labourers. The women return to their parents,
and commonly spin, in order to make
clothes for themselves and their families.
Even the independent workmen do not always
work for public sale, but are employed by
some of their neighbours in manufactures for
family use. The produce of their labour,
therefore, frequently makes no figure in those
public registers, of which the records are sometimes
published with so much parade, and
from which our merchants and manufacturers
would often vainly pretend to announce the
prosperity or declension of the greatest empires.
Though the variations in the price of labour
not only do not always correspond with those
in the price of provisions, but are frequently
quite opposite, we must not, upon this account,
imagine that the price of provisions has
no influence upon that of labour. The money
price of labour is necessarily regulated by two
circumstances; the demand for labour, and
the price of the necessaries and conveniencies
of life. The demand for labour, according as
it happens to be increasing, stationary, or declining,
or to require an increasing, stationary,
or declining population, determines the
quantities of the necessaries and conveniencies
of life which must be given to the labourer;
and the money price of labour is determined
by what is requisite for purchasing this quantity.
Though the money price of labour,
therefore, is sometimes high where the price
of provisions is low, it would be still higher,
the demand continuing the same, if the price
of provisions was high.
It is because the demand for labour increases
in years of sudden and extraordinary
plenty, and diminishes in those of sudden and
extraordinary scarcity, that the money price of
labour sometimes rises in the one, and sinks
in the other.
In a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty,
there are funds in the hands of many of
the employers of industry, sufficient to maintain
and employ a greater number of industrious
people than had been employed the year
before; and this extraordinary number cannot
always be had. Those masters, therefore, who
want more workmen, bid against one another,
in order to get them, which sometimes raises
both the real and the money price of their labour.
The contrary of this happens in a year of
sudden and extraordinary scarcity. The funds
destined for employing industry are less than
they had been the year before. A considerable
number of people are thrown out of employment,
who bid one against another, in order
to get it, which sometimes lowers both the
real and the money price of labour. In 1740,
a year of extraordinary scarcity, many people
were willing to work for bare subsistence. In
the succeeding years of plenty, it was more
difficult to get labourers and servants.
The scarcity of a dear year, by diminishing
the demand for labour, tends to lower its
price, as the high price of provisions tends to
raise it. The plenty of a cheap year, on the
contrary, by increasing the demand, tends to
raise the price of labour, as the cheapness of
provisions tends to lower it. In the ordinary
variations of the prices of provisions, those
two opposite causes seem to counterbalance
one another, which is probably, in part, the
reason why the wages of labour are everywhere
so much more steady and permanent
than the price of provisions.
The increase in the wages of labour necessarily
increases the price of many commodities,
by increasing that part of it which resolves
itself into wages, and so far tends to diminish
their consumption, both at home and abroad.
The same cause, however, which raises the
wages of labour, the increase of stock, tends
to increase its productive powers, and to make
a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater
quantity of work. The owner of the stock
which employs a great number of labourers
necessarily endeavours, for his own advantage,
to make such a proper division and distribution
of employment, that they may be enabled
to produce the greatest quantity of work possible.
For the same reason, he endeavours to
supply them with the best machinery which
either he or they can think of. What takes
place among the labourers in a particular
workhouse, takes place, for the same reason,
among those of a great society. The greater
their number, the more they naturally divide
themselves into different classes and subdivisions
of employments. More heads are occupied
in inventing the most proper machinery
for executing the work of each, and it is,
therefore, more likely to be invented. There
are many commodities, therefore, which, in
consequence of these improvements, come to
be produced by so much less labour than before,
that the increase of its price is more than
compensated by the diminution of its quantity.
CHAP. IX.
OF THE PROFITS OF STOCK.
The rise and fall in the profits of stock depend
upon the same causes with the rise and
fall in the wages of labour, the increasing or
declining state of the wealth of the society;
but those causes affect the one and the other
very differently.
The increase of stock, which raises wages,
tends to lower profit. When the stocks of
many rich merchants are turned into the same
trade, their mutual competition naturally tends
to lower its profit; and when there is a like