Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1909 - Economics - 1004 pages
 

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Page 121 - One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head ; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations ; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another ; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is in this manner divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands,...
Page 202 - It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.
Page 121 - I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day.
Page 426 - Happily, there is nothing in the laws of Value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up ; the theory of the subject is complete...
Page 749 - But the best state for human nature, is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
Page 201 - The laws and conditions of the Production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths.
Page 281 - Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.
Page 572 - It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race.
Page 750 - It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a yery poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character ; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.
Page 761 - In the present stage of human progress, when ideas of equality are daily spreading more widely among the poorer classes, and can no longer be checked by anything short of the entire suppression of printed discussion and even of freedom of speech, it is not to be expected that the division of the human race into two hereditary classes, employers and employed, can be permanently maintained.

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