revenue or profit without changing masters, or circulating any further. Such
capitals, therefore, may very properly be called fixed capitals.

Different occupations require very different proportions between the fixed
and circulating capitals employed in them.

The capital of a merchant, for example, is altogether a circulating capital.
He has occasion for no machines or instruments of trade, unless his shop or
warehouse be considered as such.

Some part of the capital of every master artificer or manufacturer must be
fixed in the instruments of his trade. This part, however, is very small in
some, and very great in others, A master tailor requires no other
instruments of trade but a parcel of needles. Those of the master shoemaker
are a little, though but a very little, more expensive. Those of the weaver
rise a good deal above those of the shoemaker. The far greater part of the
capital of all such master artificers, however, is circulated either in the
wages of their workmen, or in the price of their materials, and repaid, with
a profit, by the price of the work.

In other works a much greater fixed capital is required. In a great
iron-work, for example, the furnace for melting the ore, the forge, the
slit-mill, are instruments of trade which cannot be erected without a very
great expense. In coal works, and mines of every kind, the machinery
necessary, both for drawing out the water, and for other purposes, is
frequently still more expensive.

That part of the capital of the farmer which is employed in the instruments
of agriculture is a fixed, that which is employed in the wages and
maintenance of his labouring servants is a circulating capital. He makes a