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There is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate, both of wages and profit, in every different employment of labour and stock.…

When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the…

Though the price, therefore, which leaves him this profit, is not always the lowest at which a dealer may sometimes sell his goods, it is the…

The market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the…

When the quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent,…

When the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual demand, and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either…

The quantity of every commodity brought to market naturally suits itself to the effectual demand. It is the interest of all those who employ their…

If at any time it exceeds the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must be paid below their natural rate. If it is rent, the…

If, on the contrary, the quantity brought to market should at any time fall short of the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price…

The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. Different…

The occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of any commodity fall chiefly upon those parts of its price which resolve themselves…

But though the market price of every particular commodity is in this manner continually gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural price;…

Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade. A dyer who has found the means of producing a particular colour…

A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company, has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by…

The exclusive privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain in particular employments, the competition to…

The market price of any particular commodity, though it may continue long above, can seldom continue long below, its natural price. Whatever part…

The natural price itself varies with the natural rate of each of its component parts, of wages, profit, and rent; and in every society this rate…

Though pecuniary wages and profit are very different in the different employments of labour and stock; yet a certain proportion seems commonly to…

The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour. In that original state of things which precedes both the appropriation…

But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduction of…

It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest. His maintenance is generally…

The produce of almost all other labour is liable to the like deduction of profit. In all arts and manufactures, the greater part of the workmen stand…

It sometimes happens, indeed, that a single independent workman has stock sufficient both to purchase the materials of his work, and to maintain…

Such cases, however, are not very frequent; and in every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the…

When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year…

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…