Adam Smith was born 300 years ago this Friday, on 16 June, 1723. Now that we are in the month of his birth, tercentenary birthday parties are picking up pace. Adam Smith was known for his unassuming manner, and quite conceivably, he would have marked the occasion of his anniversary with his favourite leisure activity, a solitary walk on the Scottish coast, rather than with having toasts raised in his honour at a gala.
Adam Smith might have kept a low profile personally, but he did not shy from starting out with a bang in his writing. The first chapter of the first book of The Wealth of Nations, On the Division of Labour, catches the reader’s attention on the first page with a practical demonstration:
“To take an example, … the trade of the pinmaker; a workman not educated to this business … nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it … could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on … the important business of making a pin is divided into about eighteen distinct operations … I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and … they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day.”
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