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In reality, high profits tend much more to raise the price of

work than high wages. If, in the linen manufacture, for example,

the wages of the different working people, the flax-dressers, the

spinners, the weavers, etc. should all of them be advanced

twopence a-day, it would be necessary to heighten the price of a

piece of linen only by a number of twopences equal to the number

of people that had been employed about it, multiplied by the

number of days during which they had been so employed. That part

of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into the

wages, would, through all the different stages of the

manufacture, rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of

wages. But if the profits of all the different employers of those

working people should be raised five per cent. that part of the

price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would,

through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise in

geometrical proportion to this rise of profit.