another good indicator is the volume of natural
resources used per unit area of settlement and the variety of goods and services locally on offer.
Yet another is the relative dependence of individuals upon highly specialised productive roles of
fellow citizens, and the fragmentation of their social relations into many small, discrete, and
unconnected networks.
The environment through which the nomad gatherers make their rounds remains, although
its
vegetation may be altered radically, almost as vast and empty as nature made it. In farming
country, the cultivated fields and gardens display the handiwork of man, but the environments that
they provide for crops remain ruled more by nature than by man. The city and the road are
altogether artificial features, though, and commercial urban people live and work within
environments that they impose on nature.
The wanderers live "off the land," garnering a livelihood from wild plants
and animals; and farmers
live "on the land," feeding themselves from their crops and livestock; but urban specialists
live
under highly artificial circumstances, lack the means of producing crops for themselves, and thus
rely on rural populations to supply their food in exchange for other goods and services. We have
observed that specialized commercial production of the kind associated with cities is possible only
when, in addition to the food-producing symbiosis, there is a further symbiosis of exchange within
the society that allows some of its members to engage in pursuits other than cultivation.
Large differences in artificial spatial arrangements are related to differences in
economic forms. In
subsistence societies, which have no appreciable exchange, all the various stages of production
are carried out by the members of one very small household group in a small area. The complex of
artificial features associated with production is "telescoped," and its component elements
are little
differentiated. Resource sites are few; routes of circulation are short and hardly improved;
manufacture is carried on around the dwelling, and specialized services are few in number. Many
parallel systems of production exist with little reciprocal effect, and the complexity and size of any
one of them are limited by the small numbers of workers and the slight degree of specialization of
the household group.
Societies in which much exchange is practiced display a different character. There,
routes of
transport link the many sites of resource exploitation, manufacture, and service; and along these
routes are specialized installations for various kinds of commercial production. The artificial
complex serves a large area, and tends to be connected with other like complexes. The productive
system commands the labour and highly specialized skills of a large number of workers. The uses
made of particular places, the equipment and installations devoted to particular tasks, and the
working roles of individuals are all well differentiated and specialized.
A system organized around only the single symbiosis of and urban food supply develops
a
multitude of unconnected, parallel economic units, each with its own complex of artificial productive
features. The double symbiosis involving exchange in addition creates a single economic unit of
wide scope, having one large and more or less unitary complex of highly specialized productive
installations. The particular nature of this complex depends upon the degree of commercialization
attained, i.e., the extent to which various commodities are subject to exchange between urban and
rural markets.
