in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure
them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other
places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land
produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same
thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _They give
a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the
expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_;
and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it,
that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than
they could have obtained it before. _The cultivators get a better
price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other
conveniences which they have occasion for._ They are thus both
encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further
improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility
of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of
the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its
fertility_. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and
afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets.
_For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse
manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the
expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved
manufacture easily may._ In a small bulk it frequently contains the
price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth,
for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the
price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several
thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working
people, and of their immediate employers. _The corn which could with
difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this
manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and
may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world._"