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THE NATURE AN1) CAUSES

CHAP. III.

That the Division of Labour is limited by theExtent of the Market.

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to thedivision of labour, so the extent of this division must alwaysbe limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, bythe extent of the market. When the market is very small,no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himselfentirely to one employment, for want of the power to ex-change all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour,which is over and above his own consumption, for such partsof 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 no where but in a great town. Aporter, for example, can find employment and subsistence inno other place. A village is by much too narrow a spherefor him; even an ordinary market-town is scarce large enoughto afford him constant occupation. In the lone housesand very small villages which are scattered about in sodesert a country as the Highlands of Scotland , every farmermust be butcher, baker, and brewer for his own family. Insuch situations we can scarce expect to find even a smith, acarpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles ofanother of the same trade. The scattered families that liveat eight or ten miles’ distance from the nearest of them mustlearn to perform themselves a great number of littlp piecesof work, for which, in more populous countries, they wouldcall in the assistance of those workmen. Country workmenare almost every where obliged to apply themselves to all thedifferent branches of industry that have so much affinity toone another as to be employed about tliesame sort of materials.A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is madeof wood; a country smith in every sort of work that is madeof iron. The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, acabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-wright, a plough-wright, a cart and waggon maker. Theemployments of the latter are still more various. It is im-possible there should be such a trade as even that of a nailerin the remote and inland parts of the Highlands of Scotland .Such a workman at the rate of a thousand nails a day, andthree hundred working days in the year, will make threehundred thousand nails in the year. But in such a situation