Page:The wealth of nations, volume 2.djvu/54

 Part of the capital of the master manufacturer is employed as a fixed capital in the instruments of his trade, and replaces, together with its profits, that of some other artificer of whom he purchases them. Part of his circulating capital is employed in purchasing materials, and replaces, with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and miners of whom he purchases them. But a great part of it is always, either annually, or in a much shorter period, distributed among the different workmen whom he employs. It augments the value of those materials by their wages, and by their masters&#39; profits upon the whole stock of wages, materials, and instruments of trade employed in the business. It puts immediately into motion, therefore, a much greater quantity of productive labor, and adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labor of the society than an equal capital in the hands of any wholesale merchant. No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labor than that of the farmer. Not only his laboring servants, but his laboring cattle, are productive laborers. In agriculture, too, nature labors along with man&#59; and though her labor costs no expense, its produce has its value, as well as that of the most expensive workmen. The most important operations of agriculture seem intended not so much to increase, though they do that, too, as to direct the fertility of nature toward the production of the plants most profitable to man. A field overgrown with briars and brambles may frequently produce as great a quantity of vegetables as the best cultivated vineyard or cornfield. Planting and tillage frequently regulate more than they animate the active fertility of nature; and after all their labor, a great part of the work