"An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adam Smith)

market. When the market is very small, no person can have any
encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want
of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his
own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such
parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for.

There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can
be carried on nowhere but in a great town. A porter, for example, can
find employment and subsistence in no other place. A village is by
much too narrow a sphere for him; even an ordinary market-town is
scarce large enough to afford him constant occupation. In the lone
houses and very small villages which are scattered about in so desert
a country as the highlands of Scotland, every farmer must be butcher,
baker, and brewer, for his own family. In such situations we can
scarce expect to find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within
less than twenty miles of another of the same trade. The scattered
families that live at eight or ten miles distance from the nearest of
them, must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces
of work, for which, in more populous countries, they would call in the
assistance of those workmen. Country workmen are almost everywhere
obliged to apply themselves to all the different branches of industry
that have so much affinity to one another as to be employed about the
same sort of materials. A country carpenter deals in every sort of
work that is made of wood; a country smith in every sort of work that
is made of iron. The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a
cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-wright, a
plough-wright, a cart and waggon-maker. The employments of the latter
are still more various. It is impossible there should be such a trade
as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland parts of the
highlands of Scotland. Such a workman at the rate of a thousand nails
a-day, and three hundred working days in the year, will make three
hundred thousand nails in the year. But in such a situation it would
be impossible to dispose of one thousand, that is, of one day's work
in the year. As by means of water-carriage, a more extensive market is
opened to every sort of industry than what land-carriage alone can
afford it, so it is upon the sea-coast, and along the banks of
navigable rivers, that industry of every kind naturally begins to
subdivide and improve itself, and it is frequently not till a long
time after that those improvements extend themselves to the inland
parts of the country. A broad-wheeled waggon, attended by two men, and
drawn by eight horses, in about six weeks time, carries and brings
back between London and Edinburgh near four ton weight of goods. In
about the same time a ship navigated by six or eight men, and sailing
between the ports of London and Leith, frequently carries and brings
back two hundred ton weight of goods. Six or eight men, therefore, by
the help of water-carriage, can carry and bring back, in the same
time, the same quantity of goods between London and Edinburgh as fifty
broad-wheeled waggons, attended by a hundred men, and drawn by four
hundred horses. Upon two hundred tons of goods, therefore, carried by
the cheapest land-carriage from London to Edinburgh, there must be