The Wealth of Nations

When an independent workman, such as a weaver or shoemaker, has got more stock than what is sufficient to purchase the materials of his own work, and…

The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot…

First, in almost every part of Great Britain there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. Summer…

Secondly, the wages of labour do not, in Great Britain, fluctuate with the price of provisions. These vary everywhere from year to year, frequently…

In years of plenty, servants frequently leave their masters, and trust their subsistence to what they can make by their own industry. But the same…

In years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of subsistence make all such people eager to return to service. But the high price of provisions…

It is because the demand for labour increases in years of sudden and extraordinary plenty, and diminishes in those of sudden and extraordinary…

In a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty, there are funds in the hands of many of the employers of industry, sufficient to maintain and employ…

The rise and fall in the profits of stock depend upon the same causes with the rise and fall in the wages of labour, the increasing or declining…

The increase of stock, which raises wages, tends to lower profit. When the stocks of many rich merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual…

But though it may be impossible to determine, with any degree of precision, what are or were the average profits of stock, either in the present or…

Since the time of Henry VIII. the wealth and revenue of the country have been continually advancing, and in the course of their progress, their…

It generally requires a greater stock to carry on any sort of trade in a great town than in a country village. The great stocks employed in every…

The lowest ordinary rate of profit must always be something more than what is sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which every…

The highest ordinary rate of profit may be such as, in the price of the greater part of commodities, eats up the whole of what should go to the…

In countries which are fast advancing to riches, the low rate of profit may, in the price of many commodities, compensate the high wages of labour,…

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, must, in the same neighbourhood, be either…

Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in Europe extremely different, according to the different employments of labour and stock. But…

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become, in its advanced state, their most agreeable…

Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never…

When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the…

The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. All the different…

A house-carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and a more ingenious trade than a mason. In most places, however, for it is not universally so,…

When the trades which generally afford constant employment, happen in a particular place not to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good…

The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on…

When a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people, depends, not upon the nature…

The dangers and hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them.…

Of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wages of labour, two only affect the profits of stock; the agreeableness or disagreeableness…

They are so accordingly. The difference between the earnings of a common labourer and those of a well employed lawyer or physician, is evidently much…

The five circumstances above mentioned, though they occasion considerable inequalities in the wages of labour and profits of stock, occasion none…

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation from which…

Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, can take place only in the…

The demand for almost every different species of labour is sometimes greater, and sometimes less than usual. In the one case, the advantages of the…

The produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would otherwise be suitable to its nature. Stockings, in many parts of Scotland,…

The spinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the same way as the knitting of stockings, by servants, who are chiefly hired for…

Such are the inequalities in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, which the defect of…

First, The policy of Europe occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of…

The exclusive privilege of an incorporated trade necessarily restrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to those who are free of…

In France, the duration of apprenticeships is different in different towns and in different trades. In Paris, five years is the term required in a…

In Scotland, there is no general law which regulates universally the duration of apprenticeships. The term is different in different corporations.…

Apprenticeships were altogether unknown to the ancients. The reciprocal duties of master and apprentice make a considerable article in every modern…

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or…

It is in this manner that the policy of Europe, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be…

Secondly, the policy of Europe, by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be, occasions another inequality, of…

That unprosperous race of men, commonly called men of letters, are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians probably would be in,…

Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment, and from place to place,…

No independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement, either by apprenticeship or by service.…

The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its…

The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of Shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which makes a great part of the subsistence of…

The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to…

Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market, of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must…

There are some parts of the produce of land, for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring…

Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or…

The particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land which always afford some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes may…

But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it…

The most desert moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than…

The rent of land not only varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, but with its situation, whatever be its fertility. Land in the…

A corn field of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man, than the best pasture of equal extent. Though its cultivation…

It is thus that, in the progress of improvement, the rent and profit of unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and…

This equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of…