Adam Smith Document Worksheet

If you want an extra credit assignment, you may complete the worksheet given out in class today using the documents below.

Document 1 – Adam Smith

It is not from the benevolence [goodness] of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
...By pursuing his own interest, [man] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

Document 2 – Adam Smith

The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.

Document 3 – Adam Smith

The property which every man has is his own labor; as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred… To hinder [prevent] him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor is a plain violation of this most sacred property.

Document 4 – Adam Smith

Where competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are all endeavoring [trying] to jostle one another out of employment, obliges every man to endeavor to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness...

Document 5 – Adam Smith

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition ... is so powerful, that it is alone… capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity.

Document 6 – Adam Smith

Such is the delicacy of man alone, that no object is produced to his liking. He finds that in everything there is need for improvement.... The whole industry of human life is employed not in procuring the supply of our three humble necessities, food, clothes and lodging, but in procuring the conveniences of it according to the nicety and delicacy of our tastes.

Document 7 – Adam Smith

Capital has been silently and gradually accumulated by the private frugality [thriftiness] and good conduct of individuals, by their universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort to better their own condition. It is this effort… which has maintained the progress of England towards opulence [wealth] and improvement in almost all former times...

Document 8 – Adam Smith

The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is ... that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence [carelessness].

Document 9 – Adam Smith

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign [ruler] has only three duties to attend to ... first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, so far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain...

Document 10 – Adam Smith

In exchanging the complete manufacture either for money, for labor, or for other goods over and above what may be sufficient to pay the price of the materials 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… 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.