In his An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations Adam Smith set out an analytic scheme which has proved immensely influential in deciding the framework within which later generations have discussed economic growth, and in associating capitalism with that growth. At the beginning of the first chapter of the book Adam Smith told the parable of the pinmakers. It was intended to drive home the huge scale of the gain in output per man that could be attained by a suitable division of labour. Having described the way in which pin manufacture could be broken down in eighteen distinct operations, and having referred to his visit to a small manufactory employing ten men capable of producing a total of 48,000 pins or more each day, he concluded:

Adam Smith went on to make it clear that what held true for pin manufacture also applied to ‘every other art and manufacture’, though he was careful to stress that it applied only to a much lesser degree in agriculture where ‘the ploughman, the harrower, the sower of seed, and the reaper of the corn’ were perforce one and the same and there was therefore less opportunity to specialise.