Smith, Adam

Adam (1723-1790), a noted Scottish professor of political economy. He was the son of a customs officer of Fifeshire. He was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. He held the professorship of moral philosophy at Glasgow for twelve years. He then resigned and traveled in France as tutor to a young nobleman, after which he settled down at Edinburgh to round out his life with study and writing. He lived simply, and was noted for hospitality. His first published work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments, an examination of the motives of those who work unselfishly for others. The work on which his fame rests, however, is The Wealth of Nations, the first systematic treatise on political economy. The fact that it appeared in 1776 shows how little the American Revolution occupied the minds of European scholars. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that Smith advocated free trade and fair play. Some notion of his views may be had from two quotations. Speaking of fair wages for working people, he says:

It is but equity that those who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Having in mind the wretched, ill-fed, ill-paid operatives in the British factories, he said:

Our merchants and manufacturers complain much of the effect of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale, of their goods both at home and abroad; they say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with respect to the pernicious effects of their own gains; they complain only of those of other people.