An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

by Adam Smith

annual labour

is the fund

necessaries and conveniencies of life which it an...

scantiness

The causes of this improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the order according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the first book of this Inquiry.

The number of useful and productive labourers,

is everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work,

capital stock,

Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry.

agriculture, the Industry of the country.

Though those different plans were,

first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to,

their consequences upon the general welfare ...

they have given occasion to very different theories of ...

some magnify the importance of that industry which is ca...

others of that which is carried on in...

sovereign

The fifth and last book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth.

shew,

which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society, and which of them, by that of some particular part o...

what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute towards defraying the expense...

what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts;

real wealth,

IMPROVEMENT IN

PRODUCTIVE POWERS

LA...

The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour,

seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

the trade of a pin-maker:

But if they had all wrought separately and independently,

they certainly could not each of them have made twenty,

in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

The division of labour,

occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour.

The nature of agriculture,

does not admit of so many subdivisions of labour,

as manufa...

gr...

spinner is almost always a distinct person from the weaver;

but the ploughman, the harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often the same.

opulent

the poor country, notwithstanding the

inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its manufactures,

high duties

first, to the increase of dexterity

in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object, than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things.

who had occasion to use the machines. Many improvements have been made

and some by that of those who are called philosophers, or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing, and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects in the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular

class of citizens.