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Materials of manufacture are the inputs that get destroyed, transformed, or otherwise used up in the production process. The term is roughly equivalent to circulating capital, and it contrasts with instruments of trade.
Materials of Manufacture Quotes in The Wealth of Nations
The The Wealth of Nations quotes below are all either spoken by Materials of Manufacture or refer to Materials of Manufacture. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
Every fixed capital is both originally derived from, and requires to be continually supported by, a circulating capital. All useful machines and instruments of trade are originally derived from a circulating capital, which furnishes the materials of which they are made, and the maintenance of the workmen who make them. They require, too, a capital of the same kind to keep them in constant repair.
No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital. The most useful machines and instruments of trade will produce nothing, without the circulating capital, which affords the materials they are employed upon, and the maintenance of the workmen who employ them. Land, however improved, will yield no revenue without a circulating capital, which maintains the labourers who cultivate and collect its produce.
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Book 3, Chapter 1
Quotes
The inhabitants of the town, and those of the country, are mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work, and the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation.
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Materials of Manufacture Term Timeline in The Wealth of Nations
The timeline below shows where the term Materials of Manufacture appears in The Wealth of Nations. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Chapter 6
...such as farmers who own the land they plant and artisans who purchase their own materials. In more developed economies with more specialized divisions of labor, rent and profit make up...
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Book 1, Chapter 8
...wages and maintenance) and the value of what the farm produces. Similarly, master artisans lend materials to their apprentices, pay their wages, and take a share of what they produce as...
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...revenue (more income than its people need to survive) and surplus stock (more capital and materials than its existing labor capacity can make use of). The combination of surplus revenue and...
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Book 1, Chapter 10
If young workers could instead start out as journeymen, paying for the materials they use and getting paid for their work, they would learn faster and more cheaply....
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Book 1, Chapter 11
...the growth in wages. In a few trades, like carpentry, the rising cost of raw materials more than offsets productivity gains, which causes total prices to increase over time. But in...
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Book 2, Chapter 1
...Finally, society’s circulating capital stock also has four parts: money, merchants’ unsold provisions, unused raw materials, and manufacturers’ finished but unsold products.
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As these provisions, raw materials, and unsold products get sold, they either go to replenish the stock reserved for consumption,...
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Book 2, Chapter 2
The expense of maintaining circulating capital—producing new provisions, raw materials, and unsold products to replace those that have been turned into fixed capital or the...
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...simply an expense that produces no revenue. But it can also take the form of “materials, tools, and provisions” of manufacture, which does add to society’s revenue. This is the wiser...
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Book 2, Chapter 5
Manufacturers use their capital to buy the instruments (fixed capital) and materials (circulating capital) that they need to make their products, as well as to pay their...
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Book 4, Chapter 8
...help domestic business produce goods cheaply actually do the opposite. It discourages the exportation of materials of manufacture and instruments of trade, while encouraging the importation of the materials but not...
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Book 5, Chapter 2
...and drawbacks, while creating different import duties for different commodities. There are no duties for materials of manufacture, while imports that would compete with domestic manufactured goods are completely prohibited. Most...
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