Summary Of Horace Say's Essay I Pin

In his essay, “I Pin,” Horace Say critiques Adam Smith’s story of a pin factory and puts the work in the perspective of a modern day economist. Adam Smith wrote heavily about how industries, especially manufacturing, can benefit from a division of work within the system. I saw this way of labor as the most effective as it lessened the intensity of one man’s work and, in the end, it greatly affected the rate of production. He believed that the workers should be divided to do specialized tasks based on their certain skills or strengths. He used the example of a pin manufacturer to support his claim. His story showed the massive difference in effectivity between an assembly line style of labor and an individual one. Workers were subdivided based on their skills into distinct branches

He suggested that if Adam Smith were to extend his writings, he should include that this form of labor is not only used by small manufacturers of little value. It is also the basis of our world’s way of trade. The system of world trade is not only an example of how the division of labor is used on an international scale, but it is also makes the work of that small factory possible. Going back the discussion of the pin manufacturer, there is a long line of work involved in the creation of a pin even before the materials are brought to the factory. Miners dug up the ore for the pins, workers built the ships that the ore was transported on, and so on. The author goes on to stress the dependence factories have on the actions of possibly millions of other people, all part of our vast economic system. Horace Say’s essay is closed by stating the inconceivable fact that a single branch of a manufacturing industry has relied on extensive research and labor of other workers. All industries are connected and provide for each other at some point in our world economic