An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

consent that

every other class should do the same. In consequence of such regulations, indeed, each class

was obliged to buy the goods they had occasion for from every other within the town,

somewhat dearer than they otherwise might have done. But, in recompence, they were

enabled to sell their own just as much dearer ; so that, so far it was as broad as long, as they

say ; and in the dealings of the different classes within the town with one another, none of

them were losers by these regulations. But in their dealings with the country they were all

great gainers; and in these latter dealings consist the whole trade which supports and enriches

every town.

 

Every town draws its whole subsistence, and all the materials of its industry, from the:

country. It pays for these chiefly in two ways. First, by sending back to the country a part of

those materials wrought up and manufactured ; in which case, their price is augmented by the

wages of the workmen, and the profits of their masters or immediate employers ; secondly, by

sending to it a part both of the rude and manufactured produce, either of other countries, or of

distant parts of the same country, imported into the town; in which case, too, the original price

of those goods is augmented by the wages of the carriers or sailors, and by the profits of the

merchants who employ them. In what is gained upon the first of those branches of commerce,

consists the advantage which the town makes by its manufactures; in what is gained upon the

second, the advantage of its inland and foreign trade. The wages of the workmen, and the

profits of their different employers, make up the whole of what is gained upon both. Whatever

regulations, therefore, tend to increase those wages and profits beyond what they otherwise:

would be, tend to enable the town to purchase, with a smaller quantity of its labour, the

produce of a greater quantity of the labour of the country. They give the traders and artificers

in the town an advantage over the landlords, farmers, and labourers, in the country, and break

down that natural equality which would otherwise take place in the commerce which is

carried on between them. The whole annual produce of the labour of the society is annually

divided between those two different sets of people. By means of those regulations, a greater

share of it is given to the inhabitants of the town than would otherwise fall to them, and a less

to those of’ the country.

 

The price which the town really pays for the provisions and materials annually imported into

it, is the quantity of manufactures and other goods annually exported from it. The dearer the

latter are sold, the cheaper the former are bought. The industry of the town becomes more, and

that of the country less advantageous.

 

That the industry which is carried on in towns is, everywhere in Europe, more advantageous

than that which is carried on in the country, without entering into any very nice computations,

we may satisfy ourselves by one very simple and obvious observation. In every country of

Europe, we find at least a hundred people who have acquired great fortunes, from small

beginnings, by trade and manufactures, the industry which properly belongs to towns, for one

who has done so by that which properly belongs to the country, the raising of rude produce by

the improvement and cultivation of land. Industry, therefore, must be better rewarded, the

wages of labour and the profits of stock must evidently be greater, in the one situation than in

the other. But stock and labour naturally seek the most advantageous employment. They

naturally, therefore, resort as much as they can to the town, and desert the country.

 

The inhabitants of a town being collected into one place, can easily combine together. The

most insignificant trades carried on in towns have, accordingly, in some place or other, been

incorporated ; and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation-spirit,

the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to communicate the secret of

their trade, generally prevail in them, and often teach them, by voluntary associations and

agreements, to prevent that free competition which they cannot prohibit by bye-laws. The

trades which employ but a small number of hands, run most easily into such combinations.

Half-a-dozen wool-combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers

at work. By combining not to take apprentices, they can not only engross the employment, but

reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves, and raise the price of their

labour much above what is due to the nature of their work.

 

The inhabitants of the country, dispersed in distant places, cannot easily combine together.

They have not only never been incorporated, but the incorporation spirit never has prevailed

among them. No apprenticeship has ever been thought necessary to qualify for husbandry, the

great trade of the country. After what are called the fine arts, and the liberal professions,

however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and

experience. The innumerable volumes which have been written upon it in all languages, may

satisfy us, that among the wisest and most learned nations, it has never been regarded as a

matter very easily understood. And from all those volumes we shall in vain attempt to collect

that knowledge of its various and complicated operations which is commonly possessed even

by the common farmer ; how contemptuously soever the very contemptible authors of some of

them may sometimes affect to speak of him. There is scarce any common mechanic trade, on

the contrary, of which all the operations may not be as completely and distinctly explained in

a pamphlet of a very few pages, as it is possible for words illustrated by figures to explain

them. In the history of the arts, now publishing by the French Academy of Sciences, several of

them are actually explained in this manner. The direction of operations, besides, which must

be varied with every change of the weather, as well as with many other accidents, requires

much more judgment and discretion, than that of those which are always the same, or very

nearly the same.

 

Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many

inferior branches of country labour require much more skill and experience than the greater

part of mechanic trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments,

and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the

man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen, works with instruments of which

the health, strength, and temper, are very different upon different occasions. The condition of

the materials which he works upon, too, is as variable as that of the instruments which he

works with, and both require to be managed with much judgment and discretion. The common

ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom

defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse,

than the mechanic who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth, and more

difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however,

being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of

the other, whose whole attention, from morning till night, is commonly occupied in

performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the

country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either

business or curiosity has led to converse much with both. In China and Indostan, accordingly,

both the rank and the wages of country labourers are said to be superior to those of the greater

part of artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so everywhere, if corporation

laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it.

 

The superiority which the industry of the towns has everywhere in Europe over that of the

country, is not altogether owing to corporations and corporation laws. It is supported by many

other regulations. The high duties upon foreign manufactures, and upon all goods imported by

alien merchants, all tend to the same purpose. Corporation laws enable the inhabitants of

towns to raise their prices, without fearing to be undersold by the free competition of their

own countrymen. Those other regulations secure them equally against that of foreigners. The

enhancement of price occasioned by both is everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farmers,

and labourers, of the country, who have seldom opposed the establishment of such

monopolies. They have commonly neither inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations;

and the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them, that the

private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part, of the society, is the general interest of the

whole.

 

In Great Britain, the superiority of the industry of the towns over that of the country seems to

have been greater formerly than in the present times. The wages of country labour approach

nearer to those of manufacturing labour, and the profits of stock employed in agriculture to

those of trading and manufacturing stock, than they are said to have none in the last century,

or in the beginning of the present. This change may be regarded as the necessary, though very

late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the industry of the towns. The

stocks accumulated in them come in time to be so great, that it can no longer be employed

with the ancient profit in that species of industry which is peculiar to them. That industry has

its limits like every other ; and the increase of stock, by increasing the competition,

necessarily reduces the profit. The lowering of profit in the town forces out stock to the

country, where, by creating a new demand for country labour, it necessarily raises its wages. It

then spreads itself, if I my say so, over the face of the land, and, by being employed in

agriculture, is in part restored to the country, at the expense of which, in a great measure, it

had originally been accumulated in the town. That everywhere in Europe the greatest

improvements of the country have been owing to such over flowings of the stock originally

accumulated in the towns, I shall endeavour to shew hereafter, and at the same time to

demonstrate, that though some countries have, by this course, attained to a considerable

degree of opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be disturbed and

interrupted by innumerable accidents, and, in every respect, contrary to the order of nature and

of reason The interests, prejudices, laws, and customs, which have given occasion to it, I shall

endeavour to explain as fully and distinctly as I can in the third and fourth books of this

Inquiry.

 

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the

conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It

is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or

would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the

same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such

assemblies, much less to render them necessary.

 

A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names

and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals

who might never otherwise be known to one another, and