ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the distribution of labour among different occupations and places. It showed that in many occupations marginal social net product differs from marginal private net product. Hence the maximisation of the national dividend does not require that the values of marginal private net products shall be equal in all uses. In general, causes of failure from equality in the demand prices and wage-rates of labour of given quality at different points are also causes of injury to the national dividend. These causes may be divided into three broad groups—ignorance or imperfect knowledge, costs of movement, and restrictions imposed upon movement from outside. For division of labour means the splitting up of complex operations, formerly executed as wholes, into the elementary parts, and it so happens that a comparatively small number of elementary parts, when combined in different ways, make up nearly all the wholes.
