# A Master — The Wealth of Nations character guide

> A Master in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** a master

**First appearance:** 0011-viii-of-the-wages-of-labour

## Snapshot

The unnamed employer whose household and workshop Smith keeps returning to, the quiet test case for every claim about wages, labor, and the invisible hand.

## Who they are

He never speaks, never appears, yet his decisions ripple through Smith's examples of how labor is hired, divided, and paid. The tension is structural: he wants profit, his workers want subsistence, and the bargain between them is never equal. Reading him closely reveals how Smith turns a single employer's ledger into a theory of the whole commercial order.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wealth_of_nations_se/characters/a_master
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wealth_of_nations_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wealth_of_nations_se/characters