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
A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most
fertile corn field. Two crops in the year, from thirty to sixty bushels
each, are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its
cultivation, therefore, requires more labour, a much greater surplus
remains after maintaining all that labour. In those rice countries,
therefore, where rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the
people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a
greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than
in corn countries. In Carolina, where the planters, as in other British
colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords, and where rent,
consequently, is confounded with profit, the cultivation of rice is found
to be more profitable than that of corn, though their fields produce only
one crop in the year, and though, from the prevalence of the customs of
Europe, rice is not there the common and favourite vegetable food of the
people.
A good rice field is a bog at all seasons, and at one season a bog covered
with water. It is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard, or,
indeed, for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men; and
the lands which are fit for those purposes are not fit for rice. Even in
the rice countries, therefore, the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the
rent of the other cultivated land which can never be turned to that
produce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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