In that hierarchy of activities which Smith had drawn up according to the varying degree of utility each possessed for the nation, Smith had placed agriculture first. Say preserved the order, but placed alongside of agriculture “all capital employed in utilising any of the productive forces of nature. An ingenious machine may produce more than the equivalent of the interest on the capital it has cost to produce, and society enjoys the benefit in lower prices.”[268] This sentence is not found in the edition of 1803, and appears only in the second edition. Say in the meantime had been managing his factory at Auchy-les-Hesdins, and he had profited by his experience. This question of machinery, which was merely touched on by Smith in a short passage, finds a larger place in every successive edition of Say’s work. The general adoption of machinery by manufacturers both in England and France frequently incited the workers to riot. Say does not fail to demonstrate its advantages. At first he admits that the Government might mitigate the resulting evils by confining the employment of machinery at the outset to certain districts where labour is scarce or is employed in other branches of production.[269] But by the beginning of the fifth edition he changed his advice and declared that such intervention involved interference with the inventor’s property,[270] admitting only that the Government might set up works of public utility in order to employ those men who are thrown out of employment on account of the introduction of machinery.