Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/80

Rh during several months until the leather is sold. In this Craft, and in many others, must not those who work at it have learned the trade before they venture to touch the materials, which they would spoil in their first attempts? Here, then, is another advance indispensable. Who, in the next place, will collect the materials for the work, the ingredients and the tools necessary for the process? Who will get canals, market halls, all the different kinds of buildings constructed? Who will enable that great number of Workmen to live until the leather is sold, of whom none could prepare a single skin by himself? considering, moreover, that the profit on the sale of a single tanned hide could not furnish subsistence for any one of them. Who will defray the expenses for the instruction of Pupils and Apprentices? Who will procure for them the means of subsistence until they are taught, by enabling them to pass step by step from labour which is easy and proportioned to their age to labours which demand the utmost vigour and ability? It will be one of those Possessors of capitals, or of moveable accumulated values, who will employ them, partly in advances for the construction of the establishment and for the purchases of materials, partly for the daily wages of the Workmen who labour in the preparation (of the commodities). It is he who will wait for the sale of the leather to return to him not only all his advances but a profit in addition, sufficient to make up to him for what his money would have been worth to him if he had employed it in the purchase of an estate; and, furthermore, for the wages due to his labours, his cares, his risks, and even his skill; for doubtless, if the profit were the same,