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

least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation, of
the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper than
those of England, because the silk manufacture, at least under the
present high duties upon the importation of raw silk, does not so well
suit the climate of England as that of France. But the hardware and
the coarse woollens of England are beyond all comparison superior to
those of France, and much cheaper, too, in the same degree of
goodness. In Poland there are said to be scarce any manufactures of
any kind, a few of those coarser household manufactures excepted,
without which no country can well subsist.

This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of
the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of
performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the
increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the
saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species
of work to another; and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of
machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do
the work of many.

First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workmen, 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. A common
smith, who, though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been
used to make nails, if, upon some particular occasion, he is obliged
to attempt it, will scarce, I am assured, be able to make above two or
three hundred nails in a day, and those, too, very bad ones. A smith
who has been accustomed to make nails, but whose sole or principal
business has not been that of a nailer, can seldom, with his utmost
diligence, make more than eight hundred or a thousand nails in a day.
I have seen several boys, under twenty years of age, who had never
exercised any other trade but that of making nails, and who, when they
exerted themselves, could make, each of them, upwards of two thousand
three hundred nails in a day. The making of a nail, however, is by no
means one of the simplest operations. The same person blows the
bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the iron,
and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head, too, he is
obliged to change his tools. The different operations into which the
making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them
much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it
has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater.
The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures
are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had
never seen them, he supposed capable of acquiring.

Secondly, The advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly
lost in passing from one sort of work to another, is much greater than
we should at first view be apt to imagine it. It is impossible to pass