Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819947356
• Langue: English

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AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THEWEALTH OF NATIONS.
By Adam Smith
INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK.
The annual labour of every nation is the fund whichoriginally supplies it with all the necessaries and convenienciesof life which it annually consumes, and which consist always eitherin the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchasedwith that produce from other nations.
According, therefore, as this produce, or what ispurchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to thenumber of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better orworse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for whichit has occasion.
But this proportion must in every nation beregulated by two different circumstances: first, by the skill,dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied;and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those whoare employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not soemployed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory ofany particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annualsupply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those twocircumstances.
The abundance or scantiness of this supply, too,seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstancesthan upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters andfishers, every individual who is able to work is more or lessemployed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as hecan, the necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself, andsuch of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, ortoo infirm, to go a-hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, areso miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequentlyreduced, or at least think themselves reduced, to the necessitysometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning theirinfants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingeringdiseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts.Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though agreat number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consumethe produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times, morelabour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce ofthe whole labour of the society is so great, that all are oftenabundantly supplied; and a workman, even of the lowest and poorestorder, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater shareof the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possiblefor any savage to acquire.
The causes of this improvement in the productivepowers of labour, and the order according to which its produce isnaturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions ofmen in the society, make the subject of the first book of thisInquiry.
Whatever be the actual state of the skill,dexterity, and judgment, with which labour is applied in anynation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply mustdepend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportionbetween the number of those who are annually employed in usefullabour, and that of those who are not so employed. The number ofuseful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, iseverywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which isemployed in setting them to work, and to the particular way inwhich it is so employed. The second book, therefore, treats of thenature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is graduallyaccumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which itputs into motion, according to the different ways in which it isemployed.
Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill,dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, havefollowed very different plans in the general conduct or directionof it; and those plans have not all been equally favourable to thegreatness of its produce. The policy of some nations has givenextraordinary encouragement to the industry of the country; that ofothers to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealtequally and impartially with every sort of industry. Since thedown-fall of the Roman empire, the policy of Europe has been morefavourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry oftowns, than to agriculture, the Industry of the country. Thecircumstances which seem to have introduced and established thispolicy are explained in the third book.
Though those different plans were, perhaps, firstintroduced by the private interests and prejudices of particularorders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, theirconsequences upon the general welfare of the society; yet they havegiven occasion to very different theories of political economy; ofwhich some magnify the importance of that industry which is carriedon in towns, others of that which is carried on in the country.Those theories have had a considerable influence, not only upon theopinions of men of learning, but upon the public conduct of princesand sovereign states. I have endeavoured, in the fourth book, toexplain as fully and distinctly as I can those different theories,and the principal effects which they have produced in differentages and nations.
To explain in what has consisted the revenue of thegreat body of the people, or what has been the nature of thosefunds, which, in different ages and nations, have supplied theirannual consumption, is the object of these four first books. Thefifth and last book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, orcommonwealth. In this book I have endeavoured to shew, first, whatare the necessary expenses of the sovereign, or commonwealth; whichof those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contributionof the whole society, and which of them, by that of some particularpart only, or of some particular members of it: secondly, what arethe different methods in which the whole society may be made tocontribute towards defraying the expenses incumbent on the wholesociety, and what are the principal advantages and inconvenienciesof each of those methods; and, thirdly and lastly, what are thereasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governmentsto mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts; andwhat have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, theannual produce of the land and labour of the society.
BOOK I. OF THE CAUSES OF IMPROVEMENT IN THEPRODUCTIVE POWERS OF LABOUR, AND OF THE ORDER ACCORDING TO WHICHITS PRODUCE IS NATURALLY DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE DIFFERENT RANKS OFTHE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER I. OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.
The greatest improvements in the productive powersof labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, andjudgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem tohave been the effects of the division of labour. The effects of thedivision of labour, in the general business of society, will bemore easily understood, by considering in what manner it operatesin some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to becarried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that itreally is carried further in them than in others of moreimportance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destinedto supply the small wants of but a small number of people, thewhole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and thoseemployed in every different branch of the work can often becollected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under theview of the spectator.
In those great manufactures, on the contrary, whichare destined to supply the great wants of the great body of thepeople, every different branch of the work employs so great anumber of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all intothe same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than thoseemployed in one single branch. Though in such manufactures,therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greaternumber of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, thedivision is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much lessobserved.
To take an example, therefore, from a very triflingmanufacture, but one in which the division of labour has been veryoften taken notice of, the trade of a pin-maker: a workman noteducated to this business (which the division of labour hasrendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of themachinery employed in it (to the invention of which the samedivision of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce,perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, andcertainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which thisbusiness is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiartrade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which thegreater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out thewire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; afifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the headrequires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is apeculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even atrade by itself to put them into the paper; and the importantbusiness of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into abouteighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are allperformed by distinct hands, though in others the same man willsometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a smallmanufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, andwhere some of them consequently performed two or three distinctoperations. But though they were very poor, and therefore butindifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, theycould, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelvepounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of fourthousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore,could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in aday. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eightthousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eighthundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately andindependently, and with