The Wealth Of Nations Epub

[Marsilius Boa]

AnInquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. Through reflection over the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labor, productivity, and free markets.

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The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it withall the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, andwhich consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in whatis purchased with that produce from other nations.

According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears agreater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, thenation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries andconveniencies for which it has occasion.

But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two differentcircumstances: first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which itslabour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between thenumber of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who arenot so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of anyparticular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, inthat particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.

The abundance or scantiness of this supply, too, seems to depend more upon theformer of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savagenations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work is more orless employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can,the necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself, and such of his familyor tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm, to go a-huntingand fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from merewant, they are frequently reduced, or at least think themselves reduced, to thenecessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning theirinfants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, toperish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. Among civilized andthriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do notlabour at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of ahundred times, more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet theproduce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are oftenabundantly supplied; and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if heis frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries andconveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

The causes of this improvement in the productive powers of labour, and theorder according to which its produce is naturally distributed among thedifferent ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of thefirst book of this Inquiry.

Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with whichlabour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annualsupply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportionbetween the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, andthat of those who are not so employed. The number of useful and productivelabourers, it will hereafter appear, is everywhere in proportion to thequantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to theparticular way in which it is so employed. The second book, therefore, treatsof the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is graduallyaccumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts intomotion, according to the different ways in which it is employed.

Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in theapplication of labour, have followed very different plans in the generalconduct or direction of it; and those plans have not all been equallyfavourable to the greatness of its produce. The policy of some nations hasgiven extraordinary encouragement to the industry of the country; that ofothers to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally andimpartially with every sort of industry. Since the down-fall of the Romanempire, the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures,and commerce, the industry of towns, than to agriculture, the Industry of thecountry. The circumstances which seem to have introduced and established thispolicy are explained in the third book.

Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the privateinterests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, orforesight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; yetthey have given occasion to very different theories of political economy; ofwhich some magnify the importance of that industry which is carried on intowns, others of that which is carried on in the country. Those theories havehad a considerable influence, not only upon the opinions of men of learning,but upon the public conduct of princes and sovereign states. I haveendeavoured, in the fourth book, to explain as fully and distinctly as I canthose different theories, and the principal effects which they have produced indifferent ages and nations.

To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people,or what has been the nature of those funds, which, in different ages andnations, have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these fourfirst books. The fifth and last book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, orcommonwealth. In this book I have endeavoured to shew, first, what are thenecessary expenses of the sovereign, or commonwealth; which of those expensesought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society, andwhich of them, by that of some particular part only, or of some particularmembers of it: secondly, what are the different methods in which the wholesociety may be made to contribute towards defraying the expenses incumbent onthe whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniencies ofeach of those methods; and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causeswhich have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of thisrevenue, or to contract debts; and what have been the effects of those debtsupon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society.

The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greaterpart of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed,or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour. Theeffects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will bemore easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in someparticular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in somevery trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them thanin others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which aredestined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the wholenumber of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in everydifferent branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse,and placed at once under the view of the spectator.

In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply thegreat wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the workemploys so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them allinto the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than thoseemployed in one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the workmay really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of amore trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordinglybeen much less observed.

To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one inwhich the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade ofa pin-maker: a workman not educated to this business (which the division oflabour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of themachinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labourhas probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry,make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way inwhich this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiartrade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater partare likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire; another straights it;a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receivingthe head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put iton is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade byitself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pinis, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, insome manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others thesame man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a smallmanufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some ofthem consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though theywere very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessarymachinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them abouttwelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousandpins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among themupwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making atenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making fourthousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separatelyand independently, and without any of them having been educated to thispeculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty,perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred andfortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth, part of what they areat present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division andcombination of their different operations.

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