in a great proportion as labour comes to be more and more subdivided; and as
the operations of each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree of
simplicity, a variety of new machines come to be invented for facilitating
and abridging those operations. As the division of labour advances,
therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of
workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and
tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things, must
be accumulated before-hand. But the number of workmen in every branch of
business generally increases with the division of labour in that branch; or
rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and
subdivide themselves in this manner.

As the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this
great improvement in the productive powers of labour, so that accumulation
naturally leads to this improvement. The person who employs his stock in
maintaining labour, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to
produce as great a quantity of work as possible. He endeavours, therefore,
both to make among his workmen the most proper distribution of employment,
and to furnish them with the best machines which he can either invent or
afford to purchase. His abilities, in both these respects, are generally in
proportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it
can employ. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every
country with the increase of the stock which employs it, but, in consequence
of that increase, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater
quantity of work.

Such are in general the effects of the increase of stock upon industry and
its productive powers.

In the following book, I have endeavoured to explain the nature of stock,