60. Explanation of the use of the advances of capitals in
enterprises of industry; on their returns and the profits they
ought to produce.
In early times, he that employed labouring people under him,
furnished the materials himself, and paid from day to day the
salaries of the workmen. It was the cultivator or the owner
himself that gave to the spinner the hemp he had gathered, and he
maintained her during the time of her working. Thence he passed
the yarn to a weaver, to whom he gave every day the salary agreed
upon. But those slight daily advances can only take place in the
coarsest works. A vast number of arts, and even of those arts
indispensable for the use of the most indigent members of
society, require that the same materials should pass through many
different hands, and undergo, during a considerable space of
time, difficult and various operations. I have already mentioned
the preparation of leather, of which shoes are made. Whoever has
seen the workhouse of a tanner, cannot help feeling the absolute
impossibility of one, or even several indigent persons providing
themselves with leather, lime, tan, utensils, etc. and causing the
requisite buildings to be erected to put the tan house to work,
and of their living during a certain space of time, till their
leather can be sold. In this art, and many others, must not those
that work on it have learned the craft before they presume to
touch the materials, lest they should waste them in their first
trials? Here then is another absolute necessity of advances. Who
shall now collect the materials for the manufactory, the
ingredients, the requisite utensils for their preparation? Who is
to construct canals, markets, and buildings of every
denomination? How shall that multitude of workmen subsist till
the time of their leather being sold, and of whom none
individually would be able to prepare a single skin; and where
the emolument of the sale of a single skin could not afford
subsistence to any one of them? Who shall defray the expences for
the instruction of the pupils and apprentices? Who shall maintain
them until they are sufficiently instructed, guiding them
gradually from an easy labour proportionate to their age, to
works that demand more vigour and ability? It must then be one of
those proprietors of capitals, or moveable accumulated property
that must employ them, supplying them with advances in part for
the construction and purchase of materials, and partly for the
daily salaries of the workmen that are preparing them. It is he
that must expect the sale of the leather, which is to return him
not only his advances, but also an emolument sufficient to
indemnify him for what his money would have procured him, had he
turned it to the acquisition of lands, and moreover of the salary
due to his troubles and care, to his risque, and even to his
skill; for surely, upon equal profits, he would have preferred
living without solicitude, on the revenue of land, which he could
have purchased with the same capital. In proportion as this
capital returns to him by the sale of his works, he employs it in
new purchases for supporting his family and maintaining his
manufactory; by this continual circulation, he lives on his
profits, and lays by in store what he can spare to increase his
stock, and to advance his enterprize by augmenting the mass of
his capital, in order proportionably to augment his profits.
