The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

requires less machinery and buildings and a smaller stock of materials. ↩

Below, here. ↩

Only true if “commodity” be understood to include solely goods which constitute income. ↩

The “whole annual produce” must be taken to mean the income and not the whole mass of goods produced, including those which perish or are used up in the creation of others. ↩

Some parts of this “other revenue,” viz., interest and taxes, are mentioned in the next paragraph. It is perhaps also intended to include the rent of houses; see below, here and here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “sale of his work.” ↩

Below, here through here. ↩

Eds. 1⁠–⁠3 read “was.” ↩

The chapter follows Lectures, pp. 173⁠–⁠182, very closely. ↩

Below, chaps. viii and ix. ↩

Below, chap. xi. ↩

The same phrase occurs below, here and here. ↩

Above, here and note 237. ↩

Ed. 1, beginning three lines higher up, reads “according as the greatness of the deficiency increases more or less the eagerness of this competition. The same deficiency.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “the competitors.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “fall short of it.” ↩

See below, here. ↩

Repeated below, here. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “more.” ↩

They are called profits simply because all the gains of the master-manufacturer are called profits. They can scarcely be said to have been “considered” at all; if they had been, they would doubtless have been pronounced to be, in the words of the next paragraph, “the effects of a particular accident,” namely, the possession of peculiar knowledge on the part of the dyer. ↩

Ed. 1 places “for whole centuries together” here instead of in the line above. ↩

See below, here through here. Playfair, in a note on this passage, ed. Wealth of Nations, 1805, vol. i, p. 97, says: “This observation about corporations and apprenticeships scarcely applies at all to the present day. In London, for example, the freemen only can carry on certain businesses within the city: there is not one of those businesses that may not be carried on elsewhere, and the produce sold in the city. If Mr. Smith’s principle applied, goods would be dearer in Cheapside than in Bond Street, which is not the case.” ↩

Above, here, and below, here. ↩

In Lectures, p. 168, the Egyptian practice is attributed to “a law of Sesostris.” ↩

The same nine words occur above, p. 49, in ed. 2 and later Eds. ↩

The word “cheaper” is defined by the next sentence as “produced by a smaller quantity of labour.” ↩

It would be less confusing if the sentence ran: “But though all things would have become cheaper in the sense just attributed to the word, yet in the sense in which the words cheaper and dearer are ordinarily used many things might have become dearer than before.” ↩

I.e., “would in the ordinary sense of the word be five times dearer than before.” ↩

I.e., “in the sense attributed to the word above.” ↩

If the amount of labour necessary for the acquisition of a thing measures its value, “twice as cheap” means simply, twice as easy to acquire. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “of whatever produce.” ↩

The provision of tools to work with and buildings to work in is forgotten. ↩

Cp. with this account that given at the beginning of chap. vi, pp. 49, 50 above. ↩

Ed. 1 reads, “The masters being fewer in number can not only combine more easily, but the law authorises their combinations, or at least does not prohibit them.” ↩

E.g., 7 Geo. I, stat. 1, c. 13, as to London tailors; 12 Geo. I, c. 34, as to wool-combers and weavers; 12 Geo. I, c. 35, as to brick and tile makers within fifteen miles of London; 22 Geo. II, c. 27, § 12, as to persons employed in the woollen manufacture and many others. ↩

The word is used as elsewhere in Adam Smith without the implication of falsity now attached to it: a pretence is simply something put forward. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “either.” ↩

Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, 1755, pp. 42⁠–⁠47. The “seems” is not meaningless, as Cantillon is unusually obscure in the passage referred to. It is not clear whether he intends to include the woman’s earnings or not. ↩

I.e., before completing their seventeenth year, as stated by Dr. Halley, quoted by Cantillon, Essai, pp. 42, 43. ↩

Contillon himself, p. 44, says: “C’est une matière qui n’admet pas un calcul exact, et dans laquelle la précision n’est pas même fort nécessaire, il suffit qu’on ne s’y éloigne pas beaucoup de la réalité.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “them.” ↩

There is no attempt to define “maintenance,” and consequently the division of a man’s revenue into what is necessary for his maintenance and what is over and above is left perfectly vague. ↩

It seems to be implied here that keeping a menial servant, even