An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
General
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 lake 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 of 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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