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
The price of flax resolves itself into the same three parts as that of
corn. In the price of linen we must add to this price the wages of the
flax-dresser, of the spinner, of the weaver, of the bleacher, &c.
together with the profits of their respective employers.
As any particular commodity comes to be more manufactured, that part of
the price which resolves itself into wages and profit, comes to be
greater in proportion to that which resolves itself into rent. In the
progress of the manufacture, not only the number of profits increase,
but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because the
capital from which it is derived must always be greater. The capital
which employs the weavers, for example, must be greater than that which
employs the spinners; because it not only replaces that capital with its
profits, but pays, besides, the wages of the weavers: and the profits
must always bear some proportion to the capital.
In the most improved societies, however, there are always a few
commodities of which the price resolves itself into two parts only, the
wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and a still smaller number,
in which it consists altogether in the wages of labour. In the price of
sea-fish, for example, one part pays the labour of the fisherman, and
the other the profits of the capital employed in the fishery. Rent very
seldom makes any part of it, though it does sometimes, as I shall shew
hereafter. It is otherwise, at least through the greater part of Europe,
in river fisheries. A salmon fishery pays a rent; and rent, though it
cannot well be called the rent of land, makes a part of the price of a
salmon, as well as wages and profit. In some parts of Scotland, a few
poor people make a trade of gathering, along the sea-shore, those little
variegated stones commonly known by the name of Scotch pebbles. The
price which is paid to them by the stone-cutter, is altogether the wages
of their labour; neither rent nor profit makes any part of it.
But the whole price of any commodity must still finally resolve itself
into some one or other or all of those three parts; as whatever part of
it remains after paying the rent of the land, and the price of the whole
labour employed in raising, manufacturing, and bringing it to market,
must necessarily be profit to somebody.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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