Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/79

52 only their arms to maintain them, it was necessary that those who thus lived on wages should begin by having something in advance, either to procure the materials upon which to labour, or to maintain them while waiting for the payment of their wages.

S60
Further explanations as to the employment of the advance of capitals in enterprises of industry, as to their return, & as to the profit they ought to yield.

In the earliest times he who set men to work furnished the materials himself and paid from day to day the wages of the Workman. It was the Cultivator or the Proprietor himself that gave to the Spinner the hemp he had gathered, and maintained her during the time of her working; then he handed over the yarn to a Weaver, to whom he gave every day the wages agreed upon; but these slight daily advances could be sufficient only for works of the simplest and roughest kind. A great number of Crafts, and even of the Crafts engaged in by the poorest Members of the Society, require that the same material should pass through a crowd of different hands, and undergo for a very long time exceedingly difficult and various operations. I have already mentioned the preparation of the leather whereof shoes are made: whoever has seen the establishment of a Tanner realises the absolute impossibility of one poor man, or even of several poor men, providing themselves with hides, lime, tan, utensils, etc., getting the buildings erected which are necessary for setting a Tan-house in operation, and living