An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
In order, however, that this equality may take place in the whole of their
advantages or disadvantages, three things are requisite, even where there
is the most perfect freedom. First the employments must be well known and
long established in the neighbourhood; secondly, they must be in their
ordinary, or what may be called their natural state; and, thirdly, they
must be the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.
First, this equality can take place only in those employments which are
well known, and have been long established in the neighbourhood.
Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new
than in old trades. When a projector attempts to establish a new
manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments,
by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or than the
nature of his work would otherwise require; and a considerable time must
pass away before he can venture to reduce them to the common level.
Manufactures for which the demand arises altogether from fashion and
fancy, are continually changing, and seldom last long enough to be
considered as old established manufactures. Those, on the contrary, for
which the demand arises chiefly from use or necessity, are less liable to
change, and the same form or fabric may continue in demand for whole
centuries together. The wages of labour, therefore, are likely to be
higher in manufactures of the former, than in those of the latter kind.
Birmingham deals chiefly in manufactures of the former kind; Sheffield in
those of the latter; and the wages of labour in those two different places
are said to be suitable to this difference in the nature of their
manufactures.
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
the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits
sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they
are quite otherwise; but, in general, they bear no regular proportion to
those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds,
they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes
thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the
level of other trades.
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 ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of those
employments.
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