The Wealth of Nations Is Published
Next: March 9, 2027
The book that started economics.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 9 March 1776, when An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in London in two volumes, printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Its author, the Scottish thinker Adam Smith, had been Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. The book set out to explain how nations grow rich, through the division of labour, trade and markets, and it became a founding work of modern economics.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but economists, teachers and libraries remember the anniversary, and the full text can be read free online. It is a good day to read its famous first chapter, on how a team of workers makes pins, and to think about how many hands it took to make the things on your desk.
Did you know
- Smith described a small workshop where ten men, each doing a few of about eighteen steps, could make upwards of 48,000 pins a day; working alone, each might not have made twenty.
- The first edition had more than 1,000 pages, no preface and no index, and sold for one pound sixteen shillings.
- Smith wrote that China had long been one of the richest, most fertile, best cultivated and most populous countries in the world.
Coming up next
- International Day of Women Judges · March 10, 2027
- World Plumbing Day · March 11, 2027
- The Web's Birthday · March 12, 2027
- Discovery of Uranus · March 13, 2027
- White Day · March 14, 2027
- Pi Day · March 14, 2027