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

liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows. One of the greatest
improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first
invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save
his own labour.

All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the
inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many
improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the
machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade;
and some by that of those who are called philosophers, or men of
speculation, whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe
every thing, and who, upon that account, are often capable of
combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar
objects in the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes,
like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and
occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other
employment, too, it is subdivided into a great number of different
branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or
class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in
philosophy, as well as in every other business, improve dexterity, and
saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar
branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science
is considerably increased by it.

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 comes to the same thing, for the price of a great
quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have
occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has
occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the
different ranks of the society.

Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer
in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the
number of people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part,
has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all
computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the
day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of
the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the
sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the
scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many
others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even
this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must
have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those
workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the