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

the farm in this manner

produces without expense, must always be much smaller than the whole

quantity of butcher’s meat which is reared upon it; and in times of wealth

and luxury, what is rare, with only nearly equal merit, is always preferred

to what is common. As wealth and luxury increase, therefore, in consequence

of improvement and cultivation, the price of poultry gradually rises above

that of butcher’s meat, till at last it gets so high, that it becomes

profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. When it has got

to this height, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more land would soon be

turned to this purpose. In several provinces of France, the feeding of

poultry is considered as a very important article in rural economy, and

sufficiently profitable to encourage the farmer to raise a considerable

quantity of Indian corn and buckwheat for this purpose. A middling farmer

will there sometimes have four hundred fowls in his yard. The feeding of

poultry seems scarce yet to be generally considered as a matter of so much

importance in England. They are certainly, however, dearer in England than

in France, as England receives considerable supplies from France. In the

progress of improvements, the period at which every particular sort of

animal food is dearest, must naturally be that which immediately precedes

the general practice of cultivating land for the sake of raising it. For

some time before this practice becomes general, the scarcity must

necessarily raise the price. After it has become general, new methods of

feeding are commonly fallen upon, which enable the farmer to raise upon the

same quantity of ground a much greater quantity of that particular sort of

animal food. The plenty not only obliges him to sell cheaper, but, in

consequence of these improvements, he can afford to sell cheaper; for if he

could not afford it, the plenty would not be of long continuance. It has

been probably in this manner that the introduction of clover, turnips,

carrots, cabbages, etc. has contributed to sink the common price of

butcher’s meat in the London market, somewhat below what it was about the

beginning of the last century.

 

The hog, that finds his food among ordure, and greedily devours many things

rejected by every other useful animal, is, like poultry, originally kept as

a save-all. As long as the number of such animals, which can thus be reared

at little or no expense, is fully sufficient to supply the demand, this sort

of butcher’s meat comes to market at a much lower price than any other. But

when the demand rises beyond what this quantity can supply, when it becomes

necessary to raise food on purpose for feeding and fattening hogs, in the

same manner as for feeding and fattening other cattle, the price necessarily

rises, and becomes proportionably either higher or lower than that of other

butcher’s meat, according as the nature of the country, and the state of its

agriculture, happen to render the feeding of hogs more or less expensive

than that of other cattle. In France, according to Mr Buffon, the price of

pork is nearly equal to that of beef. In most parts of Great Britain it is

at present somewhat higher.

 

The great rise in the price both of hogs and poultry, has, in Great Britain,

been frequently imputed to the diminution of the number of cottagers and

other small occupiers of land ; an event which has in every part of Europe

been the immediate forerunner of improvement and better cultivation, but

which at the same time may have contributed to raise the price of those

articles, both somewhat sooner and somewhat faster than it would otherwise

have risen. As the poorest family can often maintain a cat or a dog without

any expense, so the poorest occupiers of land can commonly maintain a few

poultry, or a sow and a few pigs, at very little. The little offals of their

own table, their whey, skimmed milk, and butter milk, supply those animals

with a part of their food, and they find the rest in the neighbouring

fields, without doing any sensible damage to any body. By diminishing the

number of those small occupiers, therefore, the quantity of this sort of

provisions, which is thus produced at little or no expense, must certainly

have been a good deal diminished, and their price must consequently have

been raised both sooner and faster than it would otherwise have risen.

Sooner or later, however, in the progress of improvement, it must at any

rate have risen to the utmost height to which it is capable of rising ; or

to the price which pays the labour and expense of cultivating the land which

furnishes them with food, as well as these are paid upon the greater part of

other cultivated land.

 

The business of the dairy, like the feeding of hogs and poultry, is

originally carried on as a save-all. The cattle necessarily kept upon the

farm produce more milk than either the rearing of their own young, or the

consumption of the farmer’s family requires ; and they produce most at one

particular season. But of all the productions of land, milk is perhaps the

most perishable. In the warm season, when it is most abundant, it will

scarce keep four-and-twenty hours. The farmer, by making it into fresh

butter, stores a small part of it for a week ; by making it into salt butter,

for a year ; and by making it into cheese, he stores a much greater part of

it for several years. Part of all these is reserved for the use of his own

family; the rest goes to market, in order to find the best price which is to

be had, and which can scarce be so low is to discourage him from sending

thither whatever is over and above the use of his own family. If it is very

low indeed, he will be likely to manage his dairy in a very slovenly and

dirty manner, and will scarce, perhaps, think it worth while to have a

particular room or building on purpose for it, but will suffer the business

to be carried on amidst the smoke, filth, and nastiness of his own kitchen,

as was the case of almost all the farmers’ dairies in Scotland thirty or

forty years ago, and as is the case of many of them still. The same causes

which gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat, the increase of the

demand, and, in consequence of the improvement of the country, the

diminution of the quantity which can be fed at little or no expense, raise,

in the same manner, that of the produce of the dairy, of which the price

naturally connects with that of butcher’s meat, or with the expense of

feeding cattle. The increase of price pays for more labour, care, and

cleanliness. The dairy becomes more worthy of the farmer’s attention, and

the quality of its produce gradually improves. The price at last gets so

high, that it becomes worth while to employ some of the most fertile and

best cultivated lands in feeding cattle merely for the purpose of the dairy

; and when it has got to this height, it cannot well go higher. If it did,

more land would soon be turned to this purpose. It seems to have got to this

height through the greater part of England, where much good land is commonly

employed in this manner. If you except the neighbourhood of a few

considerable towns, it seems not yet to have got to this height anywhere in

Scotland, where common farmers seldom employ much good land in raising food

for cattle, merely for the purpose of the dairy. The price of the produce,

though it has risen very considerably within these few years, is probably

still too low to admit of it. The inferiority of the quality, indeed,

compared with that of the produce of English dairies, is fully equal to that

of the price. But this inferiority of quality is, perhaps, rather the effect

of this lowness of price, than the cause of it. Though the quality was much

better, the greater part of what is brought to market could not, I

apprehend, in the present circumstances of the country, be disposed of at a

much better price; and the present price, it is probable, would not pay the

expense of the land and labour necessary for producing a much better

quality. Through the greater part of England, notwithstanding the

superiority of price, the dairy is not reckoned a more profitable employment

of land than the raising of corn, or the fattening of cattle, the two great

objects of agriculture. Through the greater part of Scotland, therefore, it

cannot yet be even so profitable.

 

The lands of no country, it is evident, can ever be completely cultivated

and improved, till once the price of every produce, which human industry is

obliged to raise upon them, has got so high as to pay for the expense of

complete improvement and cultivation. In order to do this, the price of each

particular produce must be sufficient, first, to pay the rent of good corn

land, as it is that which regulates the rent of the greater part of other

cultivated land; and, secondly, to pay the labour and expense of the farmer,

as well as they are commonly paid upon good corn land ; or, in other words,

to replace with the ordinary profits the stock which he employs about it.

This rise in the price of each particular produce; must evidently be

previous to the improvement and cultivation of the land which is destined

for raising it. Gain is the end of all improvement; and nothing could

deserve that name, of which loss was to be the necessary consequence. But

loss must be the necessary consequence of improving land for the sake of a

produce of which the price could never bring back the expense. If the

complete improvement and cultivation of the country be, as it most certainly

is, the greatest of all public advantages, this rise in the price of all

those different sorts of rude produce, instead of being considered as a

public calamity, ought to be regarded as the necessary forerunner and

attendant of the greatest of all public advantages.

 

This rise, too, in the nominal or money price of all those different sorts

of rude produce, has been the effect, not of any degradation in the value of

silver, but of a rise in their real price. They have become worth, not only

a greater quantity of silver, but a greater quantity of labour and

subsistence than before. As it costs a greater quantity of labour and

subsistence to bring them to market, so, when they are brought thither they

represent, or are equivalent to a greater quantity.

 

Third Sort. � The third and last sort of rude produce, of which the price

naturally rises in the progress of improvement, is that in which the

efficacy of human industry, in augmenting the quantity, is either limited or

uncertain. Though the real price of this sort of rude produce, therefore,

naturally tends to rise in the progress of improvement, yet, according as

different accidents happen to render the efforts of human industry more or

less successful in augmenting the quantity, it may happen sometimes even to

fall, sometimes to continue the same, in very different periods of

improvement, and sometimes to rise more or less in the same period.

 

There are some sorts of rude produce which nature has rendered a kind of

appendages to other sorts; so that the quantity of the one which any country

can afford, is necessarily limited by that of the other. The quantity of

wool or of raw hides, for example, which any country