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
There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be
carried on nowhere but in a great town. A porter, for example, can find
employment and subsistence in no other place. A village is by much too
narrow a sphere for him; even an ordinary market-town is scarce large
enough to afford him constant occupation. In the lone houses and very
small villages which are scattered about in so desert a country as the
highlands of Scotland, every farmer must be butcher, baker, and brewer,
for his own family. In such situations we can scarce expect to find even
a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles of
another of the same trade. The scattered families that live at eight or
ten miles distance from the nearest of them, must learn to perform
themselves a great number of little pieces of work, for which, in more
populous countries, they would call in the assistance of these workmen.
Country workmen are almost everywhere obliged to apply themselves to all
the different branches of industry that have so much affinity to one
another as to be employed about the same sort of materials. A country
carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood; a country
smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The former is not only
a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood,
as well as a wheel-wright, a plough-wright, a cart and waggon-maker. The
employments of the latter are still more various. It is impossible there
should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland
parts of the highlands of Scotland. Such a workman at the rate of a
thousand nails a-day, and three hundred working days in the year, will
make three hundred thousand nails in the year. But in such a situation
it would be impossible to dispose of one thousand, that is, of one day's
work in the year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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