to the labourer; and the quantity of labour commonly em-
ployed in acquiring or producing any commodity, is the only
circumstance which can regulate the quantity of labour
which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange
for.

As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particu-
lar persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting
to work industrious people, whom they will supply with
materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit 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 ma-
terials, 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 prin-
ciples, 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 em-
ployed at the rate of fifteen pounds a year each, or at the
expence of three hundred a year in each manufactory. Let

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