by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the
materials. In exchanging the complete manufacture either for money, for
labour, or for other goods, over and above what may be sufficient to pay the
price of the materials, and the wages of the workmen, something must be given
for the profits of the undertaker of the work, who hazards his stock in this
adventure. The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore,
resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their
wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of
materials and wages which he advanced. He could have no interest to employ
them, unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than
what was sufficient to replace his stock to him ; and he could have no
interest to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless his profits
were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock.

The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought, are only a different name
for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspection and
direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite
different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship,
or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction. They
are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater
or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock. Let us suppose, for
example, that in some particular place, where the common annual profits of
manufacturing stock are ten per cent. there are two different manufactures,
in each of which twenty workmen are employed, at the rate of fifteen pounds
a year each, or at the expense of three hundred a-year in each manufactory.
Let us suppose, too, that the coarse materials annually wrought up in the
one cost only seven hundred pounds, while the finer materials in the other
cost seven thousand. The capital annually employed in the one will, in this
case, amount only to one thousand pounds; whereas that employed in the other
will amount to seven thousand three hundred pounds. At the rate of ten per