Introduction (Book II) - Page 2

workmen in every branch of
business generally increases with the division of labour in that branch; or
rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and
subdivide themselves in this manner.

As the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this
great improvement in the productive powers of labour, so that accumulation
naturally leads to this improvement. The person who employs his stock in
maintaining labour, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to
produce as great a quantity of work as possible. He endeavours, therefore,
both to make among his workmen the most proper distribution of employment,
and to furnish them with the best machines which he can either invent or
afford to purchase. His abilities, in both these respects, are generally in
proportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it
can employ. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every
country with the increase of the stock which employs it, but, in consequence
of that increase, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater
quantity of work.

Such are in general the effects of the increase of stock upon industry and
its productive powers.

In the following book, I have endeavoured to explain the nature of stock,
the effects of its accumulation into capital of different kinds, and the
effects of the different employments of those capitals. This book is divided
into five chapters. In the first chapter, I have endeavoured to shew what
are the different parts or branches into which the stock, either of an
individual, or of a great society, naturally divides itself. In the second,
I have endeavoured to explain the nature and operation of money, considered
as a particular branch of the general stock of the society. The stock which
is accumulated into a capital, may either be employed by the person to whom
it belongs, or it may be lent to some other person. In the third and fourth
chapters, I have endeavoured to examine the manner in which it operates in
both these situations. The fifth and last chapter treats of the different
effects which the different employments of capital immediately produce upon
the quantity, both of national industry, and of the annual produce of land
and labour.