A handbook of political economy1858 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abundance accumulation of capital advantage amount be large annual income BANK CHARTER ACT capitalist cloth coin consequence consist consumers corn cost of labour crease cultivation currency demand for labour diminish diminution dispose dities division of labour duce duction effect employed enjoyments exchangeable value expended fertile foreign trade greater importance improvement increase of capital increase of wealth industry J. S. Mill labouring classes Macculloch machinery manufactures means of obtaining mode modities money in circulation nation natural necessaries and conveniences object occasion one-tenth or one-thousandth pairs of stockings pins political economy portion Portugal possession precious metals productive labour productive powers proportion purchase quantity of commodities quantity of gold quantity of labour quantity of money rate of profit raw produce reduce regulation rent Ricardo rise society soil supply suppose surplus tain taxation taxes thing tion value of money wages whole quantity workman
Popular passages
Page 13 - 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 77 - THE annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.
Page 92 - The produce of the earth— all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery and capital, is divided among three classes of the community, namely the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated.
Page 14 - But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day...
Page 24 - But when the division of labour has once been thoroughly introduced, the produce of a man's own labour can supply but a very small part of his occasional wants. The far greater part of them are supplied by the produce of other men's labour, which he purchases with the produce, or, what is the same thing, with the price of the produce of his own.
Page 13 - ... could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater From Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
Page 80 - First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases the quantity of the work he can perform ; and the division of labour, by reducing every man's business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman.
Page 90 - It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what...
Page 94 - In order to decide this point, it must be considered, that value is a relative term ; that the value of a commodity is not a name for an inherent and substantive quality of the thing itself, but means the quantity of other things which can be obtained in exchange for it.
Page 87 - No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone...