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

separation of different trades and employments from one another, seems
to have taken place in consequence of this advantage. This separation,
too, is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the
highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one
man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of several in an
improved one. In every improved society, the farmer is generally
nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer.
The labour, too, which is necessary to produce any one complete
manufacture, is almost always divided among a great number of hands.
How many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen and
woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the wool, to
the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers
of the cloth! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so
many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one
business from another, as manufactures. It is impossible to separate
so entirely the business of the grazier from that of the corn-farmer,
as the trade of the carpenter is commonly separated from that of the
smith. The 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. The occasions for those
different sorts of labour returning with the different seasons of the
year, it is impossible that one man should be constantly employed in
any one of them. This impossibility of making so complete and entire a
separation of all the different branches of labour employed in
agriculture, is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the
productive powers of labour, in this art, does not always keep pace
with their improvement in manufactures. The most opulent nations,
indeed, generally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as
in manufactures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their
superiority in the latter than in the former. Their lands are in
general better cultivated, and having more labour and expense bestowed
upon them, produce more in proportion to the extent and natural
fertility of the ground. But this superiority of produce is seldom
much more than in proportion to the superiority of labour and expense.
In agriculture, the labour of the rich country is not always much more
productive than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so much
more productive, as it commonly is in manufactures. The corn of the
rich country, therefore, will not always, in the same degree of
goodness, come cheaper to market than that of the poor. The corn of
Poland, in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as that of France,
notwithstanding the superior opulence and improvement of the latter
country. The corn of France is, in the corn-provinces, fully as good,
and in most years nearly about the same price with the corn of
England, though, in opulence and improvement, France is perhaps
inferior to England. The corn-lands of England, however, are better
cultivated than those of France, and the corn-lands of France are said
to be much better cultivated than those of Poland. But though 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, at