Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/33

 children is certainly more productive than one which affords only two; so the labor of farmers and country laborers is certainly more productive than that of merchants, artificers and manufacturers. The superior produce of the one class, however, does not render the other barren or unproductive.

Secondly, it seems, upon this account, altogether improper to consider artificers, manufacturers and merchants in the same light as menial servants. The labor of menial servants does not continue the existence of the fund which maintains and employs them. Their maintenance and employment is altogether at the expense of their masters, and the work which they perform is not of a nature to repay that expense. That work consists in services which perish generally in the very instant of their performance, and does not fix or realize itself in any vendible commodity which can replace the value of their wages and maintenance. The labor, on the contrary, of artificers, manufacturers and merchants naturally does fix and realize itself in some such vendible commodity. It is upon this account that, in the chapter in which I treat of productive and unproductive labor, I have classed artificers, manufacturers and merchants among the productive laborers, and menial servants among the barren or unproductive.

Thirdly, it seems, upon every supposition, improper to say that the labor of artificers, manufacturers and merchants does not increase the real revenue of the society. Though we should suppose, for example, as it seems to be supposed in this system, that the value of the daily, monthly, and yearly consumption of this class was exactly equal to that of its daily, monthly, and yearly production; yet it would not from thence follow that its labor added nothing to the real revenue, to the real value of the annual produce of the