CHAPTER III.

THAT THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IS LIMITED BY THE EXTENT OF THE MARKET.

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of
this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the
extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement
to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that
surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption,
for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for.

There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere
but in a great town. A porter, for example, can find employment and subsistence in no other
place. A village is by much too narrow a sphere for him; even an ordinary market-town is
scarce large enough to afford him constant occupation. In the lone houses and very small
villages which are scattered about in so desert a country as the highlands of Scotland, every
farmer must be butcher, baker, and brewer, for his own family. In such situations we can
scarce expect to find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles of
another of the same trade. The scattered families that live at eight or ten miles distance from
the nearest of them, must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces of work,
for which, in more populous countries, they would call in the assistance of those workmen.
Country workmen are almost everywhere obliged to apply themselves to all the different
branches of industry that have so much affinity to one another as to be employed about the
same sort of materials. A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood ;
a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The former is not only a carpenter,
but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-wright, a
plough-wright, a cart and waggon-maker. The employments of the latter are still more
various. It is impossible there should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and