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Q U E S T I O N S 
 
 OF THE 
 
 D A Y: 
 
 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. WILLIAM ELDER 
 
 Library. 
 
 P II I L A D E L P II I A : 
 HKNUY (JAIiKY 13 A HID, 
 
 INDUSTRIAL PUI 
 
 406 Walnut Street. 
 
 1871. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871. by 
 
 W LIjLIAM EL.DER, 
 in the (Uhce ot the Librarian of ( oiigress. at Washing-ton, ]).(. 
 
 HlN!\VALT & BRiiWN, 1 KINTEnS, 
 PCMi BuiMlng, S. W. comer 7th and Cbcstuut Hi.-., 
 r 1 1 i i \ i> i. i- II I A . 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE purpose governing in the composition of this treatise was 
 not so much the discussion and settlement of the questions involved 
 in the matters now occupying the people of the United States, and 
 awaiting solution hy the thinkers and voters of the day, as a desire 
 to help the popular investigation, by suggesting the underlying 
 principles which must, at last, solve all the problems of public 
 policy. Aware of the difficulties of my task, I intended, at the 
 beginning of my work, to give it the unassuming title of STUDIES 
 in Political Economy. I intended nothing else or more, and felt 
 that T must avoid the pretentious claim of a comprehensive or 
 conclusive treatment of all the subjects, or all the principles prom 
 ised by such a title as " The Causes of the Wealth of Nations," or 
 those more frequently adopted by the higher authorities, " Princi 
 ples, or Elements, of Political Economy;" and I must be allowed, 
 also, to say, in the personal confidence which a preface allows 
 between an author and his readers, that under terror of the failures 
 made, and in sight of the wrecks that strew this uncharted sea of 
 speculation, and the disrepute into which the writers on Political 
 Economy have fallen, I felt anxious to avoid even the most miti 
 gated form of the old reproach. This feeling drove me upon the 
 choice of a title less appropriate, but chosen because it is less alarm 
 ing to the common sense of the reading public. I would not cheat 
 the reader by the label upon the back of my book, but T would not 
 deter him from opening it. My purpose is to provoke and assist 
 inquiry in matters of such practical importance as those herein 
 discussed, and the title page must not be allowed to scare away the 
 reader. 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 This book is, nevertheless, in spirit and purpose, a series of studies 
 in the principles which rule the questions of the time the practical 
 questions, which the people are engaged in settling into the policy 
 of their social and economic conduct. It is an outlook upon public 
 affairs, taken from an American observatory, and its discussions are 
 " calculated," as astronomers say, for the Western Hemisphere. 
 
 Holding that Political Economy is National in its purview and 
 range, as opposed to abstract, general, or cosmopolitan, T am content" 
 that my thoughts shall be understood to proceed from so narrow a 
 stand-point of observation; nor would it embarrass m in the least 
 if my doctrines should foe pronounced not only American, but even 
 Pennsylvanian, in spirit and inspiration, for I would have them 
 something certain, settled, and actual, rather than the general and 
 universal that comprises everything, and belongs to nothing in 
 particular. For the reason that in the study of man, I would take 
 for examination a completely representative individual neither a 
 giant nor a dwarf, an idiot nor a genius, but an average well-rounded 
 and well-balanced man, I adopt what I take to bo a. community 
 whose forces, functions, and attainments best answer as a standard 
 of societary policy; and the reader may as well be apprised in 
 advance, that this book is written under the conviction that tlio 
 United States is the field of inquiry which, better than any other, 
 promises the whole truth in matters of political, economic, and social 
 speculation ; and, that Pennsylvania, by its eminently representative 
 character, is the focal point of the great facts which the nation 
 offers for instructive study. This State is neither eminently com 
 mercial, agricultural, nor manufacturing. It is neither so near the 
 sea as to lose its nationality, nor so far from its coast as to be inju 
 riously separated from the outside world. Its climnte and soil do 
 not arbitrarily determine or restrict its industries, but it has, in all 
 things, that happy balance of economic interests, and such a diver 
 sity of nationalities in its population, as assures it a condition and 
 position of equilibrium ; or, let me say, in my vernacular, American 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 English, enables her to carry her head "level" in economic and 
 political questions. 
 
 There is more meaning than appears at lirst sight in her sobriquet, 
 the Keystone State. Such a claim as this will doubtless be disputed 
 by every other State in the Union. Perhaps, not one of them would 
 concede her this rank as against itself ., but if the point were sub 
 mitted to the arbitration of a general vote, she would carry the 
 majority handsomely, as the majority has voted with her in every 
 Presidential election since the formation of the Federal Union. 
 
 It is not preeminence in any special excellence that we are here 
 insisting upon, but, on the contrary, it is the very absence of any 
 thing like such unevenuess in her characteristics that gives her the 
 position of an exemplar in economic policy. If there is anything 
 in a complete diversification of resources and of industries, and in 
 the resulting perfect division of productive labor, she has it. It is 
 this that makes her a model for the study of economists, and it is 
 from this rounded entirety of her character that her distinguished 
 Political Economists, Frederick List, Henry C. Carey, and Stephen 
 Colwell derived the data and drift of their studies. Upon the 
 system of the first named, who confessed that he learned here all 
 that he afterwards taught, we have the verdict of Germany s accept 
 ance and practical adoption, and that verdict, besides, vindicated 
 by the astonishing achievements which have recently resulted from 
 a long-continued and persistent conformity to its principles and 
 policy. Such has been the influence of Professor List upon the 
 policy and destiny of Prussia, that it is safe to say that if he had 
 not guided its industrial system, a Uismarck, a Moltke, and an 
 Emperor of Germany would have been impossible to-day. 
 
 Northern Europe has already recognized Mr. Caroy (named 
 second here only because later in date), as the Authority of the 
 new time, and Interpreter of its new necessities; and I venture to 
 predict that the last in the order of date and labor, Mr. Colwell, 
 will, in due time be recognized as one of the greater lights in the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 firmament of the science when the fermentation of the problems of 
 Finance shall come to take a settled and certain form. 
 
 The inconvenience and the labor of assigning to the several 
 authors, who have been my teachers and helpers in the study of 
 my subjects, their respective shares in the matter that I have used, 
 and the overloading of my pages with such frequent acknowledg 
 ments as are due to them would have compelled, determined me to 
 decline the task. But I had another reason or reasons for so doing ; 
 promiscuous reading and study through many years, renders it quite 
 impossible for me to trace home to its sources the information 
 obtained and used ; besides, I would not willingly assume to settle 
 the claims to originality for even the principal matters borrowed from 
 them. Moreover, I would hesitate to make my authorities respon 
 sible for my use of their facts and doctrines by quoting them in 
 foot notes. 
 
 ITcre, however, I am bound to say that my indebtedness to Mr. 
 Carey is so great that only those who are intimately acquainted 
 with his works can duly estimate it. I believe that no future 
 writer upon any of the subjects embraced in the wide field of his 
 studies will be able to do much more, to any purpose, than give his 
 doctrines some required difference of presentment and application. 
 
 Tn like manner, I would acknowledge the heaviest obligations to 
 Frederick List. Alexander Hamilton, and to Stephen Colwell. To 
 Parke Godwin, Esq., I am indebted largely for matter used freely 
 in my second and third introductory chapters; and to Horace 
 Greeley, and the domestic and foreign correspondents of the Tribune, 
 for valuable information employed in discussing the current coopera 
 tive movements of the time. 
 
 It will doubtless occur to the reader that Taxation and National 
 Finance are among the most considerable and pressing "questions 
 of the day." They hold, indeed, such a place among the topics now 
 under popular and official consideration, that all other subjects of 
 public interest actually converge in them. T intended to embrace 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 them, but had not advanced very fur in their treatment until I 
 found that they must be reserved fur a separate treatise, if they 
 were to be discussed to any purpose. There are no questions of 
 public affairs so much debated, and none that so much need a more 
 critical examination than they receive in the controversies main 
 tained upon them; moreover, there are none more difficult of 
 treatment. In my apprehension of them, I should be obliged to 
 confront the opinions that now rule in the administration of our 
 State and National affairs. I can neither agree with the policy 
 of the National Treasury, nor with the most influential conductors 
 of the public press. The discussion would be one unbroken con 
 troversy, requiring room, arrangement, and readers wholly incon 
 sistent with the purpose and drift of the other parts of this treatise. 
 The closing chapters in the division entitled Guaranty ism, are 
 intended to awaken attention to the great social question of the 
 time the strife between labor and capital. He would be a bold 
 man who would assume to settle this last and most difficult problem 
 that has ever yet arisen in the progress of civilization a question 
 upon whose happy solution and settlement depends the general 
 welfare in an eminent degree. Every earnest man s best help is 
 due to it, and I have contributed what under the circumstances I 
 could. For the faults which admit of no fair justification those 
 for which I am fully responsible I have no right to offer any 
 apology. 
 
 W. E. 
 
 1824 MT. VEIINOX STREET, 
 
 Philadelphia, June, 1871. 
 
TITLES OF THE CHAPTERS. 
 
 THAI-TICK. 
 
 1. iNTUonucTOHY. Political Economy 
 
 [j Formation of Society 14 
 
 HI. Civilization 20 
 
 \y Migration and Occupation of the Eatth 33 
 
 V. Wealth the Laws and Conditions of its Growth ... 40 
 
 VI. Sources of Advancement in Wealth Sii 
 
 VII. Population Law of Increase 70 
 
 Yin. Distribution of Wealth Wages 85 
 
 IX. Money, as an Exchanger of Values 106 
 
 X. Money, as a Producer while acting as an Exchanger 120 
 
 XL Paper Money, and incidentally, of Banks 133 
 
 XII. Commerce 157 
 
 III 1. Trade hetweeik-Natioiis in diverse Geographic, and Eco 
 
 nomic Conditions 176 
 
 XIV. Free Trade and Protection 100 
 
 XV. Doctrine and Policy of Protection 204 
 
 XVI. The most Prominent and Plausible Objections to Pro 
 tection v 221 
 
 XVII. Protection in the Historic Nations 235 
 
 XVIII. Guarantyism 247 
 
 XIX. Secret Societies 204 
 
 XX. Coo j oration Survey of the Field 281 
 
 XXI. Stores, Manufactories, Banks 295 
 
 XXII. In the United States 315 
 
 8 
 
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 INTR OD UCTOR Y. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Definition of Political Economy; its subjects. Individuality and Association, 
 the centripetal and centrifugal forces of society. Their material analogues. 
 A man the type of a society. Province of Political Economy limited while 
 its bearings are unbounded. What it teaches the Statesman, the Moralist, and 
 the Religionist. 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY is the theory of human well-being, in its 
 relations with the production, distribution, and consumption of 
 wealth. 
 
 Its subjects are man and those external things which minister to 
 his earthly wants. It is concerned with his mental and moral 
 nature, so far as these are involved in his societary relations, and, 
 with his physical necessities, and those material things which are 
 made to satisfy them. 
 
 OF MAN AS A SUBJECT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Association with his fellow-men is the first and greatest neces 
 sity of man s life. It is indispensable to his intellectual and social 
 faculties, and equally so to his physical welfare. For the care and 
 culture of his body, mind, and morals, and for their due enjoy 
 ments, he depends upon others from birth till death. 
 
 For the best service of his industrial powers, he requires the 
 largest and most direct commerce with the world around him. 
 2 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Every individual soul holds beneficial relations with every created 
 thing, and is crippled in the proportion that it is deprived of inter 
 change, possession, and enjoyment. The attractive impulses of his 
 constitution, which answer to this large range of relations, gather 
 men into families, communities, states, and nations, and engage 
 them in a commerce of ideas, commodities, and enterprises with 
 each other and with the world. Trade, travel, and correspondence 
 spring from them, and the highest forms and richest fruits of human 
 development are due to them. This associative attraction is ana 
 logous to the material law of gravitation, which groups the atoms of 
 the universe in planets, solar systems, and constellations; ordering 
 and collocating them around their several centres; the local centres 
 by counter attraction, holding each group in its own sphere and 
 office, and every individual of each group in its appropriate position. 
 
 This tendency to unity would produce the evil of uniformity in 
 character, and of centralization in place, if it were not counter 
 balanced by the equally essential provision for securing and de 
 veloping his Individuality. It is the related diiferences of indi 
 viduals which evoke their qualities and stimulate their growth. 
 Gregarious animals are too much alike to educate each other into 
 higher capabilities; but men, differing in tastes, feelings, and capa 
 cities, play perpetually upon each other s powers, and develop them 
 by the mutual action and reaction of social commerce; their dis- 
 tinctiveness ever growing in the ratio of the number and variety of 
 the relations subsisting between them. Savage society, even within 
 its limited range of mutual services and dependencies, develops the 
 individual, diversifies the character, and enriches the aggregate of 
 the horde, by considerably multiplying the functions and modifying 
 the faculties of its members. But it is in civilized societies that the 
 immense number of mental and social affinities and industrial inter 
 changes have opportunity to display their power in the development 
 of the highest individuality through the most varied and complete 
 association. 
 
 The operation of these two forces Association and Individu 
 ality are thus reciprocal and corroborative in enhancing each 
 other and in promoting the progress of the man, the community, 
 and the race. 
 
 It is a universal law of matter, animate and inanimate, that dif 
 ference of quality, condition, or position, excites a manifestation of 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY. 11 
 
 force and an interchange of activities. In chemistry, new com 
 binations give new and varied powers to the atoms of matter ; in 
 astronomy, difference of position and magnitude give rise to and 
 determine the motions of the celestial bodies. Association and 
 individuality are exact correlatives of the centripetal and centrifu 
 gal forces which hold the orbs at their appropriate distances from 
 their centres, and propel them in their respective orbits; they cor 
 respond also to that counterbalance of cohesion and repulsion 
 which keeps the particles of bodies in position, and gives them 
 freedom, while it enforces order and harmony in action. Especially 
 arid 4 eminently, association and individuality obtain in the organism 
 of the human body, in which a thousand different functions are 
 secured in their specialty of character and service, while they are 
 perfectly associated and coordinated in integral unity. A man is a 
 society in the least form, and his structure and functions intimate 
 the policy of the larger society, or grand man, to which a complete 
 community conforms. St. Paul (Ephesians iv. 16) finds the ana 
 logue of a perfect Christian society in this individualism and co 
 operation of the constituents of the human frame, and borrows from 
 it an argument and an illustration. He calls the church a perfect 
 man, of which Christ is the head, u from whom the whole body, 
 fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint sup- 
 plieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every 
 part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in 
 love" (or, in harmony). These forces decentralize and diversify the 
 societary organism to secure individual liberty and development, 
 and at the same time coordinate the elements and subordinate their 
 agencies as the harmony of entirety requires. Individuality takes 
 care of the severalties; association organizes them into unity of 
 general uses. 
 
 It is admitted that the individual man has moral and spiritual 
 faculties and necessities which do not fall within the province of 
 political economy proper; and that communities have interests 
 which in like manner lie beyond the jurisdiction of civil govern 
 ment. Yet it must be also admitted that all the interests of this 
 life and, conditionally, of the next, are so far involved in the tem 
 poral welfare of man, as it depends upon material conditions, that 
 political economy stands directly related to politics, morals, and re 
 ligion. It has, therefore, something essential to teach the States- 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 man and the Moralist, as well as the producer, the exchanger, and 
 the consumer of commodities. 
 
 As a system of the laws which govern society, its first principles 
 instruct the Statesman that upon the utmost possible diversification 
 of business pursuits depend the growth, the wealth and the strength 
 of the State, and of the people individually j that, the worth of the 
 infinitely varied capabilities of a people is to be secured and made 
 available to the whole community, only by providing for them a 
 corresponding variety of industrial and social functions. 
 
 The Moralist, who cannot be ignorant of the influence of circum 
 stances upon character and conduct, especially upon that mass of 
 men whose improvement he seeks of all, indeed, except the race* 
 of moral heroes and martyrs may learn how to change the necessi 
 ties, which lead to violation of the social laws, into opportunities, 
 which tend to induce conformity; how enforced idleness and de 
 pendency may be replaced by self-support, and the respect which 
 grows out of it for the rights of property, and the resulting interest 
 felt in the general welfare ; how a partnership in a common pros 
 perity takes away the temptations which have their source and 
 provocation in the wants and necessities of poverty and privation 
 in a word ; he will see and feel the force of the Great Teacher s 
 injunction: Seek first the divine order of society, which He calls 
 the Kingdom of God, that men may be delivered from a dangerous 
 desire for what they shall eat, what they shall drink, or where 
 withal they shall be clothed. (Matthew vi. 31.) 
 
 Nor can the Religionist rightly neglect the study of those first 
 principles in the economy of human society which so deeply concern 
 its spiritual welfare. He must not leave to political policy, to 
 economical and philanthropic endeavor, the whole charge of reform 
 atory enterprise. His Master, who taught self-denial as a means of 
 spiritual discipline, never said a word in commendation of that 
 poverty which means want, ignorance, slavery, despair and death ; 
 but, on the contrary, went about doing good to the bodies, as well 
 as to the souls, of men. The fasting which he approved was not 
 that of beggary or necessity, but the free well-principled restraint 
 of the appetites. Among the beatitudes we do not find a blessing 
 upon poverty in temporal goods, but upon the poor in spirit, nor are 
 they pronounced blessed who suffer for lack of material benefits, but 
 those who hunger and thirst after righteousness ; and those only 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY. 13 
 
 are required to renounce their wealth in whom avarice and covet- 
 ousness are idolatry. 
 
 Thus all who are either teachers or governors, with all who are 
 in any-wise responsible for the well-being of their fellow men, are 
 deeply concerned to know the principles and order which best pro 
 mote it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Of the Formation of Society: History of its progress. EDENISM: Conditions 
 of the primitive race. Communism and social harmony. Suffering not the 
 only source of development. SAVAGISM : Nature in rebellion to human au 
 thority ; fratricidal war. Clans and Hordes. Industry and Cmmerce nar 
 rowly limited. Rule of the strongest. Democracy in government. Property 
 rights held by possession. No international or intertribal law. Liberty with 
 out security. In a true order rights and duties are commensurate, and life is a 
 system of equitable exchanges. Indolence, ignorance, immorality, irreligion, 
 selfishness of the Savage. Dwarfed individuality; association but little larger 
 than the animal instincts prompt ; Commerce, public sentiment, and gen 
 eral ideas of the lowest grade. Analogy to infancy of an individual. North 
 American Indians probably a degenerate race. PATRIARCHISM : The family 
 polity extended to a larger community. The type of all the despotisms. An 
 association that represses individuality. Productive Industry begins, property 
 in the soil recognized, commerce initiated, money used. Men become self-sup 
 plying. Women and children are slaves. Monarchy and political slavery are 
 better. Egyptian bondage more favorable than the rule of the Patriarchs. 
 The system analogous to childhood. BARBARISM : Productive industry, arts 
 and sciences greatly advanced. In advance of civilization of Western Europe 
 previous to the inauguration of the new physical philosophy. Characteristics 
 contrasted with those of civilization. Difference in powers of association and 
 growth of individualitj". Correspondence of all the phases of society to ages in 
 the life of an individual. 
 
 A THEORY of human history, embracing its known facts and sup 
 plying such as are logically necessary to its completeness, must help 
 us in the endeavor to unfold the philosophy of societary organiza 
 tion. It will, at least, serve as a study, though it falls short of 
 demonstration by induction. 
 
 EDENISM. 
 
 The primitive state of man on the earth is a matter of faith to 
 those who believe they have the knowledge of it by divine revela 
 tion, by their authorities, however inspired, or. by accepted tradi 
 tion. The record received by the Christian world from the Jewish 
 
 14 
 
FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 15 
 
 is understood to declare that the first pair were created in the image 
 of their Maker, and were placed in "a garden which the Lord God 
 planted eastward in Eden, in which grew every tree that is pleas 
 ant to the sight and good for food. And God blessed them and 
 said unto them : be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, 
 and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over 
 the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon 
 the earth/ 
 
 The provision for life and happiness was ample. The state of the 
 primal society was perfect innocence, or, total ignorance of evil, and 
 the only labor was "to dress the garden of Eden, and, to keep it." 
 In their food, they were restricted to " herbs bearing seed, and the 
 fruit of trees yielding seed," and, they were naked. Night and 
 day and the varied seasons recurred, but they needed no defenses 
 against the vicissitudes to which their posterity is exposed. 
 
 The necessary fecundity of nature fresh from the hand of the 
 Creator, and the correspondent innocence and happiness of the new- 
 made race of men for whom all things were prepared, gave the idea 
 of the age of Saturn, the golden age, to the Greeks and Romans; 
 the reign of the gods on earth to the Egyptians, and similar con 
 ceptions of a necessary period of peace and happiness to the cos 
 mogonies of the other nations of antiquity, whose mythologies and 
 philosophies have been less completely preserved, but were doubt 
 less received as well authenticated. 
 
 The evidence, revealed, traditional, and presumptive is held suffi 
 cient to prove that man appeared upon the earth after the mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal creatures had provided and furnished it for 
 his comfortable residence and support that, the race was first 
 placed in the temperate zone, and that they there formed a primi 
 tive society wholly unlike those of all subsequent times. 
 
 In such conditions, it is obvious that exclusive property in the 
 soil could not exist, and that an abundant provision for the suste 
 nance of life prevented contests of interests, induced mildness of 
 manners and pacific relations among the parties. While such a 
 state of things continued, war and oppression would be unknown, 
 and men, women and children would live as one family, free from 
 suffering and care. But it is just as obvious that all their happiness 
 would be mainly that of the senses and affections, and but little 
 refined or elevated by the delights of intelligence. 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 We cannot say that such an order of human life must have a 
 limited period ; for it is illogical to affirm that the growth of human 
 faculties, any more than the faculties themselves, must spring from 
 pain, privation, or the want of the conditions of well-being, for this 
 would make evil necessary to the existence of good; but we know 
 that the Edenic period or golden age did fail, whatever may or 
 might have been its distinctive character. 
 
 SAVAGISM. 
 
 The greater part of modern philosophers have declared for the 
 original savagism of men, which though it may be the second phase 
 of human society in actual order, is necessarily the first in contem 
 plation of strictly inductive philosophy, resting, as is its wont, upon 
 observation and experiment exclusively, or upon history, and stop 
 ping short of the First Cause and of deductions from the necessary 
 truths that thence proceed. 
 
 In this stage of societary history the earth is found in a state of 
 disharmony, and the elements and subordinate terrestrial beings, 
 vegetable and animal, in such resistance to man s dominion that 
 life may be called a battle between the sovereign and his legitimate 
 subjects. Then " the ground." as under a curse, brought forth 
 thorns and thistles, the actual dominion over the fowls of the air 
 and the beasts of the field passed away, and, instead, " the fear 
 and the dread" of man fell upon all the inferior creatures that 
 surrounded him, and he became the destroyer of the creatures of 
 which, in happier conditions, he had been the governor and 
 guardian. 
 
 The Edenic harmony of the race also gave way to fratricidal 
 war. The invasion of ferocious beasts and the necessity of seeking 
 subsistence in the chase, caused the invention of destructive weap 
 ons, which were as often employed by men in despoiling and destroy 
 ing each other. The necessity of defense and the means of effective 
 aggression led to the union of families, and of these the horde was 
 formed. 
 
 The industry of savage tribes is confined to hunting, fishing, 
 gathering the forest fruits in their season, and the fabrication of 
 arms, offensive and defensive. Internal trade is extremely limited, 
 productive industry being so inconsiderable, so little varied and so 
 
FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 17 
 
 little skilled, that nearly every man is the fabricator of all the 
 commodities which he uses. Among them there is no useful divi 
 sion of labor in adaptation to special capabilities, and, consequently, 
 no organization and but little improvement of industry. 
 
 Women are in servitude. Man, in right of larger bones and 
 stronger muscles, establishes the law of the strongest, and might 
 becomes right in all the institutions of the tribe, and in its dealings 
 with surrounding tribes. In all questions of internal order and 
 external action, demanding the combined force of the mass, each 
 has a voice. A rude democracy prevails in the appointment of 
 rulers and leaders. The right of property rests in actual possession 
 and occupancy. The common law of the horde, in accordance with 
 this fundamental principle, recognizes the right of gathering the 
 fruits of the forest, of taking wild animals wherever they are found, 
 and, of fishing in all streams. The obligations of justice between 
 tribes are unknown. They acknowledge no international law, and 
 observe the conditions of treaties only so long and so far as they 
 seem convenient and advantageous; and the right of taking the 
 goods of other tribes, by force or fraud, is as clear to them as that 
 of hunting in their forests. A larger license, or less restraint of 
 natural liberty, marks the institutions of the savage than is at all 
 compatible with the system of civilization ; but there is less security 
 for those that are allowed, and, in the same degree, the less real 
 liberty enjoyed. 
 
 In the necessary order of things the largest benefits of society 
 bring with them the largest responsibilities ; duties are commensu 
 rate with rights; enjoyments are in proportion to social relations; 
 and the greater the service obtained from others, the greater the 
 reciprocities demanded. Social life is a system of exchanges ; 
 wrongs inflicted are echoed in injuries received ; equity is a debt, 
 and benevolence is the price of needed kindness. 
 
 Insecurity of property is naturally accompanied by aversion to 
 productive industry which necessarily results in a degraded, igno 
 rant, and dwarfed existence. The stimulant of hope in the future 
 is wanting for the service of the present, and there is no progress. 
 The moral nature of the savage ranges but little beyond the animal 
 instincts, sharpened, but not refined, by his undeveloped intellect, 
 which is less the director than the servant of his passions. His 
 religion is a mixture of fear and selfishness. Having no father God 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 he can have no brother man. He lacks the impulses that prompt 
 to social amelioration, and his interest in posterity is limited to the 
 instinct which centres in his immediate offspring. 
 
 The rudimentary forces of the higher forms of society are all 
 found in the savage community, else the advancement from the 
 lowest to the highest were impossible ; but they are overlaid by the 
 ignorance, indolence and brutality which characterize it. The sen 
 timent of Association has DO nobler reach than the animal passions 
 prompt; that of Individuality has no greater growth than accidental 
 advantages induce. Social commerce but little transcends the gre- 
 gariousness of the irrational races in extent or value; for where 
 there is but little productive industry and no permanent improve 
 ment of land, the exchanges of service must be small, and there can 
 be no educational enterprise, no public sentiment, no general ideas 
 or interests, no corporate feeling, and, neither the man nor the com 
 munity can take the form which promotes the highest ends and 
 aims of life. 
 
 The analogies of individual life affirm and illustrate this general 
 conception. These earliest combinations of men by a just corre 
 spondence are regarded as the Infancy of human society; they are 
 built upon the lowest, most common and earliest developed faculties 
 of man upon the instincts and propensities, with that modicum of 
 intelligence which describes the life of the earliest childhood. In 
 phrenological language the reigning faculties are acquisitiveness, 
 combativeness, secretiveness. cautiousness, sharpness of the percep 
 tive powers; all trained to the service of selfishness ; while the cor 
 rective and directing sentiments of justice, benevolence, veneration 
 and the higher reason are yet inactive. 
 
 There is good ground for believing that savages are in some in 
 stances degenerate races remnants of a social and political wreck. 
 Our North American Indians have lost their history, but they pre 
 serve the traces of a much higher social and political system than 
 they have shown since they became kuown to Europe. It is. there 
 fore, only in relative rank that they are here treated as exhibiting 
 the first or earliest stage of societary organization. We are not con 
 sidering them as subjects of successive, but of contemporaneous his 
 tory, and this for the purpose of exhibiting the spirit, the forces, 
 and the differences of societary constitutions from the simplest to 
 the more complex forms. 
 
FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 19 
 
 PATRIARCIIISM. 
 
 This is the next societary system in an orderly study of our sub 
 ject. It is an advance upon the tribal organization and the economy 
 of the savage horde. In effect it is an extension of the family 
 polity to that of a larger community, in which the Chief has all the 
 absoluteness of the father of a family, and an equally energetic 
 government a despotism, unchecked by the instinctive tenderness 
 of immediate parentage, and marked by such abridgment of the 
 subject s liberties as hinders the development of the individual and 
 the progress of the clan. 
 
 As a community svstem it is circumscribed to a few favoring 
 regions of the earth. The best known and in its best form is the 
 system of the Israelites previous to their captivity in Egypt, It is 
 of little importance, and almost impracticable in modern times. It 
 centralized the community upon the family model, and was incapable 
 of anything approaching a true nationality. In Palestine, after the 
 Egyptian Exodus, it was greatly modified both in sacerdotal and 
 political principles by the institutions of Moses, The Executive of 
 his system held his office by delegation, and not in right of inherit 
 ance until the monarchy of Saul was established, which had arbitrary 
 power in secular affairs ; the Priesthood being at the same time con 
 fided to a single family of the nation. In pure patriarchism the 
 head of the tribe is King. Priest, General and Judge the type of 
 all the various forms of despotism, and tending to all the tyrannies 
 of government endured among men. It is an instance of Associa 
 tion without the conditions which favor or allow Individuality, with 
 its attendant freedom, responsibility and progressiveness, to any 
 considerable or worthy extent. It is, nevertheless, a form of society 
 superior to the wild liberty of savage life. It is a more effective 
 association. The first steps in social progress are made in it. Pro 
 ductive industry begins ; flocks are reared ; the simpler branches of 
 manufacture are undertaken ; property in the soil is recognized to 
 some extent, and in movables, absolutely; exchange of services 
 and values is initiated ; money and other mediums of exchange 
 come into use ; men become attached to the soil which they now 
 own, and they depend upon settled and distributed industries for 
 subsistence. They supply their wants by skill and labor, and no 
 longer live exclusively by spoliation of the forests and rivers. 
 
20 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 But these ameliorating influences are too narrowly limited to 
 provide for any considerable advance of the commonwealth. It is 
 quite as apparent in the history of the patriarchal system of the 
 plains of Asia, as of the Highlands of Scotland, that the head of 
 the great family, though with less of ferocity than the savage Chief, 
 is quite as perfidious and, in effect, as despotic, and as much an 
 oppressor of his subjects. His wife is a slave and his children are 
 servants fur life; all women are either drudges or dishonored ministers 
 of their masters pleasures a system of such inequality and so full 
 of mischief, that the earliest necessities of growing communities 
 require its modification. A single family of two or three generations 
 may endure it, but a considerable population is safer and better in 
 absolute political and personal slavery to masters or monarchs. 
 Egyptian bondage, rigorous as it was, proved more friendly to the 
 welfare of the Israelites than their accustomed tribal institutions 
 would have been in Mesopotamia for in taking care of the family 
 groups, the patriarchal polity had too little control of the federative 
 unity of the tribes, and utterly failed of effecting an association 
 comprehensive and free enough to secure internal peace or external 
 defense, or the advancement of the people either individually or 
 collectively. 
 
 In analogy to an individual life, patriarchism was a government 
 in its childhood, favorable to the stage of development to which it 
 was adapted, but obstructive and repressive of all endeavor towards 
 further advancement an injuriously prolonged minority of the 
 subjects. 
 
 BARBARISM. 
 
 The next well-defined stage of national growth is a large stride 
 in the social, political, industrial, and commercial institutions of a 
 State. Productive industry in a <ireat variety of forms becomes the 
 occupation of the mass of the people; and the arts and sciences 
 receive a great development. Through the Middle Ages the Ma- 
 houiedans of Asia and the Moors in Spain gave noble proofs of the 
 capabilities and brilliant illustration to the polity of Barbarism. It 
 proved itself capable of very great economic success. In mechanic 
 skill the nations which we call civilized in the same age, so far from 
 excelling did not approach them in excellence. In architecture and 
 decorative art they fell but a little way behind Greek and Roman 
 
FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 21 
 
 achievement. In agriculture they were greatly in advance of all 
 western Europe all the service of wealth they had at command ; 
 and in civil policy and military achievement they certainly had no 
 superiors. Indeed, it is hard to find a quality of personal or na 
 tional character in which the} 7 were transcended by the people of 
 the Caucasian race, prior to the inauguration of the new physical 
 philosophy and its wonder-working application in arts and manu 
 factures. 
 
 Barbarism retained the warlike spirit of the savage system and 
 the despotism of the Patriarchal, but it associated men more effec 
 tively for the ends of society, and brought the progress of the race 
 to the verge of the next epoch in its civil advancement. Its char 
 acteristics are most clearly defined by its contrasts with civilization. 
 The chief of these are : Its stationary-spirit, resulting from its doc 
 trine of fatalism and fanatical theocracy; its directness and prompt 
 itude of distributive justice, springing from the free action of the 
 passions and the simplicity of its political forms. Civilization in 
 these respects being marked by its unlimited progressiveness, result 
 ing from its confidence in the dominion of natural laws over the 
 elements and forces of matter, and, by the logical structure of its 
 religious beliefs. Its political institutions have a flexibility and a 
 conformity to the exigencies of the times and to changes of inter 
 national relations, of which Barbarism is entirely incapable ; and its 
 jurisprudence is rendered circuitous by its respect for individual 
 rights, by publicity of procedure, and by responsibility of its official 
 ministers. 
 
 Differences of societary constitutions may be traced to their roots 
 in corresponding differences of mental qualities, and the reflex in 
 fluence of institutions upon national character may be allowed ; 
 but with these questions we are not now concerned, we are only 
 endeavoring distinctive definitions by arraying the actual contrasts 
 between the respective systems which we are considering. Beside 
 those already indicated others are noteworthy. They may be seen 
 sufficiently for all that they suggest in the following tabular array : 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IN BARBARISM. I>* CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Ecclesiastical absoluteness, governing ) An appeal to reason admitted in the 
 by divine right. interpretation of revealed truth. 
 
 Literature, impassioned and iinagina- 
 
 Literature, logical and philosophical, 
 live. 
 
 Opinion fixed. } Opinion free. 
 
 Doctrine indisputable. [- Doctrine variable. 
 
 Parental and marital rights, abso- ) Parental and marital rights, 
 
 lute. limited. 
 
 ) Women and children guarded by 
 Women and children enslaved. J municipal law . 
 
 These contrasts so rugged and bold in abstract statement are, 
 however, much modified in effect, by the fact, which must be con 
 ceded, that the larger and better guarantied liberties of civilization 
 under the rule of public opinion and official responsibility are much 
 weakened by the substitution of fraud for force, the cunning of the 
 fox for the boldness of the lion, wherever right is to be overborne, 
 or wrong inflicted or defended. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the evasions of right, the illusions of hope, 
 disappointments of trust, and the various oppressions of the more 
 advanced forms of free government, the difference of operation upon 
 private interests and on the destiny of the commonwealth, is very 
 greatly in favor of civilized institutions. They still preserve the 
 tendency to diffuse their benefits among the masses of the people, 
 elevating the community as a whole, and giving a massiveness, sta 
 bility, and aggregate value and force to the better order to which 
 Barbarism can never by any possibility attain. Civilization has all 
 that is possible of human welfare in its prospect. Barbarism is 
 limited by its incapacity of change or growth, and is unfitted for 
 the command of that infinite power of association which a perfect 
 development of individuality secure^s. 
 
 We have indicated or intimated a certain correspondence of char 
 acteristics between the societary phases of the human race or races, 
 and the marked stages in the life and growth of an individual. 
 There must be such analogies if each man is a representative of 
 the race, and the collective race is but a comprehensive abstract of 
 the individual man. ^We do not, however, mean to affirm that the 
 several kinds of societies flow or grow into each other as the suc 
 cessive stages of an individual life do, for it is not proved that the 
 
FORMATION OP SOCIETY. 23 
 
 "varieties" of mankind are capable of such transition or develop 
 ment from the savage or patriarchal, or even from the barbarian, 
 into the advanced form of that which we call the maturest state, 
 such as civilization assumes, with its capability of indefinite pro 
 gression. We mean only that there is an analogy or representative 
 image of the one in the other. The reader will have noticed an ana 
 lytic parallelism shown in the savage and individual infant. Fol 
 lowing this thought, we have spoken of patriarchism as the analogue 
 of childhood, or the period between the seventh and fourteenth 
 year of individual life. Let us look for the correspondence : Child 
 hood is distinguished from the next succeeding, as from the im 
 mediately preceding stage, by its facility of faith, its docility under 
 authority, the dedication of its endeavors to preparation for action, 
 and its incapability of any effective agency in the world s work. 
 It is dreamy and inefficient. It has not reached the productive 
 period in the useful arts. It has few or no social relations no 
 place in the world s life. It has not the impulse of self-assertion, 
 nor has it caught the spirit of propagandism. Its period is marked 
 by growth without corresponding increase of strength. It is a 
 state of accumulation without responsive action. It has affection 
 without friendship; culture without influence; crude, incoherent 
 acquirement, without recognized ends or fixed aims. Its acquire 
 ments are only a stock of possibilities, which the age in advance 
 must draw out and actualize. Is not this picture, if drawn at 
 length, a reflex of the patriarchal polity, with which we are best 
 acquainted ? The childhood of Israel found the refuge of its fee 
 bleness, and was nursed into strength, in barbaric bondage. The 
 oracles committed to their custody received their interpretation and 
 realization in the system which supplanted theirs. The patriarchal 
 got its evolution first under the institutions of Egypt, and eventu 
 ally from the Gentile nations, .whose conditions, at the era of the 
 earliest practical realization, were in the state which we call bar 
 barism, and by analogy, the youth of the race. 
 
 Barbarism fitly answers to the analogous period of youth or adoles 
 cence, which is usually bounded by the fourteenth and twenty-fifth 
 years of the individual. It is the age of chivalry, enthusiasm, undoubt- 
 ing faith in its destiny, recklessness of risk and ardent devotedness to 
 vague and unlimited enterprise. It is impatient and discontented 
 with its inheritance ; it demands a new world for its fresh new life. 
 
24 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Routine is as repulsive as imprisonment, and it forces circumstances 
 with an industry that employs muscle more than mind, and is led 
 by fancy rather than philosophy; it would achieve all that it 
 imagines, and dreams that there is nothing beyond its compass an 
 insanity of aspiration barely checked in manifestation by the des 
 potic authority of manners and opinion ; the fates are its gods ; it 
 is passionate, peremptory, pitiless ; its fortunes are predestinated, 
 and it gives circumspection to the winds. 
 
 Are there not parallel points here to the history of Ancient 
 Egypt and Middle-age Arabia ? The vigor and fire, aye, the fine 
 frenzy of youth glows in all their doings and darings, and their 
 monuments, of all kinds, tangible, historical, traditional and fabu 
 lous, are all alike poetical. 
 
 In fine contrast with the youthlike impetuosity of barbarism, 
 with its quick activity of imagination, exaggerated self-confidence, 
 irreflective courage and passionate love of glory, we have the sobered 
 thoughtfulness of manhood in advanced civilization, the circum 
 spection that comes with experience, and the rigorous logic that 
 law has impressed by its penalties upon willfulness ; the warring 
 spirit of enthusiasm is replaced by the serene masterdom of mind 
 adjusted to the conditions of its subjects, and executive wisdom 
 evades resistance and, by administrative address, secures success. 
 Youth is in rebellion against the past; manhood makes experience 
 its minister; and the issues register the unlike results. Barbarism 
 ultimates itself in its achievements; its monuments are its bounda 
 ries, "the butt and sea-mark of its utmost sail;" its triumphs stand 
 for its tombstones. But the highest attainments of civilization are 
 fresh points of departure to higher and greater things beyond ; they 
 are only the scaffoldings of the edifice it rears, and every structure 
 it erects for its service is also an observatory for a wider scope of 
 aims and efforts. The works of barbarism, like the system, are 
 arrested at the stage of success, and stand still in a completeness of 
 fulfillment, which civilization never meets or confesses. The one 
 declares its plan accomplished, the other indicates its own perpetuity. 
 
 NOTE. Comte, author of the " Positive Philosophy," remarks, that every 
 thoroughly developed individual passes through three mental stages : First, 
 religious ; second, theoretical or hypothetical ; third, matter-of-fact or practical ; 
 and that nations have the same tendency, that is, a thoroughly developed race or 
 family of men has a growth through corresponding phases. The theory whioh 
 
FORMATION OF SOCIETY. 25 
 
 this acute observer of facts deduces from these propositions is not by any means 
 sustained, but the facts are sound. They apply happily to the respective ages of 
 Childhood, Youth and Mature Manhood, and the characteristics he assigns to 
 them may be thus translated in our use of them : for " religious " read faith and 
 obedience; for "hypothetical" read speculative, adventurous, enthusiastic; 
 " matter-of-fact " may stand as serving sufficiently well for our apprehension of 
 the soberly philosophical mood of the matured mind and method of advanced 
 manhood; and, let it be noted, that only those nations who have actually entered 
 upon the last stages are proved capable of rising through and over-passing the 
 previous grades. The students of Ethnology can have no difficulty in applying 
 this theory to the diverse nationalities in history. 
 
 Comte s scale of progressive development has met an universal acceptance, and 
 has had the influence to carry with it, besides, his illogical deduction that the 
 mind upon entering each new stage throws off the preceding that the stage of 
 the hypothetical discards that of faith, and is itself in turn rejected in the last, 
 the matter-of-fact or philosophical state. This is decidedly unphilosophical in 
 theory, as it is untrue in fact. Faith, speculation and fact, if they all have, or 
 find, or hold the truth, harmonize, focalize, and persist in the issue that realizes 
 them. 
 
 3 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Civilization, barbarism and savagism geographically distributed. Only the Euro 
 pean families have passed through all the stages of societary growth. No 
 instance or sign of decadence in them. Asiatic communities culminate in bar 
 barism. Nations on the borders of Asia only are stationary. Africans are not 
 a decaying race; they cannot be classed with the American Indians. Their 
 character in the United States. Not to be judged by our present standards of 
 capability and fitness for the world s uses. African race resembles European 
 women. The future must solve the problem of their societary relations. Civil 
 ization elastic and composite. Its late development. India in advance of 
 England in the fourteenth century. The Moors superior to the Spaniards in the 
 fifteenth century. The Dark Ages in Europe. Monarchy introduced order and 
 initiated progress in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Intellectual and re 
 ligious revolutions of the fifteenth century. The age of the nascent industries, 
 geographical discoveries, and the inauguration of man in the dominion of matter. 
 Progress of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The great career of the 
 race carried forward by the people of European Origin. Co-operative unity 
 of diverse races. Vicious generalities of the prevalent theory of Political Econ 
 omy. No single kindred is cosmopolitan. The whole history of civilization is 
 its only adequate definition. 
 
 CIVILIZATION connects itself historically with certain races of 
 men, and is limited by geographical lines. In general statement it 
 may be called the European form of societary life ; as in like general 
 terms Asia is barbaric, and Africa, for the want of any more exact 
 term, may be classed as savage. These are the social, economic and 
 political distinctions of those three portions of the globe in modern 
 times ; and in America civilization is found in different degrees of 
 maturity, only in that portion of the continent which is occupied by 
 European Colonists. Neither Asia nor Africa has organized a 
 civilized government at home, nor formed one abroad within the 
 reach of authentic history. If the Asiatic or African border of the 
 Mediterranean Sea gave to Europe its superior races, they were 
 exceptional peoples, and belonged to Europe by constitutional char- 
 2fl 
 
CIVILIZATION. 27 
 
 acters, as nearly as their geographic origin bordered upon the 
 territory which they were destined to occupy and illustrate ; and 
 none of the regions that lay beyond them have shown any similar 
 capabilities since the earliest known localities of the tribes of men. 
 Moreover, it is of the European people only that it can be affirmed, 
 with the assurance which experience affords, that they are capable 
 of passing through all the stages from savage to civilized conditions, 
 and who give indications of a progress in institutions and attainments 
 without assignable limits in the future. Besides, none of the fami 
 lies or kindreds of Europe have ever yet shown any of the signs of 
 declension which threaten the catastrophe that has already settled the 
 fate of Asiatic and Egyptian nations, and of the aborigines of North 
 and South America. No people found from the Mediterranean Sea to 
 Scandinavia, or between the Ural Mountains and the North Atlantic 
 Ocean, have within the range of history retrograded toward extinc 
 tion. These people, whether German or Celtic, in Southern or 
 Western Europe in time past, and now before our eyes, in the North 
 and East, are demonstrating their capability of growth and culture 
 into the highest style of human development. While, in marked 
 contrast, Asiatic communities seem to culminate in barbarism, and 
 are there arrested or thence decline, as if their constitutional 
 maturity were reached at periods corresponding to the childhood or 
 youth of the nations that now rule the world. Europe has emerged 
 into civilization, settled America, and conquered whatever she 
 desired of Asia, while the countries in which power and glory had 
 their earliest sway have been retrograding, absolutely as well as 
 relatively, from the time that the western mind seized the dominion 
 of matter and undertook the destiny of the world. 
 
 A growth of the families of men corresponding to the epochs of 
 individual life, and a decay like its decline toward extinction or 
 death, has happened, and is threatened to the peoples which we 
 style barbaric ; but none of the European nations have perished ; 
 none of them are in the category of the dying. History has not 
 set up the tombstone of a single branch of the Germanic or Celtic 
 families, and the analogy has no true application to them. It is 
 worth noting in connection with this fact, that the only members of 
 this great kindred, ascertained by geographic boundaries, which are 
 now unprogressive, are those that lie nearest to stationary Asia and 
 unenlightened Africa; Spain, Italy and Greece, are borderers of 
 
28 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 the sea that separates the ancient from the modern world of human 
 supremacy. 
 
 The people of Middle and Southern Africa are ranked as savages 
 for want of a more sharply defined classification. But they do not 
 resemble our American Indians in anything but inferiority to the 
 foremost of the races. The latter are incapable of improved condi 
 tions. They are a dying people. The former have not yet shown 
 any capability of self-development. In their native country they 
 are without literature, science, and the fine and useful arts. They 
 have organized no governments; they have no commerce, and they 
 have no religion that can improve their life; but they have the 
 physical health, simplicity, docility, and joyousness of childhood, and 
 they show no signs of decay. Under circumstances the most un 
 favorable for any other people, they have improved among us to the 
 utmost limit of their opportunity, and in the most tempting situa 
 tions they have exhibited the kindliest qualities of character. 
 Through the whole period of servitude, through the great American 
 rebellion, and since, they have disappointed every unfavorable pro 
 phecy of their conduct in their changed relations to society, and 
 have as much surpassed the hopes of the most sanguine philanthro 
 pists. We do not know this people; we have never known them. 
 We cannot know them while we judge them by our standard, and 
 hold that standard to be unchangeable for the future that probably 
 lies generations in advance of us. Just as reason and experience 
 find essential differences in the respective histories and destinies of 
 the civilized and barbaric races, so we may suspect that the African 
 is not measurable by the character and functions of the European. 
 If they should after fair trial be found to be specifically different in 
 the kind of mental power that is mastering the material conditions 
 of terrestrial life, may they not have some other modification of 
 mind not incompatible or incongruous, but helpful to the work of 
 the world ? Childhood and youth co-exist with and even corrobo 
 rate maturity. The feminine mind and character are quite as 
 broadly different from the masculine. These people in the mass 
 more strongly resemble European women than they do the men of 
 any other race, and they may weave into the web of social life well 
 enough to vary and thus enrich it. Our judgment to be just and 
 wise must wait for the facts wait till we know what the future 
 shall require of them and ourselves, and how they and we may 
 
CIVILIZATION. 29 
 
 answer the requirement. We know, a priori, that the noblest or 
 ganisms are those which have the most numerous and most vari 
 ously endowed constituents, and that the greatest possible diversity 
 is compatible with peace and unity that the limestone in our bones 
 is organized into harmony of use with the finest nerves of sense and 
 the highest organs of mind. The present dominant race of men 
 live and move and have all their resources of power in the inductive 
 philosophy. In this matter their own system binds them to wait for 
 experiment and observation to supply the data of their reasonings. 
 
 We had no instance of a nation born in a day of a people en 
 franchised at a blow. We could not believe it possible ; above all, 
 we could not believe them capable. Henry the Eighth hanged 
 seventy thousand new-made freedmen of our own race and kindred 
 during his reign. Political liberty seems impossible to Mexico after 
 fifty years of discipline in freedom. France has gone back from 
 Republicanism to Monarchy, and from Monarchy to chaos with such 
 portentous facility that her varied examples taught us no hope of 
 sudden adaptation to higher forms of social and civil life ; Greece 
 and Rome have declined for centuries in face of surrounding en 
 lightenment and progress ; and the precedents were contrary to the 
 hope. History warranted our fears and suggested the preparation 
 of gradualism preparation for liberty, but forbade the trial in 
 liberty. Yet, it is done; done so far safely, and so far as done, 
 wonderfully. But is the trial yet over ? Or, is it only in our coun 
 try and in our age that the habit of history can be broken ! There 
 must be something in this, for the immigrants from all Europe, in 
 capable of political liberty at home, immediately become sovereigns 
 here. The negro may in a generation become an American citizen 
 complete; for it seems that anything, that is, any next thing, is 
 possible to us. 
 
 There must be truth in experience, for it is facts accomplished ; 
 but experience is not always directory. We never fully understand 
 the present till it is past; till other experience interprets it; till 
 we see it on all sides and to the core of its meaning. A great 
 thing, surprisingly accomplished, never allows of any future thing 
 which shall surpass it or destroy its value. This is the reason that 
 all the new we have now was the impossible of the past; yet it is 
 the character of this age of wonder-working to gain assurance of 
 greater, from even the most astonishing present, success; and we 
 
30 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 are not discouragingly doubtful, however reluctant to undertake the 
 fusion and reconciliation of all the immigrant races. We begin to 
 believe that we can, in the United States unite, conciliate and 
 organize the differences of the wide world. 
 
 It is apparent in the institutions and in the intrinsic qualities of 
 savagism, patriarchism, and barbarism, that neither of them, nor 
 any mixture of them, can accomplish the social destiny of man ; 
 but civilization, retaining whatever is available in them, and adding 
 what it has of its own as human nature, by reproducing all that is 
 excellent of the inferior orders of animal life and superadding its 
 own distinctive powers provides for its predominant agencies and 
 achievements. This analogy is worthy of attention for the support 
 it gains from the unity of nature s plan of the government of all 
 the forms of related existence in their several contributions to the 
 chief and highest designs of the terrestrial system; rank and right 
 of rule being graded by the character and number of the powers 
 possessed, and by the dignity and worth of the offices to be filled 
 and of the ends to be attained. 
 
 In the earlier stages of civilized societies they compared unfavora 
 bly with the barbaric states of the higher grades, as infancy is in 
 ferior to even a mediocre maturity. India was considerably in 
 advance of England, even so lately as in the fourteenth century, in 
 all that constitutes the well-being of a people in industry, arts, 
 and domestic and foreign policy ; and the Moors were the superiors 
 of the Spaniards for at least two centuries of the time which they 
 held possession of Middle and Southern Spain. The courts of Cor 
 dova and Granada were the most splendid and polished in Europe 
 from early in the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth centu 
 ries. Indeed, the dark ages of Christendom were resplendent with 
 the arts, arms, learning and science of barbaric Arabia, Persia, 
 India and those European countries that were conquered and occu 
 pied by the Mohammedans. From the downfall of the Roman Em 
 pire the ensuing six centuries of the history of the races which 
 now hold the mastery of the world, were marked by ignorance, 
 superstition, vice, lawlessness, poverty, and weakness. 
 
 It was not until the middle of the fourteenth century that Eng 
 land fairly entered upon her career of manufacturing industry, 
 although Flanders and Toulouse had made a promising beginning 
 nearly two hundred years before. Previously, throughout Christian 
 
CIVILIZATION. 31 
 
 Europe feudalism, which is a near approach to the barbaric polity 
 of Asia, was the prevailing form of social and political life. 
 
 It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth^ centuries that monarchy 
 centralized and organized efficient governments among them j under 
 the Tudors in England, and the house of Yaloisin France; in Ger 
 many, under the elective Emperors. In Sweden, Holland, and 
 Hungary a like improving change occurred, and Spain and Por 
 tugal had fairly put themselves in the front of the age. 
 
 The fifteenth century was the period in which states and nations 
 were firmly established upon the ruins of feudalism, and of the 
 municipal republics which had failed to organize society upon 
 principles which could secure general progress and prosperity. It 
 was the age of intellectual and religious revolution, of great 
 physical activity, travels, discoveries, and labor-saving and space- 
 conquering inventions, such as the passage to India round the Cape 
 of Good Hope, the discovery of America, the invention of printing, 
 and hosts of cognate forces that inaugurated the modern dominion 
 of men over their material conditions. The sixteenth and seven 
 teenth centuries carried all these enterprises forward rapidly toward 
 maturity, and left the eighteenth rich in accumulations of power 
 acquired, and that knowledge which is the source of all attainable 
 power. It was ready to replace the monarchical institutions which 
 it inherited by representative governments, more or less bene 
 ficial, by responsible magistrates, enlightened liberty, freedom of 
 thought, and through these, a grand advance in the mastery of the 
 elements and forces of matter, with a prospect so much grander 
 than all actual achievement, that the present age feels as if it were 
 but entering upon the great career of humanity. In all that has 
 been accomplished the work of three or four hundred years the 
 people of European origin have had the exclusive agency, and they 
 are thus distinguished from the races and nations whose careers 
 have been run or are now running to their close. 
 
 All these considerations concerning the distinctive characters of 
 the four or five varieties of political and social polities of human 
 societies, and of the kindreds and peoples under them, are produced 
 here, as well as for other purposes, to show that the unity of the 
 families of man is not the unity of likeness or identity, but of diver 
 sity and its possible harmonies in that better order, of which they 
 are capable, than any known in the past or the present. 
 
32 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The study of Political Economy has suffered more from a vicious 
 system of generalization than from any other or all other errors of 
 fact and opinion. The various races of men, whatever may have 
 been their origin, or whatever the causes of those differences of 
 character, use and destiny which now exist among them, cannot be 
 confounded in a single class, or covered with a common description 
 without sacrificing all the benefits of philosophic study, and all the 
 useful guides of practical treatment; and, in keeping with this fact, 
 is the corresponding one, that while all the families of men, in the 
 aggregate, or in one category, may be called cosmopolitan, and 
 destined in their adjusted varieties to the inhabitation of the whole 
 earth, no single kindred or people are or can be so, but under a 
 distributive impulse, each grand class has its own assigned locality 
 with specially fitting conditions and a special fitness for them. 
 
 We are not yet prepared for a summary or complete statement of 
 the characteristics of civilization. They can be given only in the 
 details which are the history and the prospects of its service in the 
 world s advancement. Upon these we shall enter after some further 
 preliminaries are disposed of. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MIGRATION AND OCCUPATION OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Of Migration, and of the Occupation of the Earth : The habitats of men 1 
 ruled by their natal peculiarities. Colonization limited by isothermal lines or 
 zones; Historic illustrations. Climatic law of migration in the United States. 
 Negro population accommodated to change of temperature by change of occu 
 pation. The march of science, literature and religions guided by climatic 
 law. The doctrine of descent from a single pair of progenitors not involved in 
 the question. The harmonies of a natural distribution of the races secured. 
 Special appetencies determine the destinies of the races. Federal unions 
 accommodate and preserve specialties in progressive consummation. The 
 United States a model, and a prophecy of normal free confederations else 
 where. Three climatic zones of the United States. Their boundaries. This 
 law must rule the future permanent unions of States and Kingdoms. 
 
 IT is the custom of writers, especially of moralists and theologians 
 to speak of man as cosmopolitan ; that he is so much less affected 
 by climate than plants and the inferior animals that he is almost 
 independent of the meteorological conditions of his habitation on the 
 earth. This notion needs correction. The species, or collective 
 mankind, is adapted to all climates ; but the varieties or races are 
 governed by their natal habitudes in their fitness for and choice of 
 permanent location. Artificial defenses against vicissitudes of tem 
 perature, and a considerable constitutional power of accommodation, 
 enable the enterprising men of trade and travel to avoid the worst 
 and most immediate consequences of a change of atmospheric con 
 ditions. The spirit of commerce and of conquest carry men all over 
 the world, and across the zones ; but colonization follows accustomed 
 temperatures. The barbarous invaders of Rome came down upon 
 Italy from the north, northeast and northwest, traversing perhaps 
 five degrees of latitude, into a more genial region ; but they retired, 
 after a temporary sojourn, to their native climates. The Saxons 
 could permanently inhabit England, for their native land lay in the 
 same latitude ; and the Normans had only to cross the English chan- 
 
 33 
 
34 INTRODUCTORY. * 
 
 nel to change their residence without an important change of the 
 climatic conditions to which they had been accustomed. 
 
 That a law of climate rules the migration and colonization of the 
 natives of the diverse regions of the earth is abundantly proved by 
 ancient and modern history. We cannot here cover the whole 
 ground in detail, but a comparatively few instances are conclusive. 
 The reader can readily fill up the outlines which we give with the 
 proofs that offer themselves. His attention is invited to such as 
 the following : 
 
 The Mohammedan conquests in the east were in the line of tem 
 perature that corresponds to that of Medina from Arabia through 
 Persia into India ; and their western progress upon the south shore 
 of the Mediterranean, and their occupancy of Southern Spain fall 
 within the same isothermal lines. Mexico lies in the same belt of 
 temperature with Spain, and Cuba touches its southern border. 
 European conquests of countries outside of their own zones of cli 
 mate are no exceptions to the law. Rome when she held the world 
 in subjection inhabited Italy only. Military posts and governmental 
 agents were all that constituted her presence in regions lying north 
 or south of her. In this, England and France resemble the ancient 
 mistress of universal Europe. They hold all their foreign provinces 
 of unlike climates by their armies of occupation and officers of civil 
 administration. There were not so many as fifty thousand white 
 persons in the British West India Islands when the colored popula 
 tion amounted to eight hundred thousand. In 1861 the population 
 of East India was variously estimated at from one hundred and 
 thirty-five to two hundred millions, while the English people there 
 amounted to only one hundred and twenty-five thousand nine hun 
 dred and forty-five persons, of whom eighty-four thousand and eighty- 
 three went to compose the British officers and men of the Indian 
 army, and twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-six consisted 
 of men and boys in the civil service, the whole remainder (nineteen 
 thousand three hundred and six) being females. 
 
 This law is found to rule in the colonies or provinces of all the 
 European nations who have any foreign possessions lying consider 
 ably north or south of their own line of mean annual temperature. 
 But the most remarkable exemplification is found in the settlement 
 of the United States, whose territory, already occupied, embraces 
 twenty-three degrees of latitude, and by its great variety of tern- 
 
OCCUPATION OF THE EARTH. 35 
 
 perature may be divided into three climatic zones. In these States 
 there has long been a constant emigration from the east or Atlantic 
 coast toward the Rocky Mountains, and recently to the Pacific Ocean 
 coast. These emigrants are American born and have unlimited 
 liberty of choice as to their place of settlement upon the new lands 
 of the West. Beside these, there is an immense influx of foreigners 
 mainly from Western Europe, who are equally free to choose their 
 places of habitation. Every tenth year a census of the resident 
 population is taken, and their nativities are ascertained and noted. 
 These returns give us these surprising results : Only one of every 
 fourteen persons is found resident out of the belt or zone of their 
 native temperature, whether born in Europe or in the Eastern 
 States of the Union. That which seems to contradict or to be an 
 exception to the law, is the presence and prosperous condition of 
 the African negroes in the semi-tropical States devoted to the cul 
 tivation of cotton and rice, whose mean annual temperature is, say, 
 fifteen or twenty degrees of Fahrenheit lower than that of their 
 primitive African birthplace, and at the same time fifteen degrees 
 above that of England, and ten above the south of France. How 
 are these people adjusted to the difference from the natal climate 
 of their progenitors, and fitted to a residence so unfriendly to the 
 people of even the most southern portion of Europe? We suggest 
 that the explanation may be found in the changed conditions of 
 their life. In tropical Africa they did not need, and indeed could 
 not labor in the fields under a steady heat considerably above eighty 
 degrees the year round,* but in the Gulf States of North America 
 they are exposed only to an average heat of about seventy degrees, 
 in which they can work as healthfully as an Englishman or his 
 descendants can labor in the fields of Pennsylvania in a mean tem 
 perature of fifty degrees. It is but a change from tropical to semi- 
 tropical heat, and the exposure and the toil of the negro s new 
 residence mediates between these points so as to qualify him for 
 exertion which Africa would not allow, and which a constitution 
 from much higher latitudes could not bear. The animal heat gen 
 erated by labor compensates for its reduction in the changed 
 climate. 
 
 The familiar adage tl Westward the Star of Empire takes its 
 
 * The isothermal charts found in atlases and school maps of fifteen or twenty 
 years ago, are not reliable for such an inquiry as this question demands. 
 
36 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 way" is literally true, and it is also true that science, literature and 
 religion observe the same line of march, and for the obvious reason 
 that the races who modify opinion and speculation according to 
 their respective mental and moral constitutions, and impress them 
 selves upon all their pursuits, enterprises, and achievements, migrate 
 along their several lines of climate. 
 
 The received doctrine of the origin of all the varieties of men 
 from a single pair of progenitors, and their propagation from a 
 single centre, presents no difficulty to the acceptance or admission 
 of the law which we are considering; for, however the existing dif 
 ferences of nationality in all their shades, from the tropical African 
 to the best example of the European, were originally produced; 
 whether by natural causes providentially employed, or by miracu 
 lous adjustment of each kind to its assigned locality, it is certain 
 that such differences actually exist, and that an imperious law of 
 distribution rules in the human, as in the animal and vegetable oc 
 cupancy of the earth, and thus secures the ultimate subjection of 
 the globe in all its varied regions to a harmoniously appropriated 
 humanity. 
 
 The proper liberties of mankind are all under the government 
 of law, and the purposes of the Creator are effected by its orderly 
 control. The diverse inhabitants of the earth have, their proper 
 domiciles secured to them by this overruling law of migration and 
 inhabitation. No present superiority of any .race can permanently 
 contravene it. The surviving wanderers will in good time be re 
 claimed to their native climates. In every zone, valley, and moun 
 tain; on every continent, island, and peninsula, this grand law of 
 inheritance will hold the land for the natural claimants, and will 
 expel the usurpers by constraining their return to their own. The 
 complete subjugation of the material world, under the laws which 
 govern it, seems to be the mission of the European families of 
 mankind. When their proper work is well accomplished, the 
 Asiatic and African tribes, and the natural occupants of the Pacific 
 islands which shall survive, will enter upon their own domains and 
 go forward to the fulfillment of their several destinies. Then comes 
 the time when contrasts without collisions shall enrich the earth 
 with all their fullness and force, and differences shall be ruled into 
 perfect harmony. 
 
 The law of migration and settlement rooted in the special appe- 
 
OCCUPATION OF THE EARTH. 37 
 
 tencies of tlie various races of men, will ever protect and maintain 
 their primitive differences of endowment, and their diverse services 
 in that corroborative unity which qualifies the aggregate or grand 
 man for his manifold work in the world. Not an enforced and con 
 fused homogenity, but a harmonized diversity is demanded to fulfill 
 the functions of the species. The brotherhood of men is not a con 
 glomeration of likenesses, but an orderly organization of related dif 
 ferences. This tendency is manifest in the modern changes in the 
 political governments of both the old and the new world. Federal 
 unions among the families of the nations are its expression and prom 
 ise. The petty states of France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and that 
 cluster of old-time independencies which are now included in the 
 Empire of Ilussia, are striking examples. Most of these Unions 
 were at first in a great degree effected by force, under the ambitious 
 impulse of territorial aggrandizement; but more recently these 
 have been conformed, more or less, to the principle of voluntary as 
 sociation, and the normal order of natural law, which, while it 
 associates differences, respects them, and maintains the authority, 
 and the duly regulated functions of local centres, at the same time 
 that it embraces them in the larger and more general entireties 
 which best secure internal peace, and provide external defence. 
 In former times nations, wholly unfitted to unite, and incapable 
 of beneficial union, were subdued into unnatural and repugnant 
 nationalities; but more recently, federative unions are effected by 
 the free play of natural attraction. North Germany is rapidly 
 organizing the kindred peoples into a political union. Italy has 
 taken some effective steps towards its proper reorganization. Austria 
 has parted with its incongruous trans-alpine possessions, and has 
 reconciled Hungary to such governmental relations as are for the 
 present adapted to its specialties of character and position. The 
 broken balances of Europe are not all rectified, but they are in pro 
 cess of regulation according to natural order, and the promise of a 
 due adjustment is every year better and better assured; the time 
 is rapidly approaching when political changes of the nations will 
 be wholly internal ; or, those reformations of national polity which 
 remain to be accomplished, will be wholly improvements in the 
 civil and social order of domestic aifairs. 
 
 The Government of the United States of America seems to be 
 the model and the prophecy of the policy which is to prevail, and 
 
38 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 to determine the political institutions of all peoples, who are near 
 enough and like enough, to require and to accept common or gen 
 eral governments. 
 
 In North America we have at least three distinctly different zones 
 of climate, and a corresponding difference of their inhabitants. The 
 law which we have been considering, in free operation would, and 
 in time will, throw New England and the States due west of it and 
 the British provinces, into one class, with the valley of the St. Law 
 rence for their centre, and its waters for their easy communication 
 and domestic commerce. The Middle States from Northern Penn 
 sylvania to Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina, and all between these 
 lines extended westwardly, are fitted for another class ; and the 
 semi-tropical States lying south of the isothermal line which enters 
 at Cape Hatteras, and coincides approximately with the northern 
 border of the Gulf States, may be taken to mark the division of the 
 southern from the middle climatic zone of the Union. 
 
 The appropriate industries and special interests of these divisions 
 exhibit sufficient diversity to modify their respective pursuits and 
 policies, and to demand a conforming adaptation of domestic enter 
 prise and regulation. Of such adaptation in promotion of special 
 interests, and freedom of sectional tendencies, the federal and local 
 systems are admirably capable; and under similar constitutions the 
 peoples everywhere who are nearly related in blood and manners, 
 may have all their specialties protected, and all their common char 
 acteristics preserved, combined, and energized. Political policies 
 may vary the forms of union and intercourse among States naturally 
 allied, giving them more or less intimacy of commerce, and more or 
 less unity of civil government, in the transition age of societies, but 
 the climatic law will constantly grow more and more effective, and 
 will never be overruled nor long postponed. 
 
 Neither antiquity of claim, nor vested rights, nor opinions and 
 theories, which the change of times has overthrown in the past, and 
 will again and again modify in the future, can finally settle the rela 
 tions of contiguous States of naturally allied peoples; neither can 
 military force nor conventional forms, nor the obligations of treaties 
 overrule the physical and moral laws of human nature. They may 
 be postponed and evaded, but providential provisions are constantly 
 in the endeavor to enforce them, and will ultimately prevail. 
 
OCCUPATION OF THE EARTU. 
 
 39 
 
 NOTE. This law of climate in the government of human migrations, was first 
 announced in general terms by Mr. Carey, in the Boston Transcript, of 26th No 
 vember, 1859. It was not known to him when he published the third and last 
 volume of his "Principles of Social Science," in February, 1859, and there are 
 several portions of that work which require correction by his later discovery. In 
 the Philadelphia Press of 22d of December, 1859, the writer of this treatise gave 
 this newly-announced law an ample statistical elucidation and vindication, under 
 the caption of " Pennsylvania s Position in the Union." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF WEALTH THE LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF ITS GROWTH. 
 
 Wealth the laws and conditions of its growth : Definition of capital. Defini 
 tion of Wealth. False theories built upon a basis of disorder. The Malthu- 
 sian School. Their "preventive and corrective checks" of Providential mal 
 adjustments! Relation of sustenance to numbers. Popular error. McCulloch 
 follows Malthus with a statistical statement of disproportion of food to popula 
 tion. Ricardo s progressive exhaustion of the soil; Mill repeats and indorses 
 them. The order of earthly things only the road to ruin, temporary mitigations 
 only end in despair. British political economy confronted with British statis 
 tics. Lowe, Levi, and Gladstone on the facts. Data of British estimates. 
 Wealth doubles in GREAT BRITAIN in twenty years, population in fifty years. 
 Accelerated rate of enhancement of wealth in the latest decennial period. 
 Wealth of FRANCE increasing faster than that of Great Britain. The figures 
 and facts. Her increased product of wheat, sugar and potatoes. Food product 
 doubled in thirty-five years, population in two hundred and seventy-seven 
 years. In the densest populations of Europe the supply of food greater, and 
 growing faster than the increase of demand. Relative supply and requirement 
 in the UNITED STATES. Rate of increase of population and wealth j the former 
 doubling in twenty-three and a half years ; the latter in eight and a half years. 
 Annual product not capital value, the measure of supply. Decennial census 
 reports of annual products of industry in the United States, not above two- 
 thirds of their actual value. The deficiency demonstrated. Varied rates of 
 increased production in particulars. Increase of product of wealth in Great 
 Britain and the United States twice as great in the decade 1850-60 as in that 
 of 1840-50. A law of increase indicated. In the normal order of civilized in 
 dustries, sustenance outgrows population in accelerating movement. 
 
 BY wealth we do not mean capital, merely in its common ac 
 ceptation, though capital in this sense is embraced in it. 
 
 Capital, in business language, means an accumulation of values 
 employed for further production or profits. In a broader and better 
 sense, it embraces not only improved land, ships, wagons, ploughs, 
 machinery, food, clothing, money, and the like tangible subjects of 
 property, but ideas and credit, as much as these, because they are 
 equally efficient and necessary to the production of new values. 
 
 Labor, whether of handicraft, skill, or superintendence; is, also, 
 40 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 41 
 
 capital ; but it is usually treated rather as the associate than as a 
 component of capital. 
 
 The production of wealth employs all these agencies, and covers 
 all the faculties and forces, moral, intellectual, and material, which 
 it can in any way enlist in the service ; and it is a finer, as well as 
 a more practical apprehension, to regard wealth in a higher and 
 wider light than the mere aggregate of the substantive things in 
 which it embodies itself to the senses and are exchanged in market. 
 Taken as the means and measure of man s power over nature, it em 
 braces all the elements of capital, and opens up to the light of its 
 true meaning. It cannot be restricted to the things exchangeable in 
 trade. Whoever would understand it must follow it as it rises 
 through material things, and all their service to the life of man, and 
 stores its highest products in his heart and mind. Capital and 
 Labor, with the intelligence that directs, and the aims which warrant 
 and sanctify the ends, are tributaries to all the designs of our tem 
 poral existence. In such service they are worthy of higher con 
 sideration and better uses than we ever give them. 
 
 The appointed dominion of man over earth and air and ocean, means 
 nothing more, nothing less, than temporal wealth raised in its uses 
 into human welfare. The mastery of nature grows with every 
 victory. Every new discovery in the constitution of the material 
 things which surround us, gives us a new force to control them. It 
 is power put at compound interest; each new product added to the 
 principal to yield a larger interest ; in consonance with that ever- 
 enhancing power of the spirit to which it ministers in sublunary 
 things. 
 
 This apprehension of wealth shakes the mind free from the clogs 
 .of market-house logic, and reflects the highest lights upon the laws 
 which rule it in all its functions. 
 
 But the service of the elements requires of us their administra 
 tion under natural law. Nature bestows none of her best benefits 
 upon indolence or ignorance. The tribes that content themselves 
 with plundering her lakes and rivers, her forests and prairies, find 
 her austere, repugnant and niggard to their necessities. To partial 
 and poor cultivators, she turns poor in exact correspondence to those 
 that have shall be given. 
 
 Disordered and misgoverned societies have, until very recently, 
 and still in the majority of instances, afforded the data from which 
 4 
 
42 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the standard authorities constructed their theories. These writers 
 looking only to production, distribution and consumption of commodi 
 ties in past history, and reasoning not from the intrinsic capabilities 
 of men and things in the better order to which they are rapidly 
 advancing, but from the data of an imperfect experience, have 
 invented systems dreadfully discordant with divine beneficence and 
 with human hope. Their doctrines, under correction of later and 
 more promising facts, are now less confidently paraded; indeed, 
 they are rather assumed than asserted as demonstrable truths, but 
 like original sin, they break out into actual transgression upon every 
 tempting occasion. 
 
 Mr. Malthus digested what he took to be the evidence afforded 
 by history into a doctrine of despair, and his formulas have been 
 taken for aphorisms of science by all his English successors and 
 American disciples. So far from believing in the constant growth 
 of man s power over nature, he affirmed a constantly-increasing 
 disproportion of sustenance to population that, under the laws 
 which govern the subjects, population tends to increase in a geomet 
 rical, while the means of subsistence relatively fall off to an arith 
 metical ratio. In figures he puts it, that population unchecked 
 would in two centuries increase one hundred and twenty-eight 
 times, while food under no circumstances can increase more than 
 eight times in the same period ; or, if it were possible to produce at 
 once on the earth such a multitude, it could not afford them the 
 one-sixteenth part of the food which they would require. The 
 corrective checks, " war, pestilence, and famine," Mr. Malthus 
 believes to have been necessarily provided to prevent such a whole 
 sale catastrophe ; and, that their operation is distributed by retail all 
 along the life of the race, by way of correcting this nial-adjustineut 
 in the highest sphere of creation, which strangely enough occurs 
 nowhere else in the Maker s works ! 
 
 Mr. Malthus mistook facts logically possible only in circumstances 
 wholly impossible, for laws arising out of the nature of things. 
 He made the great blunder of taking the existing fertility of the 
 human race, designed to repair the terrible waste of life during the 
 ages of disorder, for a natural rate of reproduction, which he 
 furthermore mistook for an inflexible measure. Upon data so 
 shabbily stupid he used the inductive method of reasoning, and 
 called the horrid result philosophy ! It never occurred to him to 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 43 
 
 look for providential adjustments of natural laws to varied condi 
 tions of their subjects, which must prevent the processes of the 
 creation from destroying their own aims. 
 
 As a theory, relating to the earth s fitness for that highest use 
 to which all other uses are tributary, this doctrine might be dis 
 missed as an insanity of pretended science ; but something of its 
 mischief may be traced in popular reasoning founded upon hasty 
 observation, and is, therefore, entitled to fuller consideration. 
 
 We live in a new country, where population does not press upon 
 the means of subsistence ; where famines never come, and where 
 pauperism is an exotic. Within our boundaries there is yet a wilder 
 ness of fertility which tempts emigration even from its eastern 
 regions, as yet not half occupied or cultivated, with still easier 
 offers of livelihood, and better chances for rapid and great advance 
 ment of fortune; where labor is nearly the only form of productive 
 power, and other capital is too scarce to monopolize the opportunity 
 of acquiring wealth. From across the ocean a steady tide of hopeful 
 poverty is constantly flowing from amid its mountain steeps of wealth 
 toward our plain of better averaged competency. Under these in 
 fluences it is easy to conclude, and as easy to excuse the conclusion, 
 that there is something in the law of growth in human society 
 unfriendly to its masses, and unduly favorable to the advanced class, 
 of wealth and condition, and that this disparity results from the 
 established order of things. But facts may be accidents, and results 
 do not always indicate constitutional or permanent laws. And, not 
 withstanding the illusions which hang like a fog over real facts, the 
 truth is not left without a witness in any quarter of the globe, for 
 wherever in any country there is substantial progress, that is, where- 
 ever the true order of things is in any measure observed, in the 
 same measure subsistence supports population and tends always to 
 outgrow it. 
 
 Even in England itself, all the facts of experience are in direct 
 refutation of the dismal science, yet we find such authorities as 
 J. R. McCulloch, the popular economist and statistician of Eng 
 land, any time within the last twenty years, declaring that " sixty 
 years is the shortest time in which capital in an old and densely- 
 peopled country can be expected to be doubled," while it is in 
 proof that population has doubled in England and Wales in the 
 fifty years between 1801 and 1851. 
 
44 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Ricardo, whose work is the koran of this sect of economists, 
 holds that the progress of cultivation by a fixed necessity, begins 
 with the best lands first, and descends by a regular gradation to 
 poorer still and poorer, until absolute sterility is reached, and gen 
 eral starvation would be the catastrophe, but that it is distributed 
 all along the course of exhaustion, and thus keeps hungry mouths 
 and recurring harvests in some sort of balance. Ricardo wrote so 
 lately as in 1817, and McCulloch repeats him in effect, saying that 
 "from the operation of fixed and permanent causes, the increasing 
 sterility of soil is sure, in the long run. to overmatch the improve 
 ments that occur in agriculture and machinery." McCulloch wrote 
 until 1863 without recanting. So the ghost of Malthus, who died 
 in 1824, still haunts the highways of economic science. 
 
 But last, and therefore worst of all, John Stuart Mill, claimed to 
 be the philosopher of philanthropy, in his chapter on " The Law of 
 the Increase of Production from Land," published in the year of 
 grace, 1865, reproduces these horrors in all their hideousness. The 
 over-population theory of Malthus, and the constantly-declining 
 productiveness of land of Ricardo, are reproduced with such a 
 simple confidence of their truth as dispenses with any attempt at 
 their demonstration. 
 
 He thinks that emigration such as the potato-rot, the lack of 
 remunerative labor, and the evictions of the small tenants in Ire 
 land, compel, and the fresh soils of Australia and the wilds of North 
 America invite, may occasionally check the progress and mitigate 
 the effects of this frightful disproportion between man and food. 
 The present pressure, he suggests, might be temporarily postponed 
 by the substitution of American maize for the deficient vegetables 
 of Europe, as a brief reprieve of the old world; but then, such 
 fullness of supply would mischievously increase the growth of popu 
 lation, and soon overlap the increased supply of subsistence again, 
 and the checks, preventive and corrective, of Malthus invention be 
 again demanded in all their vigor. 
 
 So present and pressing are the alarms of his theory to him. that 
 he believes the emigration from the Atlantic to the Western States 
 of America " is what enables population to go on unchecked in the 
 Union without having yet diminished the returns to industry or 
 increased the difficulty of earning a subsistence;" but he has no 
 hope that emigration at even its greatest height "could be kept up 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 45 
 
 sufficiently to take off all that portion of the annual increase, which, 
 being in excess of the progress made during the same period in the 
 arts of life, tends to render living more difficult for every averagely- 
 situated individual in the community ; " and again, in the United 
 States, as elsewhere and everywhere in this wretchedly ordered 
 world, comes in the hopeless preventive check of prudence in 
 marriage, with the three reliable corrective ones in leash War, 
 Pestilence and Famine. Mr. Mill says of this gorgon law, "it is 
 the most important proposition in political economy; " meaning his 
 theory of it; and u were the law different, nearly all the phenomena 
 of the production and distribution of wealth would be different." 
 We may be allowed to be glad of this admission ; for if the founda 
 tion of the entire system of this school of economists can be shown 
 to be utterly false in facts and as false in its inferences, the whole 
 fabric raised upon it tumbles into rubbish. 
 
 Our appeal from theory to facts, may be safely rested upon such 
 as we here submit, which though necessarily limited in instances, 
 are so selected as to be entirely conclusive. 
 
 Joseph Lowe calculated the value of the real and personal prop 
 erty of Great Britain and Ireland, in A. D. 1793, at seven thousand 
 one hundred and thirty-two millions of dollars (87,132,000,000) 
 and the population at fourteen millions five hundred thousand 
 (14,500,000), which gives an average of four hundred and ninety- 
 one dollars to each person (8491.86). 
 
 Leoni Levi, for the year 1858, puts the value of the property at 
 twenty-nine thousand one hundred and seventy-eight millions of 
 dollars (829,178,000,000), making an average of one thousand and 
 six dollars per head (81,006). Here then the accepted authorities 
 give us an exact doubling of the population in all the British 
 Islands in Europe in sixty-five years, with a four-fold increase of 
 property, and a doubling of the average share of each individual in 
 the same time, and Mr. Mill s "averagely-situated" individual, even 
 in Great Britain and Ireland, did not find it more difficult to secure 
 a living in this long period, but in fact had his average share of the 
 total property of the United Kingdom doubled. 
 
 But the rate of increase in the general wealth was not uniform, 
 and so far was it from diminishing that it increased rapidly year by 
 year from the earliest date to that of the latest authoritative reports. 
 According to them the average increase of the whole period from 
 
46 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 1793 to 1858 required thirty-two and a half years for doubling 
 itself, but the most reliable estimates for fourteen years preceding 
 1S 66, give an increase at the rate of doubling in the greatly shorter 
 period of a fraction less than nineteen years in the kingdom of Great 
 Britain, Ireland excluded. Mr. Gladstone in his speech upon the 
 Reform bill in 1866 infers, from the increase of the income tax 
 during the next preceding fourteen years, that the wealth of the 
 kingdom of Great Britain, including Wales and Scotland, amounted to 
 sixty-five per cent, or at the compound rate of three and three quar 
 ters per cent per annum doubling in nineteen years, as already 
 said; the population at the same time increasing a fraction over one 
 and a half per cent per annum, or doubling in- fifty years. 
 
 England takes a decennial census of its population, but does not 
 estimate the value of the real and personal property of the kingdom 
 by assessment or appraisement, as is done in the United States. 
 The estimates of its statisticians, however, are probably as near the 
 truth as the census valuations of the marshals under the last-named 
 system. They have the rental, the income tax, the sworn value of 
 decedent s estates, bank, fire and marine insurance and other cor 
 poration reports, the excises, and the imports and exports of the 
 kingdom, for their data, and all these are official, and as nearly 
 accurate as might be attained by any other means. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone s inference from the income tax is probably a little 
 too high for the general average growth of wealth. The national 
 funds are not expected to yield more than three and one-quarter per 
 cent upon the investment, which, on account of their absolute secu 
 rity, is a little too low for a basis. Investments in lands, subject to 
 income tax and other abatements, at four per cent, and in railroads, 
 canals, houses, and other real property, still more burdened by risks, 
 repairs, and charges, four and one-half per cent. When these rates are 
 considered, about three and one-half per cent per annum may be 
 safely taken for the average increase of wealth, which is a doubling, 
 in the last decennial period, once in twenty years, or two and a half 
 times faster than the present rate of the population. 
 
 England surely may be taken to be one of Mr. McCulloch s "old 
 and densely-peopled countries" which he said could not double its 
 wealth in less than sixty years; but we find that she has increased 
 forty-one per cent in the ten years from 1856 to 1866, which 
 promises a doubling in twenty years. This is at twice the rate of 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 47 
 
 its growth between the years 1840 and 1850, which is explained by 
 the advantage of the later period from the influx of California 
 and Australian gold, the regularly enhancing wealth of all her 
 customers, the improvement of machinery, and, by the additional 
 good fortune that escaped the general scarcity in Europe and the 
 famine of 1847 in Ireland. 
 
 The result of this inquiry may be thus presented : Wealth grows 
 now in Great Britain at the rate of forty-one per cent in ten years ; 
 population, eleven and one-third per cent. The average of the 
 total values of the property of the Kingdom were to each person : 
 
 In the year 1851 $ 827 
 
 " 1861 , 1,074 
 
 1866 1,239 
 
 being an increase of fifty per cent in fifteen years, and a doubling 
 of the average distributive share of each individual -in twenty-five 
 and one-half years. 
 
 This is the answer that the statistical history of one old country, 
 pretty densely peopled, and with a population increasing at a me 
 dium rate, gives to the Ricardo-Mill theory of political economy, 
 which rests all its systematic doctrines on the fundamental proposi 
 tion that sustenance and supplies are ever becoming less and less 
 adequate to the demands of human life. 
 
 Let us now glance at the condition of a nation as old, nearly as 
 densely peopled, but with a population almost stationary : 
 
 France in 1836 had thirty-three and a half millions of people; 
 in 1856, thirty-six millions. Increase in twenty years only four 
 and three-quarters per cent, or one-quarter per cent per annum. 
 Her aggregate domestic exports for the ten years from 1826 to 1836 
 were valued at five thousand two hundred and fifteen millions of 
 francs (5,215,000,000f.); for the ten years from 1846 to 1856, at 
 twelve thousand and forty-five millions (12,045 ; 000,000f). In 
 crease in twenty years one hundred and thirty-one per cent in the 
 same time that her population was increasing but four and three- 
 quarters per cent. 
 
 Measuring the growth of wealth in France by the growth in 
 England, relatively to their foreign commerce, we find that in the 
 same twenty years England and Ireland increased their domestic 
 exports just one hundred and twenty per cent, or eleven per cent 
 less than the increase in France. Therefore, by this standard 
 
48 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 France was increasing in wealth at a slightly faster rate than Eng 
 land, previous to the year 1856. But the gains of France upon 
 the exports of her products are much larger than those of England. 
 Not more than one-fifth of their value is in the foreign material of 
 which they are fabricated. The four-fifths at least being her own 
 raw material and food converted into the commodities, while Eng 
 land s exports of manufactures have one-half of the value of her 
 total domestic exports in her imports of raw sugar, flax, cotton, 
 hides, hemp, silk, wool, and dyestuffs ; to say nothing of the bread- 
 stuffs and provisions, and the hundred other articles for which she 
 depends on foreign countries. 
 
 For .these and other reasons the annual profits of industry in 
 France are considerably greater than in England, that is, more than 
 three and one-half per cent, while her increase of people is almost 
 nothing one-fourth of one per cent. 
 
 With regard to her production of food, the progress has been 
 marvelous : In 1820 the yield of wheat was one hundred and fifty- 
 three millions of bushels a pro rata of five and four-tenths bushels 
 per head; in 1857 it had risen to three hundred and thirteen 
 millions (Dictionaire Universal, du Commerce tome i, p. 1384), 
 affording eight and six-tenths bushels to each individual. This is 
 three and one-half bushels per head more than the people of the 
 United States consume, leaving one hundred and thirty-three mil 
 lions of bushels for exportation. Her beet-root sugar in 1861 
 amounted to six and one-quarter pounds per head. (We raised 
 eleven pounds of cane and maple sugar.) Her product of potatoes 
 was two hundred and eighty millions of bushels. The United 
 States, with a population equal to five-sixths of hers, produced but 
 one hundred and fifty-two millions, or a little more than half the 
 per capita allowance of the French. 
 
 The total agricultural production of France has doubled in the 
 last thirty years, while at her present rate of increase it will take 
 two hundred and seventy-seven years to double her population. 
 With a density of one hundred and seventy-nine persons to the 
 square mile, or two and three-quarter times that of Pennsylvania 
 (sixty-five), she feeds all her people and has food to spare. The 
 whole of the New England and Middle States of the United States 
 in I860 had but sixty-four persons to the square mile, and when 
 the population of the entire Union shall number one hundred mil- 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 49 
 
 lions there will be but sixty-eight, or they will have a density of 
 but three-eighths (thirty-eight per cent) of that of France ; it is 
 now but one-eighth. 
 
 Population is certainly not pressing upon sustenance in France, 
 nor threatening to do so. We speak not now of its distribution, 
 but of the abundant and constantly increasing abundance of pro 
 vision for the support of the nation. 
 
 Having seen how much faster wealth increases than population in 
 the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the density being the great 
 est in Europe, except in the little Kingdom of Belgium, and the 
 increase of population at nearly the highest rate known in Europe ; 
 and, having also seen how the wealth of France grows at a propor 
 tionately faster rate upon a population nearly stationary and of 
 medium density,* we now turn to the like statistics of the United 
 States, where the movement in numbers and wealth are both on a 
 grander scale than in any of the countries of Europe. 
 
 The capital value of real and personal property, excluding that 
 in the slaves, according to the census valuation, increased in the 
 decade 1850-60, one hundred and twenty-six per cent, and the 
 population thirty-five and five-tenths per cent; or the capital 
 wealth grew at the rate of eight and one-half per cent, and the 
 population a fraction above three per cent per annum. The former 
 doubling in eight and a half years, and the latter in twenty-three 
 and a half years. The average share of each individual in 1850 
 standing at two hundred and sixty-six dollars, and rising in 1860 
 to four hundred and forty-nine dollars, being an increase in these 
 ten years of sixty-nine per cent upon the pro rata share of each 
 individual. 
 
 But, everywhere it is the annual produce that measures the pro 
 vision for the wants of men, and for their growth in numbers, and 
 improvement of their condition. Especially in the United States, 
 where the prospective value of real estate is always in advancefof its 
 present yield of profits, because it is always as certain as that already 
 reached, the capital increases considerably faster than its current 
 productiveness, the product must be taken, if we would ascertain 
 its relation to the demand for subsistence. Much of the estimated 
 
 * In 1865 England and Wales had three hundred and sixty to the square mile; 
 Scotland, ninety-eight ; United Kingdom, two hundred and sixty-seven; Ireland, 
 in 1SG1, one hundred and eighty-two. 
 
50 QUESTIONS. OF THE DAY. 
 
 value of fixed property here lies in expectation ; it is, therefore, the 
 product which land and other capital is made to yield that measures 
 the nation s actual wealth. The same is true of that greatest source 
 of wealth labor-power. All the agents, natural and artificial, that 
 may be used in production, depend for their effects upon the man 
 ner and measure of their employment. Land, labor, water and wind 
 power, money, and credit in all its forms, are in the same category. 
 Therefore, products, rather than capital, are the data for all calcula 
 tions in this matter of wealth and of its service in the support and 
 development of life. 
 
 Our decennial census reports do not nearly cover the annual pro 
 ducts of capital and industry. For instance, they take a very 
 inadequate account of the current consumption of their own crops 
 by our agriculturists, their families, and employees. In 1840 this 
 class amounted to three-fourths of the total population, and ap 
 proached the same proportion in 1850 nor, are any manufacturing 
 or mechanical products of the year returned where the annual value 
 falls below five hundred dollars. Besides all this which probably 
 amounts to one-fourth of the actual production of the country no 
 account is taken of the labor employed in clearing new and im 
 proving old lands, in building railroads, canals, houses, factories, 
 steamships, and other vessels ; nor, of the labor employed in opening 
 and working mines, in the fine arts, and a large portion of the useful 
 arts. All of which omissions may be safely stated at one-third of 
 the value of the products of agriculture and manufactures, me 
 chanics and the arts, noticed by the census-takers. Some of these 
 contributions to the subsistence and enjoyment of the people 
 those which continue their service during the period appear in 
 the valuation of the fixed and accumulated property at the recur 
 ring census appraisements, but in the aggregate, very far below 
 their value in current use. 
 
 That the census accounts of the annual product are very far below 
 the truth is apparent from the fact that they allow but $62.28 for 
 the share of each person in 1840; $64.00 in 1850; and $86.31 in 
 I860.* This is not enough for the consumption in 1860 by $14.00 
 
 * Agricultural products ninety per cent increase upon value of 1850, $1,818,- 
 156,816; manufacturing, mining, mechanic arts, eighty-seven and a half per cent 
 upon half the value of 1850 (half allowed for raw material), gives $857,671,664, 
 total $2,675,828,480 -5- 31,000,000 = $86.31 per cap. 
 
WEALTH LAWS OF GROWTH. 51 
 
 per capita, or nearly 8450,000,000 in the aggregate; besides, the vast 
 sum of $8,000,000.000 of increased capital value in the decade is 
 to be accounted for, which, if we allow even ten per cent for specu 
 lative valuation above that of 1850, would leave a deficiency of one 
 thousand two hundred and twenty millions, or 840 per capita, which 
 must have resulted from actual production, and this addition to the 
 sum allowed by the census would amount to $126,* average yield of 
 the labor capital and enterprise of each person, which is surely little 
 enough. 
 
 But our inquiry does not demand actual but comparative values 
 at the several periods which we take for the purpose of estimating 
 the proportion of wealth produced for the supply of the national 
 consumption and accumulation. The errors and defects of one 
 census are about equivalent to those of the others, and so we have 
 the ratio of provision to the number of the inhabitants, and this is 
 all that we want for our present purpose. 
 
 The increase of the products of capital and industry in the year 
 1860 over those of 1850 are well ascertained to have been : 
 
 In the Mining, Manufacturing, and Mechanic Arts... S7i per cent. 
 
 " Agriculture 90 " 
 
 " Agricultural Implements 63 " 
 
 " Books, Newspapers, and Job-printing 250 " 
 
 " Coal 170 
 
 " Wheat 71 
 
 " Indian Corn 42 " 
 
 " Potatoes 68 " 
 
 " Livestock 100 " 
 
 " Number of Horned Cattle 40 " 
 
 " Horses and Mules 48 " 
 
 " Sheep and Swine 9 " 
 
 " Ginned Cotton 112 " 
 
 " Tobacco 115 
 
 We have no hesitation in fixing the actual increase of the pro 
 ducts of 1860 over those of 1850 at one hundred per cent. This 
 
 * We reach this result in another way the population in 1850 was twenty- 
 three millions, in 1860, thirty-one millions mean number twenty-seven millions. 
 Their consumption in ten years at $100 a head makes twenty-seven thousand 
 millions. Putting the products of industry at $126 a head per annum, we get 
 the sum of thirty-four hundred millions, which gives an accumulation by labor 
 and capital employed of seven thousand millions. The census of 1860 states the 
 increased value at eight thousand millions, and we allow this one thousand mil 
 lions of difference for speculation beyond the actual value of property. 
 
52 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 would increase the per capita share of the people to forty-seven and 
 a half per cent in ten years, or to forty per cent, if only ninety per 
 cent be taken for the additional product. 
 
 Let us now restate our results in tabular form. 
 
 Increase of population, production, and, increase pro rata per 
 capita in the decade 1850 to 1860. 
 
 Of Population. ^Annual Of Share Ann** Products 
 
 United States 35.5 per cent 100 per cent 47 per cent. 
 
 France 2.6 " 44 " 40 
 
 Great Britain 11.3 " 41 " 26i " 
 
 Among the most striking results of an extended examination of 
 the growth of wealth in Great Britain and the United States, we 
 find the fact that it was just twice as great in the decade of 1850-60, 
 in both countries, as in that next preceding it, 1840-50. The pre 
 vious decades of the present century were either disturbed by 
 expensive wars, or by great commercial convulsions, which greatly 
 affect the data that they present for estimating the normal progress 
 of industry and trade; the two last-mentioned periods were but little 
 affected by any injurious events in the business affairs of either; or, 
 relatively to their respective resources, they were about equally 
 exposed to them, and they both had the advantage in a relatively 
 equal degree of all that contributed to immensely enhance the pros 
 perity of the period 1850-60. That they should both double their 
 decennial advance in wealth in the last of these periods as against the 
 previous one, under conditions so similar, goes a great way to indi 
 cate a law of progress very uniform in its operation, and as that law 
 is found to operate so favorably for the welfare of both, the mani 
 festation is clearly and conclusively in favor of our proposition which 
 may be thus stated : In a good order of human societies in the 
 present state of civilization the natural provision for the suste 
 nance of the people is abundant and growing more and more so with 
 whatever increase of numbers that can occur ; the power of men 
 over nature growing ever more complete in the increasing skill 
 applied to production. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOURCES OF ADVANCEMENT IN WEALTH. 
 
 Sources of advancement in wealth. Seven general sources. Nature s resist 
 ance. The super-natural in the "Mechanical powers." Measure of steam 
 force in equivalents of man-power. Employed in England equal to the labor- 
 power of one-quarter of the inhabitants of the Globe. Europe and America 
 supplement their human, by six times its force, in steam labor-power. This 
 power doubled again by machinery, and constant!} 7 enhancing, beyond com 
 putation. Velocity gained equals the force thus commanded. The mastery 
 obtained over masses of matter. Greater still over elements and atoms. Prac 
 tical application follows closely upon our discoveries in the laws of matter. 
 Abundance and cheapness of production supply an ample stock of provisions 
 for the wants of men. Effects of the growth of wealth on the products of 
 handicraft in dead matter. Advancement in agricultural production. In 
 crease in everything except food, unlimited. Consumption of food like its 
 possibilities of supply, limited. The despair of the " Dismal" School. General 
 answer. Famines and plagues disappear in the ratio that men increase in 
 number. Irish and Indian famines of the present centuries accounted for. 
 Exclusively agricultural countries alone exposed to starvation. Why. The 
 provision for food products adequate, and therefore practically unlimited. 
 Not ten per cent of the soil s capabilities yet mastered. Human destitution no 
 impeachment of the providence and liberality of nature s provision for human 
 wants. The laws of nature tend to adjustment of man and earth. Due culti 
 vation does not exhaust, but increases the soil s fertility. Contributions of 
 foreign commerce to subsistence. England draws four-fifths, in value, of the 
 raw material of her exported productf from foreign countries. Legitimate 
 foreign trade insures the needed supplies of the oldest countries. Relief 
 from emigration. Space in the new answers to needs in the old world. 
 Room enough still in Europe. Abundance in reserve for seven times the 
 present population of the globe. Economists, handicraftsmen, and horses 
 getting over their scare at the prospective destitution. Compensations in re 
 serve when customary reliances fail. Substitution of the abundant and cheap 
 for the scarce and dear. Civilization finds the means of human subsistence 
 ever more and more abundant and accessible. Sparseness of savage popula 
 tions and failure of their supplies. Diversified industry a sure defense against 
 famine. In progressive communities vegetable supplants animal food. Pro 
 portion of their respective yield. Economy of a vegetable diet among ani 
 mals. Progress from the animal, through, the vegetable to the mineral king 
 dom, in the supplies of advancing civilization. The Laborers opportunity 
 grows pari passu through all this progress. Last of all man advances to the 
 * 53 
 
54 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 command of the imponderables. Instances of the substitutions which mark 
 human progress, and provide for it. The Industrial liberty of nations, like 
 the emancipation of men from the despotism of the elements, comes from, and 
 is proportioned to, their control over nature s forces. Industrial and political 
 revolutions have their roots in the bosom of mother earth. 
 
 THE sources of advancement in wealth are, in general statement : 
 1st. Increase of labor-saving machinery; 2d. Substitution of arti 
 ficial for natural labor; 3d. Improvement in the quantity and 
 quality of commodities; 4th. Advancement in agricultural produc 
 tion ; 5th. Improvement in transportation ; 6th. Extension of for 
 eign trade; 7th. Substitution of the cheap and abundant for the 
 costly and scarce. 
 
 In some of these things the achievements of human art, and 
 the prospective improvements well assured, have converted the 
 fictions of magic, of our old story-books, into the facts of every-day 
 experience. The magic carpet and Aladdin s lamp seem now but a 
 prophesy of the wonders which science and art are accomplishing 
 for us. 
 
 In the conversion and transportation of the materials which serve 
 our needs, and which must undergo changes of form and place 
 before they are utilized, the forces of nature stand in resistance to 
 those of man. The earths and minerals which compose the solid 
 globe, serve men no further or better than they do the inferior 
 animals until they are transformed and subdued into use, and their 
 resistance to change of place is overcome. Their unserviceable 
 forms and properties in the natural state, and their fixity of local 
 position, call for force and speed to establish our dominion over them. 
 Something akin to the miraculous, something swper-natural, must be 
 arrayed against this natural to bring it into obedience. In the 
 " mechanical powers " we have it in the screw, the compound 
 pulley, and the wheel and axle. Nowhere in nature are either of 
 these found. Nature has the lever and the inclined plane, with the 
 force of gravitation, and that modification of it which is called cohe 
 sion, but these only in common with man and his instruments, 
 which in a thousand instances serve as successful antagonists to the 
 like forces of dead matter. Where the artificial lever is inadequate, 
 the screw and the pulley win an easy victory ; and with the wheel 
 and axle, men out-run the bird on the wing, and out-swim the fish 
 in the seas, carrying mountain-weights with a rapidity that over- 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 55 
 
 coincs all that is substantial in the resistance of Space ; while Time 
 in travel and transportation, for all the purposes of communication, 
 is effectively subdued by the apparatus of the electric telegraph and 
 the force of steam and machinery. In respect to force the force 
 of man against that of nature there can be no lack when four tons 
 of coal in a steam engine will evolve as much mechanical power as 
 an ordinary man can exert, working eight hours a day, for twenty 
 years, or, one ton of coal has in it a fifteen hundred man-power for 
 their work of one day. 
 
 Great Britain raised from her mines, in the year 1864, ninety-two 
 millions of tons j she exported to foreign countries but nine millions, 
 and if she employed but forty of the remaining eighty-three millions 
 in producing artificial labor-power, she got out of it the equivalent 
 of two hundred millions of men s work in the year. Two years 
 afterwards, in 1866, she mined one hundred and one thousand tons 
 of coal, and if she used fifty thousand tons of this quantity in the 
 same way, then she derived from it the labor-force of two hundred 
 and fifty millions of able-bodied men, which, by the ordinary com 
 putation, is about equal to that of all the inhabitants of the globe. 
 This, for an island numbering twenty-five millions of people, all 
 told, is a stupendous force. And when we add to it two-thirds of 
 this quantity, similarly used in the rest of Europe and the United 
 States, we have an aggregate population of about two hundred and 
 eighty millions, less than one-half of whom are in the producing 
 class, between fifteen and sixty years of age, and the one-half of 
 these only are males. So that considerably under seventy millions 
 of men s labor is supplemented by an artificial force derived from 
 coal, equal to that of about four hundred and ten millions of man 
 power, or, the mass of laborers in Europe and the United States 
 had the help of six times their power added to their own in doing 
 their allotted work. That is, they, with the aid of the steam-power 
 of coal, were doing nearly twice the work that the whole population 
 of the earth could do without it. Nor would it be too much to say 
 that this force was again doubled by the intervention of machinery 
 in steam works, and in its employment where water is the agent, 
 and where human force is multiplied in effect through the instru 
 mentality of the mechanical powers, as they are technically called. 
 Indeed, estimates and computation fail to grasp the effective value of 
 the adjuvants that human ingenuity employs to enhance its mastery 
 
66 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 of matter. And as a source of wealth to the civilized world, it will 
 be felt that this compelling power over inanimate things is in a 
 constant and rapid state of enhancement, growing day by day, until 
 it outstrips the limits of calculation, and the mind no longer defi 
 nitely comprehends the ever-swelling magnitude, just as it fails to 
 comprehend the indefinite ever advancing toward the infinite. 
 
 The amount of mechanical force thus growing into the unlimited, 
 in weight, is matched by the velocity of motion gained, which, while 
 still computable, is scarcely conceivable in shuttles, hammers, rollers 
 and wheels. Steam and machinery give us many hundred-fold 
 rapidity in printing, spinning, and weaving over the old hand-press, 
 wheel, and loom.* In transportation of men and commodities they 
 have afforded us fifteen miles on the ocean, and fifty on land, to the 
 hour; overcoming the resistance of wind and wave on the one, and 
 the greatest mountain masses on the other. Some idea of this ser 
 vice is given in the railroad reports of England. In 1866 her 
 trains on less than half (thirteen thousand two hundred and eighty- 
 nine miles) the length of track in the United States transported a 
 number of passengers equal to one quarter (two hundred and fifty- 
 two millions) of the population of the globe, and carried one hun 
 dred and forty millions of tons weight of men and things, one 
 hundred and thirty-four millions of miles a distance equal to that 
 from the earth to the sun, and half way back again. 
 
 These are but hints of the command we are to have over matter 
 in masses, and over time and space, in the work of conversion and 
 transportation. 
 
 Over its elements and atoms mind is achieving control still 
 greater and more wonderful. The incantations of chemistry set 
 free the hidden forces and agencies of the creation, and rehearse 
 the miracles of incessant new creations, changing the forms and uses 
 of all material things, and informing them with life and action in 
 the service of the living world. The solid rocks, the winds, the 
 waters, the latent fires of the great store- house of forces provided 
 
 * The increased economy and power obtained in the application of some kinds 
 of machinery will be apparent from the following statement, the result of accurate 
 calculation : Richard Qarsed, Esq., of Frankford, Pennsylvania, manufactures, in 
 every day of ten hours, thirty-three thousand miles of cotton thread obtaining 
 from seven tons of coal the necessary power. Supposing it possible for such 
 quality of thread to be made by hand, it would require the labor of seventy 
 thousand women to accomplish this work. 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 57 
 
 for our service, are compelled to take all shapes of use at the bid 
 ding of the spirit which masters their mysteries ; and, what is most 
 remarkable in the present age, and most promising for the oncoming 
 generations, is the practical application which follows closely upon 
 the heels of discovery. Franklin (in 1752) put his electric toy to 
 duty in guarding our habitations from the thunder-bolt; and Morse 
 (in 1832), before a generation had past after the discovery of gal 
 vanism (G-alvaui, 1791, Volta, 1801,) subdued this subtlest of 
 nature s agents to service in the electric telegraph; and now, in less 
 than thirty-six years more, it has triumphed over the last impedi 
 ments which the oceans interposed to the instant communication of 
 the whole earth. 
 
 Handicraft, which in the last hundred years has kept close com 
 pany with the rapidest revelations of science fulfills its commission, 
 " fixing firm in enduring forms the creative essence which lives and 
 works through all time, and hovers in changeful seeming till made 
 firm by enduring thought." (Goethe, prolog. Faust.) Material 
 forces, under the direction of machinery, grow as light-limbed and 
 strong-handed as the thought which they realize. Machinery be 
 comes bone and muscle to the brain and nerve of science ; and dead 
 matter answers in all its aptitudes to the mind of man. 
 
 From the union of knowledge with practical genius, physical 
 power has made such progress, and trained so many, and such 
 stupendous natural forces into our service, and all this so re 
 cently and rapidly, that we still look forward to a yet further and 
 vaster increase in the apparatus of production, and to a correspond 
 ing abundance and cheapness; and through that abundance and 
 cheapness to an ever-broadening diffusion of benefits and blessings. 
 
 This is what best describes and defines the increase of the general 
 or aggregate wealth : Men ever better and better provided with the 
 commodities which sustain their animal life; with the luxuries, 
 which refine it; with an ever enlarging release from drudgery, 
 which liberates it, and, with the opportunities and inducements, 
 thence resulting, for elevating it to its noblest uses and highest 
 possibilities. 
 
 ADVANCEMENT IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION. 
 
 Agriculture differs from manufactures in not being capable of 
 absolutely indefinite expansion. This is true in the literal mean- 
 5 
 
58 QUESTIONS OF TLLE DAY. 
 
 ing of the words; but writers of the dismal school give the truism 
 much more force in application than it is entitled to. The 
 multiplication in quantity, and improvement in quality, of all 
 things, except food, which is clearly possible, is by an allowable 
 hyperbole unlimited. Busy as a nailer, was once a proverb, be 
 cause he must hammer out a nail at a single heat, and had not a 
 moment to spare, but now a boy may be seen making more than 
 fifty in a minute, while at leisure to read a book held in his unoccu 
 pied hand. A hundred years ago England consumed one yard of 
 muslin per head per annum, but before our great domestic conflict 
 it was plenty enough and cheap enough there for the inhabitants 
 to consume an average of thirty yards; arid so of a multitude 
 of other commodities which a better state of things in the new 
 age has made necessaries of life. But food, unless it be of fish, is 
 much more limited in supply and accessibility. Its production and 
 consumption cannot be expanded in any tolerable approach to the 
 possible of textile fabrics, or metals, in their infinitely various 
 forms of use. This, however, must not be forgotten : though the 
 number of consumers is the same, the quantity of food demanded, 
 has vastly narrower limits. 
 
 Population, we are told by the Malthus school of economists, 
 goes on increasing, in favorable conditions, in a compound ratio, 
 and the food -yield from the soil at best only by simple addition; 
 and still worse, after a certain stage of culture is reached, all addi 
 tional product is at an increasing cost of labor and capital the 
 process of exhaustion all the while advancing and these general 
 abstract propositions are rigorously pressed into the service of unbe 
 lief in the harmonies of the things which most nearly concern the 
 welfare of men. 
 
 As a general answer, it is to be noticed that, in point of fact, 
 and directly to the point of this assertion, famines, and the plagues 
 attendant on them, have disappeared in modern times and under 
 modern civilization, in the direct proportion that population has in 
 creased. Particular and comparatively small districts sometimes 
 suffer now, but these are always the grossly-misgoverned or bar 
 barously-cultivated portions of the civilized world. No famine or 
 resulting plague, and no instances of very great scarcity, have 
 visited Europe within the present century; but in increasing num 
 bers and severity, as we go back towards the earliest ages of Chris- 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 59 
 
 tianity, they crowd the chronological registers of important events 
 in human history. In Ireland, indeed, with fifteen millions of 
 arable acres, and ten millions of that in pasture, the mass of the 
 population, confined for food to a single root, which, under the 
 pressure of necessity, is stimulated into disease, while the flocks 
 and herds go to a distant market for the landlord s profit, famines 
 and deficiencies in food are still lingering long after happier lands 
 have found a nearly complete exemption. Ireland, under the con 
 ditions ^which she still suffers, cannot be blamed with infertility, or 
 failure of ability to feed her people. India is still frequently visited 
 by famines, also; but, is it surprising, if the richest soil of the world 
 fails to yield its harvests, when the rule of the foreigner, or what 
 ever else the cause, has restored the jungles of tropical luxuriance 
 to the old garden grounds of the Deccan, and tiger hunts are the 
 pastimes in spots which still retain the vestiges of demolished 
 cities? Shall mother eartfy be made ashamed that she sickens and 
 withers under such abuses ? 
 
 In the northeast of Prussia we have lately heard of scarcity 
 approaching absolute destitution ; but such instances as this, and 
 others like it, occurring in districts surrounded by abundance, 
 have this lesson to teach the teachers of Political Economy and 
 the governors of states : famines now never occur except in regions 
 exclusively devoted to the production of food ; and. that a duly 
 diversified industry is an insurance against them. The crop of one 
 year, however abundant, never suffices for itself and the next fol 
 lowing, and if that of the last greatly fails, starvation must follow, 
 for all of the labor of the paople fails of its returns, and they have 
 no current products wherewith to purchase supplies. Nine hundred 
 of every thousand people, in any country, must starve if a whole 
 year s earnings are cut off. 
 
 Let us admit the limited acreage of the fertile soil of the world; 
 let us admit even the temporary exhaustibility of the soil under 
 destructive modes of cultivation, and, that the earth will not long 
 bear the robber-system of harvesting its generous tribute ; and 
 then, we turn to the despondents and reply : what, though neither 
 land nor its products are in themselves unlimited, are they, there 
 fore, not under natural law sufficient, more than sufficient, and 
 so, in reference to the demand, practically unlimited ? The thou 
 sand millions of its human inhabitants have not yet conquered 
 
60 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ten per cent of the earth s capabilities for their service, even if 
 a few garden spots may have reached the limit of their strength; 
 but what is more to the purpose : if the race is still brutal in its 
 fecundity, resulting entirely from the domination of the animal over 
 the moral and mental faculties, and is a nuisance among the fair 
 and orderly works of creation, may she not reject them as she did 
 the reptiles of the old geologic ages, without impeachment of her 
 providence and liberality ? 
 
 We are thinking of the laws, not of the abuses of human life 
 and its dependencies j and in those laws we see a constant effort in 
 correction of those abuses, and an assured promise of an ultimate 
 adjustment. But this still allows much evil and suffering in the 
 present and immediate future ! Not a whit more suffering than 
 sin ; and we cannot even imagine a system of existence in which 
 wrong shall get along as well as right. To have men live well in 
 error and evil is a gross violation of order and law, and would require 
 that the system of the universe should be changed from the divinely 
 right into conformity, if that were possible, with the rebellious evil 
 which assails and defies it. 
 
 It is well to speak strongly on this subject, for, whether any pres 
 ent good shall result or not, it is much to have a sound faith and 
 confidence in the laws of Providence. If we have an eternity for 
 thought and feeling before us, a sustaining hope will go along with 
 the study, and there will be the good cheer of a better day coming, 
 .as the motive and the reward of benevolent endeavor. 
 
 But we can rest our argument securely upon experience and 
 observation, seen in the light which the ends and issues of all things 
 o-eflect upon the processes by which they must be attained. 
 
 In point of fact the productiveness of all the old countries which 
 Tiave any degree of prosperity is in a constant and rapid increase, 
 far outstripping the demand for sustenance. They are growing 
 rich upon their surplus. 
 
 The food of France increased three times in the eighty years 
 from 17GO to 1840. In the period of 1820 to 1860 it doubled, 
 that is, it is now increasing at the rate of four-fold in eighty years 
 against three-fold in the earlier period named ; and this with a popu 
 lation nearly stationary and in an area of the same extent. She is 
 a very large exporter of food. Age has not lessened her fertility. 
 Its tendency under a due system of cultivation is always in the 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 61 
 
 opposite direction. The Mediterranean wheat, which makes such 
 a figure in commerce is grown on the oldest cultivated soil in Europe 
 and Africa. 
 
 English authors of authority claim that the usual crop of wheat 
 in the United Kingdom is thirty bushels to the acre. The United 
 States Agricultural Bureau puts our crops at from twelve to thir 
 teen bushels per acre. Here the oldest country considerably more: 
 than doubles the newest in its average yield. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE. 
 
 Improvement in the methods of cultivation, and the resulting 
 enhancement of the product of soils long under tillage in the older 
 countries, are not the only means and sources of increasing and 
 cheapening the necessary supplies of their people. The coloniza 
 tion of, and COMMERCE with new countries, and the contributions 
 which they are made to yield, afford a grand increase of the means 
 of subsistence to the participating communities. For instance, the 
 exports of cottons from England grew at a two-fold rate in the 
 decade ending in 1860 over that of 1840-50, constituting full 
 three-eighths of the value of all her domestic exports in the year 
 1860 (52 m. of 135.8 m. ), while her iron, steel, cutlery, and 
 other manufactures of iron and steel, of which she had at home all 
 the raw material ami agents of conversion, amounted to no more 
 than eleven and six-tenths per cent (15.9 m. ), or less than one- 
 eighth of the whole. Her imports of raw material used in the manu 
 facture of cottons, silks, and woolens, that year (I860) were valued at 
 forty-seven and a half millions pounds. Their export value reached 
 seventy-five millions, which, with twenty million pounds worth con 
 sumed at home, gave her quite two hundred and thirty-eight millions 
 dollars of difference in the exchange. These three manufactures, 
 founded upon foreign raw materials, gave employment to seven 
 hundred thousand laborers, whose wages supported nearly three 
 millions of her population, and yielded a profit of, say, fifteen mil 
 lions of pounds to her capitalists (sixteen per cent upon the value of 
 the products). It is probable that the United Kingdom does not 
 supply more than the one-fifth in value of the materials (exclusive 
 of the labor) of her usual exports. If so, foreign commerce gives- 
 her four-fifths of the raw stock of her multifarious foreign exports^ 
 
62 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 The United Kingdom has risen from one and a half to six 
 thousand millions of pounds in capital wealth since the United 
 States sent the first cotton to her looms (in 1790), and, as has been 
 already stated, this single article has risen to the value of three- 
 eighths of the exports of British manufactures. 
 
 All the older countries have in this species of commerce sources 
 of industrial profit, and supplies of sustenance before them, for as 
 long a period as philanthropy or patriotism need wish. Even 
 when international exchanges shall be limited to trade in the unlike 
 products of differing climates, as it eventually must be. the reci 
 procities natural and, therefore, stable and enduring, will still be 
 ample in their contributions to the welfare of all parties. 
 
 While the social disorder and misgovern rnent of the nations of 
 Western Europe continue to bear hardly upon the mass of the 
 peoples, the colonization of new countries will, in an important de 
 gree, abate the evils of disproportion between men and their current 
 means of support, at present existing. For this purpose full four- 
 fifths of the habitable idobe is still new. Europe has now less 
 than sixty-five persons to the square mile. This number does not 
 task the one-third of its capabilities at home; and America, that 
 has but three and a half, is capable of an average of at least two 
 hundred. When these two quarters of the globe shall have their 
 highest probable population in A. D. 1900, there will be ample 
 room in them for nineteen times as many as they will have, or 
 for seven times the total present population of the known world. 
 Without calculating the waiting capabilities of Asia, Africa, and 
 Oceanica for the multitudes which they can and will, in the advanc 
 ing order of the earth s occupation and use, entertain and sustain, 
 there is in the vacancies of Europe and America ample room and 
 verge enough for a future so extended, that we might as well under 
 take to forecast the arrangements of the millennium, as to concern 
 ourselves with the provision for the existence of the men that 
 shall come after the globe is averagely inhabited and tolerably well 
 subdued to the dominion of man. 
 
 Distressing apprehensions for the future of mankind are not 
 new; but it is comparatively new for science to become hypochon- 
 driacal. It must be because political economy is itself so new that 
 it breaks its heart over the foolish fears of infancy; it has not yet 
 cut its wisdom teeth. 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 63 
 
 Tn the memory of the present generation, the general and rapidly 
 increasing substitution of machinery and steam power for hand- 
 labor, threatened the displacement and the starvation of the toiling 
 multitudes, and good people stood aghast at the prospect when they 
 saw one man doing the work of fifty. The laborers themselves 
 looked upon the wonder-working machines, much as an untrained 
 horse regards a locomotive engine, frightened by the apprehension 
 that his " occupation s gone." The results, however, seem to be 
 reconciling both man and beast. They have both improved greatly 
 in quality and numbers, and they both in some vague way are be 
 ginning to understand the situation. In like manner, our grand 
 mothers looked forward to dreadful things, before fossil coal came 
 into use for fuel, for the time rapidly advancing when the forests 
 should be utterly exhausted. Even John Stuart Mill gave voice 
 in parliament in the spring of 1866, to a statistical scare over the 
 near exhaustion of the English coal mines, and urged the early pay 
 ment of the British debt in anticipation of the utter bankruptcy of 
 the nation ; that they might be able when the worst should come. 
 to say, all is lost but honor. When the American Rebellion cut off 
 the Northern States from the turpentine supply of North Carolina, 
 and the whale fisheries were showing signs of decay, trade in all its 
 branches which had depended upon these resources, gave signs of 
 woe; but then the petroleum rivers overflowed, and the lubricated 
 wheels of business rolled smoothly again; and one other world s 
 catastrophe was escaped. 
 
 By way of a short cut to the conclusion, we may be allowed to 
 suggest that, if England and France have survived their crimes and 
 follies; if they are recovering from the insanities of centuries, and 
 have taken a fresh start in business, no other people need fear the 
 fates. The decadence of the civilized nations that are disposed to 
 behave themselves as well as they can, is sheer nonsense. 
 
 SUBSTITUTION OF THE ABUNDANT AND CHEAP FOR THE SCARCE 
 AND DEAR IN THE SUPPORT OF MEN. 
 
 Besides the increase of labor-saving machinery ; the substitution 
 of artificial for natural labor; improvement in travel and transpor 
 tation ; a vast increase in the quality and quantity of manufactured 
 commodities; the rapidly growing yield of agriculture, both by 
 
64 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 improved cultivation and extension of territory for such use ; the 
 abundant aid of commerce in distributing the materials and the 
 products of skilled industry legitimately exchanged ; and the almost 
 miraculous helps of the natural sciences in extending the dominion 
 of man over the subordinate creation on which he depends for his 
 earthly welfare, there is still another source of prosperity worthy of 
 as much weight in the scale of our argument as either of these. 
 
 Within a few years gas of mineral origin has been substituted for 
 animal oil for producing artificial light in all the cities, and in every 
 thriving borough in the country ; beet sugar and sorghum, which 
 grow abundantly in the temperate climate, for the product of the 
 cane, which requires a semi-tropical temperature; roots which yield 
 by the ton, for grain that multiplies only by the bushel for the food 
 of men and the feed of domestic animals ; mineral oils have opened 
 up from the interior of the earth in rivers, to replace vegetable and 
 animal oils requiring so much of the surface soil to afford an ade 
 quate supply j and manufactures have by their ever growing abun 
 dance and cheapness come to supply and displace a very large per 
 centage of food, which a greater waste of animal heat formerly 
 required : aye, all the modern defenses against atmospheric cold are 
 the equivalents of so much food in sustaining human life. Our 
 clothing and our better habitations are worth half the food consumed 
 in ages gone by for the maintenance of a comfortable temperature 
 and health of body. By these ameliorations the average life of a 
 generation has been extended from thirty-three to forty years since 
 the beginning of the present century. 
 
 In another and broader view, our proposition may be seen in 
 convincing clearness, thus : In savage conditions men are robbers 
 of the earth, and victims of the elements. They gather the forest 
 fruits in their season, hunt the air and earth and waters for their 
 food, and suffer all the privations of improvidence. A thousand 
 acres scarcely suffice for the support of one man, and these he soon 
 exhausts, and is soon exhausted in his turn. When William Penu 
 lauded on the Delaware, there were not more than twenty-five thou 
 sand Indians from the Potomac to the chain of the northern lakes, 
 and from Connecticut to the Allegheny River. There are eleven 
 millions of men now, or four hundred and forty times that number. 
 In the pastoral state the culture of cattle commences, and some 
 sort of agriculture is introduced ; but famines frequently occur, and 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 65^ 
 
 the children of Israel must go into slavery in Egypt for an assured 
 supply of corn a barbarous civilization purchases the birthright 
 of Jacob for a mess of pottage, as he had bought Esau s at the same 
 price. Low as it is, this stage is an advancement in the supply 
 and security of life. Semi-civilization becomes so far forth master 
 of its own fortunes, and owners of the service of their inferiors. 
 This results necessarily from the law that determines the conditions 
 of society in every stage of progress. " Be fruitful, and multiply, 
 and replenish the earth, and subdue it," is the commission and the 
 means of securing the promise it contains. 
 
 Let us look, briefly, at the workings of the policy, in the processes 
 employed for obtaining command of the earth s services in progress 
 ive improvements of human life. 
 
 The vegetable kingdom, which yields, some thirty, some sixty, 
 and some an hundred-fold, is first drawn upon for its supplies. 
 Animal food begins to be supplanted, immensely reduced in the 
 temperate regions, and dispensed with in the tropical, with gains 
 proportionate to its reduction. Exclusive animal food, where pastur 
 age and feed must be used in its production, requires ten or twelve 
 acres cultivated land to grow the flesh diet of one man for one year ] 
 one acre of wheat will support three persons affording thirty-six 
 times as much sustenance. One acre of potatoes will support nine 
 persons equal to one hundred and eight times the food yielded 
 from the same extent of soil in flesh meat. In this ratio, advanced 
 agriculture multiplies the means of subsistence, by this process of 
 substitution, and in proportion, by all mixtures of these substances 
 used for food. Even in the inferior races we have a good illustra 
 tion of the economy of a vegetable over an animal diet. The lion, 
 tiger, bear, and other carnivorous beasts multiply slowly, while the 
 vegetable eaters the horse, ox, and buffalo multiply immensely; 
 they go in herds, while the ravagers of the living things roam alone 
 in the solitudes which they make. 
 
 In apparel, as necessary to the life of the more advanced classes 
 of men as food itself, and equally expensive, the vegetable flax and 
 cotton displace a vast amount of wool which would otherwise be 
 required. One acre of ground will produce as much of value in 
 textile fabrics made of these, as a hundred acres will yield in the 
 wool of sheep. 
 
 But it is not only from the animal world to the vegetable that 
 
66 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 man proceeds iii the multiplication of his means of life from the 
 beasts that roam over the earth, through the cereals that grow 
 above it, to the roots nourished in its bosom, with increasing plenty 
 at each stage in the descent. He stops not here , but deeper still he 
 finds the richest repository of his resources in the bowels of the 
 planet. The mineral kingdom, with its exhaustless stores, are next 
 opened for his use. And it is a striking fact that labor, the only 
 capital of the masses, who most need that their condition shall be 
 leveled up to competency, and thence forward toward the luxu 
 ries that refine, enlarge, and ennoble the life of man, through all 
 this progress from the scarce and costly, to the abundant and cheap, 
 shall be more and more in demand for the work of the world, and 
 will derive from it an ever increasing share of its products. In 
 agriculture nine-tenths of the product goes to the share of the 
 capitalist, but in mining three-fourths of the yield is in the reward 
 of labor another instance of the adjustment of means to ends in 
 the system of Providence, and a sure advancement of the changes 
 that are to carry the world from the savage to the millennial state of 
 the human race another proof that all the movements in human 
 history are tending arid tiding to better things and better still, in 
 infinite progression. 
 
 In the order of human advancement to complete dominion in the 
 earth, we thus find the race going from the animal to the vegetable, 
 and finally to the mineral world, for their subjects and their best 
 services from the narrowly-limited and the precarious animal sup 
 plies, to the more abundant and more secure vegetable, though sub 
 ject to the caprices of the seasons; and thence, at the last stage, to 
 the body of the solid earth, whose stores depend upon neither time 
 nor climate nor season, nor any of their changes. In the suc 
 cessive kinds of mineral contributions, it is curious to observe that 
 gold and silver are found by savages in the sands of the water 
 courses, while they are yet using implements of stone and wood in 
 handicraft; that along with these, barbarous nations employ copper 
 and iron, which they contrive to smelt and mould for use with fuel 
 of wood, and in architecture they utilize stone and clay made into 
 bricks; while civilization not only avails itself of the all-compelling 
 power of heat prospectively provided for this use in the fossil coal 
 that at present is the greatest agent in the world s work ; yet 
 further: just as modern geography has added a fifth-quarter to the 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. G7 
 
 old world, so modern science has begun to annex another kingdom 
 to the three that compassed the realm of man s subjects before the 
 birth of chemistry. We are already familiar with the use of the 
 imponderables, which have their pavilion in the clouds and their 
 amphitheatre of exposition in the recesses of the globe. 
 
 These successive stages of substitution stand in the following 
 order, and the instances uiven will serve to illustrate it. 
 
 First. From the animal to the vegetable kingdom : 
 
 Vegetable food substituted for Animal food. 
 
 Cotton " Skins and wool. 
 
 Flax and cotton " Silk. 
 
 Jlemp Skins in sails and cordage. 
 
 Gutta perch a, caoutchouc " Leather. 
 
 Wooden canoe " The wild horse. 
 
 Paper of rags Parchment. 
 
 Alcohol and vegetable oils " Animal oil. 
 
 Second. From the vegetable to the mineral kingdom : 
 
 Steel and gold pen and metallic types substituted for The goose quill. 
 Iron, stone, brick, slate, in ships and architecture, " Timber. 
 Coal, gas, mineral oil " Wood as fuel. 
 
 Third. From animals and vegetables to minerals : 
 
 Iron Engines substituted for The horse, ox, and camel. 
 
 Steel springs " Feathers and hair. 
 
 Glass " Skins. 
 
 Mineral gas " Animal oil and wnx, as light. 
 
 Mineral manures " Animal and vegetable manures. 
 
 Metal gun Wooden bow and animal string. 
 
 Wood and iron carriages (t Animal transportation. 
 
 Wooden and metallic machin- f Human bone and muscle in man- 
 
 ery (( ( ufacturing. 
 
 Steam machinery " Animal power. 
 
 Fourth. From animal, vegetable, and mineral to the imponder 
 ables : 
 
 Electricity substituted for living messengers and vegetable sails. 
 Galvanic heat " vegetable and mineral heat. 
 
 Beside these transitions from kingdom to kingdom of the material 
 world, there is a constant substitution proceeding from the scarcer 
 and costlier and poorer in each division to something better and 
 
68 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 easier of attainment within its own class, which we need not stop 
 to specify ; but there is one instance which, being less familiar, or 
 generally unknown, though already proved, deserves to be noticed 
 here for its surpassing importance in the world s business affairs. 
 
 This is gas for fuel made from water, and with the addition of 
 carbon to answer the purpose of giving artificial light as we have it 
 now from coal. Water largely supplies the combustible substance, 
 and the required gas can be produced from it at about the tenth of 
 the cost of the manufacture from coal. It is to her coal more than 
 to all the other agents of industrial production, that England owes her 
 supremacy in manufactures, and in their transportation to the world s 
 markets. The promise of a substitute that will replace her coal 
 when it shall be either exhausted or become over expensive in the 
 mining, saves her from an utter failure of her industries; but, as the 
 supply of material for this service is common and exhaustless in all 
 climates all over the earth, there can be no monopoly by any nation, 
 and the industrial despotism of England will come to an end. 
 Germany, France. Russia, and the United States are even now fast 
 approaching independence of the " Workshop of the World." 
 Some of these have coal fields that will furnish them for a few 
 thousand years to come. These coal beds will be for generations 
 easily worked, and the labor cost of their product will be light, while 
 that of England will be continually increasing with the depth and 
 distance to which the long-worked veins must be pursued. The 
 natural growth of capital and -labor in these favored regions will, at 
 an early day, make their rivalry successful ; and if our expectations 
 from water gas shall be realized, the end of British domination in 
 the world s market will be the sooner and the more surely reached. 
 
 This "Old Man of the Sea" has rendered good service in guiding 
 the nations in their forward pathway, but it has been at the expense 
 of carrying his weight till it has grown over-burthensome. The 
 younger nations are coming of age, and the mother country must let 
 go the leading strings. When pupilage becomes vassalage, resist 
 ance is compelled. Children that do not in due time reach maturity 
 are unworthy of their parents. Australia, Canada, and the West 
 Indies are already near the end of their political dependence, and 
 they will soon strike effectively for economic freedom after the 
 example of the United States. "The better day coming" cannot 
 come till all this is done and well done. Mere political sovereignty 
 
WEALTH SOURCES OF GROWTH. 
 
 GO 
 
 over her colonies never was her aim. It was achieved, and has 
 been held in all her provinces for the one purpose of securing their 
 markets. In the course of events the little islands of Great Britain 
 which can be covered with a thimble on any middling sized map of 
 the habitable globe, have lost the military preeminence among the 
 nations that once could hold them in check, and her own territories in 
 subjection. And they are fast losing that mastery in production, for 
 which all England s wars were made, and which all her invasions 
 were designed to secure. England must ere long descend from her 
 pre-eminence, and take her befitting position among the rank and 
 file of the nations. The world owes her much a balance still 
 after all the heavy payments made in return. But the patent right 
 in discoveries must run. out some time; and in the things for which 
 the rest of mankind are in her debt, that time arrives when the 
 principal of the obligation is lost in the enormous interest which it 
 has returned. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 POPULATION LAW OF INCREASE. 
 
 Population : Rate of increase in United States, England and Wales, Prussia and 
 France. Great difference between peoples nearly alike in origin. Malthusians 
 hold a constant quantity in the reproductive function. Variant death rate of 
 earlier and later dates ; Greatest in the sparsest populations. Death rate nearly 
 the same in communities which greatly differ in rate of total increase. A con 
 stant quantity in the reproductive function, with relatively constant diminution 
 of sustenance, held by the British authorities. The protest of Philosophy and 
 Philanthropy ; submission of Theologians, the reason why. The primal curse 
 contains a promise of sufficiency. The facts of history. The sources of the 
 dismal philosophy. Contradictions of these theorists. Analogies forced upon 
 differences. Different data and method of the inquiry. Arithmetical measure 
 ment of possible quantity of life and of food, indifferent. Sufficiency, the 
 issue. Possible productiveness of man and earth unknown. The question, one 
 of principles and not of estimated numerals. The strictly inductive sciences 
 assume adjustment of means to ends. The a posteriori method. Limits of 
 its province. Does not apply to life united to liberfy and responsibility. All 
 the facts not within the range of observation and experiment. Their focal 
 point and interpretation, in the design of the Creator. The a priori or deduct 
 ive method alone capable of the problem of man s relations to his material 
 conditions. A posteriori method, the vice of metaphysics and political 
 economy. The past and future in the physical sciences rest upon the a 
 priori system of reasoning. A sound faith must be corroborated by facts as 
 far as they go. The power of vital reproduction in an inverse ratio to the 
 power of maintaining life an universal law. No corrective checks in the 
 inferior animals Viability and fecundity proportioned to each other, and 
 adjusted to the intention of the life. The intention is to provide for the 
 continuance of kinds, and to meet the casualties to which they are sub 
 ject. Transfer of this law from different species, to equally varied conditions 
 of the human species. Justified by the historic changes in the human death 
 rate, and the explanation it affords of the almost fabulous populations of 
 ancient times. The supply answers the demand, and the demand rules the 
 supply. The results afforded by the argument of analogy. The law tried by 
 the inductive method. Its physiological basis contained in three proposi 
 tions or general laws of the human organism. Disease a broken balance of 
 functional activities. Unequal distribution of action among the several organs 
 in health. Effect of habitual concentration. Actual action of organs not 
 measured by their possibilities. Nervous functions antagonize the reproduc 
 tive. Remedy for excess in balanced activity. The excess meets the losses of 
 70 
 
POPULATION. 71 
 
 disordered life. Improvements in the forms of labor, the self-acting correct 
 ive. The remedy most active just where it is most needed. The promise in 
 intellectual improvement. Advancement in agriculture will diminish demand 
 and increase supply. Moral improvement will bring with it greater pro 
 duction of sustenance and greater economy in consumption. Tendency of 
 progress to restore equilibrium of functions and harmony of relations between 
 earth and man. Apparent exception. Indian chivalry. Activity of the 
 nervous functions in the Hunter tribes ; their infertility falls within the rule of 
 our law. Physiological ignorance checks criticism in special cases. Consider a- 
 tion due to exceptions. The present emigration from Western Europe. Sum 
 mary of conclusions. Great mortality results from abuses. Waste of life not a 
 blunder of the Creator. Excessive fertility designed to repair abnormal loss. 
 The remedy in the evil. The law works to good. Happy results, the marks 
 and tests of Nature s laws. 
 
 THE distribution of wealth would fitly follow the examination 
 we have given to the laws governing its accumulation; but our 
 inquiries have a drift that requires the preliminary investigation of 
 a subject intimately involved in the question of sustenance adjusted 
 to numbers the law of the relation of Population to supply. We 
 begin with the facts that we may have the field fairly before us. 
 In the sixty years preceding 1860, the population of the United 
 States increased very nearly three per cent per annum (com 
 pounded), or, at the rate of doubling every twenty-three and a half 
 years. The native white people, after deduction of the immigrants, 
 may be put at two and seven-sixteenths per cent per annum, at which 
 rate they duplicated once in twenty-seven years. Great Britain (Ire 
 land excluded) doubled its numbers in the last fifty years, but 
 allowance for emigration would reduce the period to forty-six 
 years, or one and one-half per cent per annum. Prussia increased 
 very nearly at the same rate, while Prance, almost stationary, has 
 been increasing no more than one-fourth of one per cent per 
 annum, requiring two hundred and seventy-seven years to double 
 her population. 
 
 These are enough to exhibit the varied rates of actual increase 
 occurring among nations nearly enough alike to be classed together 
 for comparison. Men differing from each other constitutionally no 
 more than the German and Celtic stocks in Europe, and their mixed 
 descendants in America, are thus found to vary in rate of natural 
 increase as the numbers twenty-seven, forty-six, and two hundred 
 and seventy-seven do from each other. It must be understood of 
 these figures that they express the present current movement of 
 
72 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 population in the countries named; and, throwing out of considera 
 tion, for the present, the difference of conditions that may be sup 
 posed to affect the results, we note the fact that, so far, we have 
 found nothing to support the doctrine that the reproductive func 
 tion in the human race is a constant quantity, as the school of 
 Malthus assumes and asserts it to be. 
 
 Neither has the law of mortality any greater constancy or uni 
 versality. The death rate varied in London in one hundred and 
 sixty years (from 1685 to 1845) from one in twenty-three of its 
 inhabitants at the former date, to one in forty at the latter. The 
 ordinary mortality of London, in the seventeenth century, says 
 Macaulay, was as great as a visitation of the cholera would make it 
 in the nineteenth. Thus a main element in the population theory, 
 imposed upon us by the authorities, is affected by difference of time 
 and attendant circumstances. One of these circumstances, what 
 ever may be said of the others, is particularly unfortunate for the 
 over-population theory. The inhabitants of London, when its 
 death rate was at the highest, were not more than one-twelfth of 
 the number that the city contained when their mortality was re 
 duced to one-half the proportion of the earlier date. 
 
 But in contemporary history we have a record that is every way 
 irreconcilable with the theory of a constant quantity in the func 
 tion of procreation. In the year 1860, England, whose popula 
 tion grows at the rate of doubling once in forty-six years, shows 
 one death to every forty-four living persons. The United States, 
 which double their numbers by natural increase once in twenty- 
 seven years, had one death to every forty-five inhabitants ; France, 
 which scarcely grows in numbers at all, had one death in forty- 
 four. Here the proportion of deaths to the living people is almost 
 the same, notwithstanding the immense disparity in the movement 
 of population in these three countries; and Prussia, which increases 
 its people not a whit faster than England and Wales, had one death, 
 to thirty-two of its people in that year. The inference, not to be 
 escaped is, that a difference in the proportion of births to popula 
 tion, in nations so nearly alike as these are, must be the cause of 
 the vastly variant increase of the people. 
 
 But this "constant quantity" of the pretended law encounters 
 still more embarrassment, and more emphatic contradiction, when its 
 application is tried upon very widely different races, or families of 
 
POPULATION. 73 
 
 mankind, which we will notice when we come to explain it in the 
 light of what we take to be a true theory of the subject. 
 
 Only the Malthusiau economists and the utterly unschooled pub 
 lic hold a fixed rate, and natural predetermined proportion of births 
 to adults, without respect to conditions, or, if the school prefers it, 
 a determined possibility of procreative power inherent in the human 
 constitution. These theorists are also distinguished from all other 
 thinkers by holding the inference from their premises, that there 
 is in the constitution of earthly things a positive, natural and ever- 
 increasing disparity between the production of human life and the 
 capability of the earth to support it. 
 
 The best known British authorities are of this party. Their 
 systems of political economy are built upon it, and can stand on no 
 other ground. 
 
 The over-population theory, presented at the beginning of the 
 present century in the imposing form of a scientific demonstration, 
 did not pass without protest. It is impossible in this age to allow 
 philosophy to justify war, pestilence, and famine, as the necessary 
 correctives of mischiefs resulting from the laws of nature. The 
 support and apology for despotism, which the doctrine affords, is 
 just as abhorrent to the sentiments of charity and philanthropy. 
 Theologians, it would seem, strangely enough, were less offended. 
 The doctrine in its scientific array sprang from a clergyman of the 
 Church of England, and was early and eagerly indorsed by Dr. 
 Chalmers, of the Free Church of Scotland. The strong tendency 
 of the religious sentiment to regard the present life as under a 
 curse, and the disorders of the terrestrial system, as the reign of 
 punitive justice, with a necessary suspension of providential benefi 
 cence, perhaps, accounts for the submission of the pulpit to this 
 revolting philosophical heresy. The "thorns and thistles" of the 
 primal curse, and all the resistance of nature to the dominion of 
 man, which it signifies, is, indeed, abundantly fulfilled, yet there is 
 a reassuring clause in the doom pronounced : " In the sweat of thy 
 face shalt thoit eat bread, until thou return unto the ground." 
 The condition being performed, there is here not only no threat of 
 famine, but a promise of supply. Laymen, while they admit that 
 the earth is "a vale of tears," may be allowed to press the miti 
 gating promise, and urge the proper measures of relief upon the 
 faith and hope of the world. In the more cheerful understand- 
 6 
 
74 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ing of the earth s economy, there is no need of "justifying the 
 ways of Grod to man," and, what is still more to the purpose, there 
 is no necessity for justifying the ways of man to man. It insists 
 that better ways of administering the affairs of earth would im 
 prove the terrestrial condition of her children. But where is the 
 \ise of beneficent endeavor if it must necessarily fail if in the 
 settled order of sublunary things population increases faster than 
 the supply of sustenance can any way be made to meet? 
 
 But the facts of human history in all places and times down to 
 the present : Do they not support the doctrines of the dismal 
 school ? We answer that so far as they can support anything, 
 they do; and we take leave to add, that the disorders of uiisgov- 
 ernment and the ill-distribution of the products of industry, the 
 pauperism, the potato rot, and the enforced emigration of Europe, 
 are the puddles from which her philosophers draw all their data, 
 and fabricate their principles ; grounds about as good for a system 
 of providential laws as a street riot affords for constructing a phi 
 losophy of societary organization. How these people philosophize 
 upon the facts which disorder supplies ! 
 
 Of the host of- writers upon this subject, some hold that 
 abundance of food increases human fertility in a direct ratio; as 
 if, because deficiency of sustenance induces disease and death, 
 sufficiency must run to excess of life ! Others are of a directly 
 opposite opinion. According to them, fecundity is in the inverse 
 ratio of sustenance. This direct antagonism is about equally well 
 supported by such facts as the respective parties select and use in 
 their demonstrations. Some think that vegetable is a stronger 
 stimulant than animal food ; for which they cite the greater pro 
 ductiveness of herbivorous than of carnivorous animals: forget 
 ting that the fishes literally fill the seas, yet live for the most part 
 upon other fishes and insects ; and, above all, forgetting that they 
 are carrying over such facts from that world of animal life, whose 
 destiny is limited, and whose creatures are incapable of the liberties 
 of progressiveness, which is the distinguishing ingredient of re 
 sponsibility, to the world of man, whose fortunes and fate are not 
 bounded by his instincts, but who is made master of the conditions 
 on which his well-being depends, and must, therefore, in his constitu 
 tion and capabilities, be adjusted to his destiny. 
 
 The assumption that man ia only a beast, as to the laws of his 
 
POPULATION. 75 
 
 life and his relations to surrounding things, is not a safe starting- 
 point for a philosophy of his nature and fortunes. So far as his 
 constitution exactly corresponds to that of inferior creatures, and, 
 so far as his functions are bounded by the like limits and uses, the 
 argument from analogy is legitimate ; but from the point of depar 
 ture where his endowments begin to look to a totally different use 
 and end, all analogous reasoning must stop, because it no longer 
 serves for interpretation. 
 
 The method here to be adopted in discussing the law of the re 
 lation of population to the means of subsistence will greatly abridge, 
 as well as greatly change, the process of inquiry. For reasons 
 that a little further on will be seen, we abstain now from consider 
 ing either the historic or the possible fertility of the race, or of the 
 capabilities of the earth as a means of measuring their adjustment 
 to each other. The quantity of effect in either is obviously indif 
 ferent, provided they are, under an overruling law, adapted to each 
 other. Not the actual numbers of the one, but the sufficiency of 
 the one to the other, is the point at issue. In fact, the quantity of 
 the possible products of neither is known. Neither the possible 
 productiveness of the earth, of the soil, the waters, and the air, nor 
 the future or ultimate rate of increase in the numbers of men, 
 are, or can be, now ascertained. These problems cannot be brought 
 within the range of arithmetical estimate. The question rests not 
 upon numerals, but upon principles. 
 
 The chief of these principles belongs to the province of final 
 causes a rule of reasoning by no means unknown or unused in the 
 cultivation of the strictly physical sciences. The Inductive Sys 
 tem, itself, is compelled to assume that the means are provided in 
 the constitution of things for the accomplishment of the ends 
 clearly indicated. It cannot advance a step in any path of dis 
 covery without postulating the principle that the prophesy of the 
 end, in all the realms of nature, is the pledge and proof of provided 
 means. There is no other basis for any science of created things. 
 An orbit, with an apparatus of vision, found in a fossil skull, means 
 a provision of light, or it means nothing. A skeleton chest, with 
 a slight twist in the ribs, proves conclusively the coexistence of 
 respirable air the structure of a tooth implies the contemporaneous 
 existence of a particular kind of food; so, natural science builds 
 its certainties as much upon the harmonies of the creation, and as 
 
76 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 confidently, too, as upon any observations of events or any results 
 of experiment. Thus far the matter-of-fact philosophy extends 
 itself into the domain of the deductive or a priori system of 
 reasoning ; unconsciously, perhaps, but actually and effectively. 
 
 The rigid a posteriori method traces the facts of observation 
 from the simplest, up through successive and enlarging generaliza 
 tions, till the most general fact is found, which is taken to be the 
 law of the whole series. This is the rule of inquiry into the 
 laws of unmixed materialism, and it is legitimate and suc 
 cessful only in the department of physics; in general terms, it rules 
 among the phenomena of celestial and terrestrial mechanics. 
 
 But it has never had any success in mental philosophy, ethics, 
 civil government, or social science, or any remedial system of either 
 animal or societary life ; that is, in any department of human 
 knowledge concerned with the errors and abuses of liberty. More 
 over, the phenomena of life united with liberty or will acting upon 
 motives, and accompanied by responsibility, are not complete 
 enough in range, nor clear enough in their meaning, within the 
 limits of experience, to indicate their central or supreme truths; 
 for the reason that the ends and aims lie all out of the reach of 
 observation and experiment. They centre not in the midst of the 
 known, but away beyond all its measurable lines. The drift and 
 tendency of the facts may be seen, indeed, but their focal point is 
 in the design of the Creator. 
 
 Water may be resolved into its constituent gases, and may again 
 be recomposed of them. The circuit of its possibilities is thus 
 known, and the relations of its elements to each other are revealed 
 in kind and measure. But of man we know but little, either of his 
 past or present, that can serve to prophesy his future. Our know 
 ledge of his relations to the things around him is so incomplete, 
 and, withal, so uncertain, that the inductive philosophy is warned by 
 its own principles not to reason from a part, as if it were the whole, 
 and inquiry is of necessity remitted to the method which assumes 
 the means required for expectant ends. 
 
 The misuse of the a posteriori, or inductive method, in matters to 
 which it does not apply of which it is wholly incapable is the vice 
 of our metaphysics and of our political economy; and it is owing to 
 this that neither of them is truly a science, or even capable of ren 
 dering safe service throughout their respective realms of study. 
 
POPULATION. 77 
 
 The most rigid of the Baconian philosophers who thinks it 
 unsafe to venture beyond the circuit of his five senses, cannot 
 object to our assuming just what he must assume, before he can 
 reason at all on anything of the past that has left only its vestiges, 
 or anything of the future which affords only its hints of the un- 
 arrived. He believes, and he assumes, the harmonies and adjust 
 ments of means and processes to their obvious ends, and he inter 
 prets those processes and agencies by the ends in which they centre 
 and ultimate themselves. We only use his license, and follow his 
 example in believing that, whether the earth was made for man, or 
 man for the earth, they must mutually suit and serve each other, 
 and that there cannot exist a war of design in the relations of 
 either to the other. 
 
 I would not, however, intimate that our theory of the matter in 
 hand rests alone upon our faith in providential adjustment of the 
 earth to human needs; for a sound faith must be corroborated by 
 facts as far as they go. Such corroboration is plainly found in the 
 facts of observation, and in analogies which partially measure and 
 cover the ground which we take. 
 
 Among the various species of animated beings we find one in 
 variable and universal fact : The power of reproduction of life is 
 in an inverse ratio to the power of maintaining it. The insects 
 of a day are produced in myriads ; the lower animals, whose span 
 is limited to half a dozen years, are reduced and limited to hun 
 dreds of offspring ; while the higher grades, who live a score or more 
 years, are in due proportion less prolific. This is the law as it 
 obtains among various species of the animated creatures inferior to 
 man, and it has this analogous bearing upon our problem : It pro 
 vides for the necessary numbers and continuance of kinds, and 
 meets the casualties to which they are respectively subject. 
 
 Did any one ever imagine that the abridgment of the term of 
 life in these creatures was designed to correct a natural fertility 
 beyond the provision for their subsistence ? 
 
 Now, can we carry over this law and its plain intention, as far 
 as correspondence exists, and apply it to the varied conditions of 
 the human race? May we extend a principle which rules among 
 distinct species of beings, to as large a difference of conditions oc 
 curring in a single race or species, having seen, as we believe, the 
 intention of the principle, and found in the, various conditions of 
 
78 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 that species the like necessity for the analogous working of the 
 principle ? Let us see how the application will justify itself: 
 
 In the savage and barbarous states, and in the earlier stages of 
 civilization in all the periods of disorder, past and present the 
 mortality of the race in early life is frightfully large. The power 
 to maintain life is low, and the rate-of reproduction is, as the principle 
 we are borrowing requires, very large. This is seen in the drudges 
 of civilization everywhere in Europe. The proposition is accurately 
 supported by the whole history of the past which is definitely 
 known. The average term of life has been lengthening, since the 
 earliest authentic records, step by step with the improvements, 
 social, sanitary, and economical, that have been progressively min 
 istering to its preservation ; and it is just as true that to the extent 
 to which famine and pestilence have been abated or abolished, 
 fecundity has been proportionately diminished. The almost in 
 credible populations given in ancient history are explained on our 
 theory by the proportionately briefer term of average life. The sup 
 ply answers the demand ; and our inference is, that the supply will, 
 in the future, be limited and determined by the demand. We have 
 the prospect of a continual improvement in the conditions of men. 
 We expect still better and better sanitary regulation of societary 
 life; better support by food, clothing, and lodging; better morals, 
 and better and broader conformity to the laws of mental and bodily 
 health all the happy influences of spiritual and material progress; 
 that is, in the terms of our proposition, a greater power to maintain 
 individual life, and with it a proportionate reduction in the rate 
 of reproduction. These results the argument from analogy affords us. 
 . These we take to be the mutual adjustments which the providential 
 law secures. 
 
 Giving their due weight to the arguments offered, and asking for 
 them no more than they may logically claim, we propose now to 
 meet the question directly after the manner, and using the data, of 
 the inductive system of the matter-of-fact philosophy which must 
 be confronted with its own weapons, and on its own ground of faith. 
 We turn to the well-established laws of the organism whose func 
 tions and force of action are the conditions of the problem. In the 
 three following propositions we think the demonstration of our 
 doctrine will be found : 
 
 1st. The nervous "system in the different species of creatures 
 
POPULATION. 79 
 
 varies with their respective capability of maintaining life larger 
 proportionately as they are longer-lived. 
 
 2d. The degree of fertility is regularly in inverse proportion to 
 the development and activity of the nervous system ; the larger and 
 the more active nervous systems being always the least, and the 
 smaller and less active, the most prolific. 
 
 3d. The functions of the various organic systems in the indi 
 vidual divide among themselves the aggregate of his vital power, 
 being equally active in a state of equilibrium; but in all unequal 
 distributions of activity the dominating function is sustained at the 
 expense of one or more of the others. 
 
 The first of these propositions need not be argued, nor does it 
 require illustration by examples. The reader is only fairly assumed 
 to be ready to accept, and from familiar instances to confirm it, or 
 in defect of the necessary information, he may find it in any good 
 work upon human or comparative physiology. 
 
 The second proposition results from the third, but is entitled to 
 distinct statement because of its eminent force among the instances 
 of the third, and its direct relevancy to the question under considera 
 tion. Such demonstration as seems to be demanded by the last two, 
 considered as one, is here submitted. 
 
 Disease manifests this diversion of energy from one or more sets 
 of organs, and its concentration upon others, as in fever, where the 
 excitement of the nervous and circulating systems is inordinately 
 great at the expense of the muscular and digestive systems ; and so 
 in every morbid state involving the frame more or less generally. 
 Disease has been well and pertinently defined, a broken balance of 
 excitement. A similar inequality of distribution of vital power is 
 almost constantly exhibited in conditions not incompatible with the 
 general health; and its necessity is, in all instances of intense occu 
 pation, enforced and felt. The examples are familiar in every one s 
 experience in his casual application of one function, or one set of 
 associated functions. In cases of permanent concentration, where 
 the fixity amounts to a habit, excluded offices of the body or mind 
 fall into the incapacity of disuse; the predominant offices deteriora 
 ting or disabling those which must be robbed to enrich them. 
 
 The first deduction to be drawn for present use from facts so 
 obvious as these, is, that no fixed and invariable quantity of action, 
 or of results, can be predicated of any one of the distinct systems of 
 
80 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 organs in the human body ; mujch less can the highest possibility of 
 any one be taken as its measure of activity in all times, places 
 and circumstances, as the " constant quantity" of the Malthusians 
 affirms. All this is eminently true of the antagonism of the nervous 
 and reproductive powers, as appears in the excessive fecundity of the 
 drudges of civilization among the former slaves of the Southern 
 States and the correspondent toilers of Europe. There does not 
 appear to be such incompatibility in muscular as in nervous activity. 
 The intellectual and moral faculties of themselves, and these as they 
 are acted upon by the external senses, seem to be special antagonists 
 of those specially concerned in the propagation of the race. Just 
 where the animal prevails over the mental habits of life, and in pro 
 portionate degree, fecundity is seen to increase; suggesting plainly 
 enough that the remedy for excess of population is not in this or 
 that kind of food, nor in artificial restraint, but in the duly- 
 balanced development of the intellectual and moral functions of the 
 brain and nerves. All the contrarieties of fact which every other 
 theory encounters are found perfectly accordant with this one, as 
 expressed in our three general propositions. The conclusion to be 
 drawn from them is, that a harmonious culture of all the powers of 
 body and mind will insure the equilibrium that corrects all dispro 
 portion, either of excess or of defect, in any of them. In accordance 
 with these fundamental principles, the facts of past and present ob 
 servation which seem to threaten an over population of the globe, 
 are met and disarmed of their terrors by the obvious reflection that 
 disorder in the vital offices, giving preponderance to the procreative 
 powers and enfeebling the constitutional corrective of the mental 
 and moral faculties, explains the evil and discovers the remedy. 
 The surplus, however, is to be understood not only nor wholly mis 
 chievous, but as serving to replace the waste of life occurring in 
 conditions that rather tend to extinction than to excessive numbers 
 of the race. 
 
 The prospective operation of these laws their more and more 
 happy vindication in the future, is their most attractive claim upon 
 our attention. They are not only explanatory of an existing dis 
 order, but they are remedial in their operation. Through what 
 agencies and in what conditions are they to exhibit their best efforts ? 
 How is the disturbed balance to be restored, and how are the har 
 monic results to be realized ? 
 
POPULATION. 81 
 
 The change in the forms and kinds of human labor that are so 
 well begun and advancing so rapidly, promise a more and more com 
 plete substitution of artificial for natural labor. This modification 
 of agency in industrial production is characterized by an ever-in 
 creasing release from muscular toil, and a proportioned substitution 
 of art and skill, and thought, arid their associate elevations of feeling, 
 which must, while they educate the proper human nature in its 
 superior powers, equally develop and occupy the brain and nervous 
 system; thus ever more and more strengthening their counter 
 balance of the animal functions. It is among the classes of men 
 that are usually called the masses that the remedy is specially 
 demanded, and here we have, in the very labor which they must 
 pursue, the opportunity for the action of the remedial principle pro 
 vided. The moral regimen prescribed is, mind mixed more and 
 more largely with muscle in producing the commodities required 
 for human support. Reformed labor, working toward the harmony 
 of functional activity in the individual labors. 
 
 Men look now for a better, broader, more diffusive and effective 
 mental education in the future, growing upon a grand advancement 
 already secured another source of brain development, and an 
 effective aid to its counter-balancing power. 
 
 Shall we have, resultiugly, an improved agriculture ; helping, on 
 the one side to replenish the store of sustenance, while the direct 
 operation of mental education serves to restrain the present excess 
 of requirement ? 
 
 Again : do we look for a progressive improvement in the morals 
 of the masses, and an equally improved administration of social, 
 civil, and international justice ? This promise, also, carries the 
 double aspect of correction at once in the relative demand of the 
 mass of consumers, and in the economies of consumption. Moral 
 refinement will give the required supremacy of man proper over 
 his insurgent animalism, and it will at the same time check the 
 waste of war, the defects and misdirection of industry, and the 
 misuse of the means of life. In a thousand ways the future presents 
 itself in expectation, as a restorer of that equilibrium among the 
 various activities of the human organism on which depends a 
 growing adjustment of the living man to the material elements 
 appointed to sustain him, and to promote his welfare in the exact 
 proportion that he conforms to the laws of the things created 
 
82 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 for his use, and which cannot fail in the service but by their 
 abuse. 
 
 The principle here asserted must be familiarized before criticism 
 is safe. Some one, for instance, may answer, " but the North 
 American Indians have been remarkable for infertility ; they are, 
 as a race, bat slightly endowed with the intersexual affections, 
 and they are savage in ignorance and in pursuits." We answer: 
 they are hunters, followers of Diana, the goddess of the chase and 
 of chastity, by which the Greeks must have meant something that 
 found its correspondence in things well known. These savages are 
 as much distinguished from the lowest class of civilizees in their 
 occupations as in fecundity. They have a fiery, nervous tempera 
 ment, great acuteness of the perceptive faculties, willfulness, arro 
 gance sentiments that are the rougher half of those that consti 
 tute the chivalric among us; they are proud, desperately selfish, 
 brave, revengeful, absolutely ungovernable, and incapable of en 
 slavement. They are eminently the men who do die in the last 
 ditch, and they are as eloquent as unlettered men can be. All 
 this indicates very considerable activity of brain, and in the very 
 direction that specially answers to the principle by which our theory 
 would explain them. 
 
 The hunter life demands great vigilance, alertness, and sharpness 
 of observation and reflection, which draws largely upon the nerves 
 of sense and the coordinating power of the brain. Their perpetual 
 warfare among themselves is another heavy drain upon the nervous 
 system, in all the modes of action that danger, ambition, and emu 
 lation so powerfully induce. Their whole life is a rapid alternation 
 of toil and sloth, surfeit and want, and their social intercourse, or 
 system of society, rather represses than favors the affections. The 
 tone as well as the character of the governing impulses is un 
 friendly to sexual attachments, and thus this apparent objection 
 falls very fully into the rank of an example under the rule. 
 
 The application of this doctrine to cases not apparently accordant, 
 which may present themselves in one of a thousand or a hundred 
 instances, need not be considered here. Their special conditions 
 are seldom known, and medical science is yet so far from fathoming 
 the mysteries of the reproductive functions that nothing of force 
 btilongs to it in the investigation of the question. Besides, a pro 
 digious array of clear examples may easily be adduced wherein 
 
POPULATION. 83 
 
 unquestionable absorption of the vital forces, by the mental activi 
 ties of the life, are in the fullest accord with the tenor of the law 
 which the larger and more completely comprehensive view of facts 
 thoroughly establishes. Exceptions are not to be ignored, because 
 rules admit of them, or because they prove the rule, as the proverb 
 most illogically affirms, for, in fact, they contradict the rules which 
 should include and govern them; but because, in the inquiry in 
 hand, they are not proved to be exceptions. The believers in a 
 law are not bound to explain away, or to surrender to, accidental 
 instances, which neither they nor anybody else understand. 
 
 Emigration as we see it and as it has been in past times, is com 
 pelled by the failure to carry forward the improvement of the man 
 in conformity with the law that adjusts him to the supply of sus 
 tenance. Labor in Western Europe, so far from improving him and 
 regulating his increase of numbers in harmonic relations to the in 
 creased productiveness of the soil, works on the contrary to the 
 constant depression of the lowest class these are the emigrants in 
 the much largest porportion. The more advanced classes of European 
 society do not migrate, and the most favored and best developed 
 portion of the people are stationary in place, for the reason that 
 they do not multiply in offspring; the very highest scarcely keeping 
 up their numbers, as witness the great number of instances in which 
 titles have become extinct in England from utter failure of heirs to 
 inherit them. 
 
 The emigration from France is almost nothing, because there 
 population is nearly stationary. 
 
 A summary of the conclusions to be drawn from this brief dis 
 cussion of the laws of population may be compactly put in this 
 form : 
 
 The waste of life in the past is due to an abnormal preponderance 
 of the animal, over the intellectual and moral faculties of the race. 
 
 That waste of life is not the corrective of a blunder in the Crea 
 tor s system, but results from an abuse of the reproductive function, 
 and its excessive activity provides for the waste incident to the dis 
 orders of human societies. It is a remedy in its nature and inten 
 tion, and not a mistake or maladjustment of natural laws. 
 
 Population is self-regulative. In the organization of the human 
 frame there is a perpetual endeavor toward the establishment of 
 equilibrium between the demand for sustenance and the earth s 
 
84 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 supplies ; so that ultimate and complete harmony awaits the con 
 formity of man to the laws under which he has his life ; and which 
 in the mean time is growing in exact proportion to his growing 
 development. This is obviously the meaning of the divine promise. 
 " Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness [conform 
 your life to the Divine Order], and all these things shall be added 
 unto you/ namely, " what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or 
 wherewithal ye shall be clothed." 
 
 Despair is doctrinal infidelity, and the source of misdirection, with 
 all the ills that attend ignorance and error in man s mismanagement 
 of his earthly dominion. 
 
 There is something healthy, holy, happy in these conclusions, and 
 they are for these sufficient reasons true. 
 
 NOTE. Limited in plan and space, the writer cannot task himself to trace the 
 first authorship of all the doctrines he adopts, but for fuller satisfaction in the 
 matter of this chapter, he refers the reader to an article in the Westminster Review 
 for April, 1852, since ascribed to Herbert Spencer, and to Carey s Social Science, 
 vol. ii. 3 pp. 265-306, for a more detailed discussion of the subject. 
 
- - r " 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH WAGES. 
 
 Distribution of Wealth Wages: In the savage state; in barbarism ; in civiliza 
 tion ; Carey s law of "Labor Value." Bastiat s identical. Quality of labor 
 improves in the ratio of quantity of cooperating capital; its productiveness in 
 creased, and price of the products lessened proportionately. Tendency of the 
 law to equality of benefits demonstrated. More liberal wages secure better 
 \vork the capitalist s interest supplies the motive. Wages the index of pro 
 ductiveness. In progressive communities only land and labor increase in value 
 reasons. Value, the cost of reproduction. Rise of the laborers in history. 
 Wages, nominal and real; value of money must be resolved into its purchasing 
 power. Agricultural wages in England, A. D. 1660 to 1688. Price of wheat at 
 the time. Wages in manufactures in 1680, a shilling a day. Doubled in one 
 hundred and twelve years. Price of wheat the same at the end of one hundred 
 and fifty years. Food of the people at the end of the seventeenth century. 
 Wages have risen faster than the price of food. Tropical productions declined, 
 and manufactures reduced sixty percent in thirty-five years (1817-1852). Labor 
 rises in value in the ratio that productiveness increases ; statistics of the United 
 States in proof. Wages of skilled industry rise fifteen and one-eighth per cent 
 in the ten years 1850-1860; doubling in forty-seven years. Rise in the United 
 States, in the same ratio to growth of national wealth as in England, showing a 
 law of equable growth, but, the law of the growth of wages relatively to that of 
 cooperating capital is not eqiwble. Rate of increase of wages much more rapid 
 than that of the enhancement of profits upon the capital jointly employed. How 
 advance of wages is provided for without corresponding loss to capital. Sta 
 tistical demonstration. The provision traced to its source the substitution of 
 machinery and artificial force for human labor, proof by the figures of the 
 census. Artificial labor releases men from low-priced drudgery and remits them 
 to the higher st3 r les of work with their higher wages. The greater effectiveness 
 of the natural agents enhances the fund upon which labor draws for its reward. 
 Wages increase and employment also increases with all improvement in the 
 modern modes of converting industry. Apparent losses of capital explained. 
 Both labor and capital increase their gains, but at unequal rates. Labor gains 
 fifteen, capital five per cent. The laborer s share of increased productiveness 
 increases in proportion; that of capital declines. In quantity both increase, but 
 the laborer s most rapidly. The harmony of these interests working through 
 all the unhappy conflicts of the parties. Wages of women have tripled while 
 those of men have been doubling. Reasons of this different rate of advance 
 ment. Why the year 1814 is taken as the date of the new era of wages. The 
 
 85 
 
86 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 liability of statistical figures to abuse. Figures must be rectified by facts. The 
 capriciousness of prices. Not fluctuations, but changes from permanent causes 
 show the truth. Price of iron in illustration. Causes of unsteadiness in prices. 
 General results, a better guidance than figures without facts. Women s wages 
 in house work have increased in real value about six times, while those of skilled 
 laborers have been doubling. Men s real wages advancing five fold in a part 
 of their consumption, accompanied, besides, with many gratuitous additions and 
 cheapened uses, availing for their welfare. Wages and food, flesh meats only 
 increased in price. Aggregate annual wages of 1814 and 1800 distributed in 
 subsistence, showing actual increase. Wages effectively doubled in the United 
 States once in fifty-five years. Different results of arithmetical processes from 
 different data used in these computations. Epochal dates in societary and 
 economic movements cannot be precise. Error in amounts do not affect the 
 percentage of increase which is the subject of inquiry. Census reports of values 
 all too low. Under modifications, according to the greater or less aid of capital, 
 wages are the index of productiveness. 
 
 HAVING shown the capability of the earth to supply subsistence, 
 and all the means of well-being abundantly adequate to the re 
 quirements of its total inhabitants, we are next concerned to see 
 what provision is made in the constitution and order of things for 
 an equitable and beneficent distribution of its products among the 
 members of human communities. 
 
 In the savage state all things are so far common to all, that the 
 allotment of property is determined by individual appropriation 
 and the power to hold possession. Here there is no division of 
 capital and labor ; no system of progressive accumulation ; no pro 
 ductive work, in its proper sense, there being no surplus reserved 
 for further production ; no capital and, therefore, no wages, as a 
 share of joint production. And, if thA-e are none of the special 
 evils of inequality in wealth, there are, also, none of its possibili 
 ties of better things to come. 
 
 In barbarism there is accumulation with its eminent creative 
 power, and to the freer portion of the people, that interest in pro 
 duction called wages, and the benefits of industrial enterprise. 
 The many may be, under some of the forms of slavery, without 
 capital or its reflected service, and may have no recognized property 
 right, even in the means of subsistence. But the laws of an orderly 
 distribution of wealth are beginning to work. 
 
 Civilization (distinguished from barbarism by its necessary ex 
 clusion of personal slavery) distributes the joint product of labor 
 and capital in the several kinds of profits, under the names of rent, 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 87 
 
 interest, aiid wages; but an equitable allotment of profits is not 
 yet secured. Equity encounters hostile interests, and unequal 
 power iu the parties to assert its claims; and wrongs, with their 
 attendant disorders and mischiefs, disturb and derange distribution 
 in freedom, even as they do in slavery, though less in degree and 
 less hopelessly. 
 
 Let us now see how, in these circumstances, the laws of the sub 
 ject work toward their end, which we assume to be the general and 
 individual improvement of the welfare of men iu progressive com 
 munities. 
 
 In the year 1837 Mr. Carey first announced to the world his 
 doctrine of " labor value " with such resistless demonstration of its 
 truth, that even the highest authority of the rival school of politi 
 cal economy, Frederick Bastiat, adopted it in 1850, under the 
 verbal change of " service value/ but so exactly identical in sub 
 stance that Professor Ferrara, of the University of Turin, says : 
 "The theory, the ideas, the order, the reasoning, and even the 
 figures of the Principles of Carey, and of the Harmonies of 
 Bastiat, coincide perfectly." 
 
 The unskilled may derive some additional assurance from such 
 an indorsement, but the propositions of Mr. Carey are quite inde 
 pendent of any extrinsic support. His most general, or funda 
 mental, proposition takes this, form : The quantity of capital and 
 the quality of the labor jointly employed in production, are 
 in direct relation to each other. All increase and decrease of 
 the capital connects itself with corresponding improvement and 
 deterioration of the labor. The passive and active agents are mar 
 ried " for better, for worse," which may be resolved into the fol 
 lowing dependent propositions : 
 
 1st. Labor gains increased productiveness in the proportion that 
 capital contributes to its efficiency. 
 
 2d. Every improvement iu the efficiency of labor, so gained by 
 the aid of capital ; is so much increased facility of accumulation. 
 
 3d. Increased power of production and accumulation lessens pro 
 portionally the value of the products in labor cost, and of simi 
 lar products previously existing; thus bringing such products 
 more easilv within the purchasing power of present labor. This 
 last-mentioned consequence is also covered by the same author s 
 definition of value, which, in his happy rendering, is simply the 
 
88 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 cost of re-production, which is only another way of saying that, 
 nothing can command a higher price than the cost of producing a 
 similar thing at the time, and nothing can be produced at less than 
 the cost of producing it. (The reader will, of course, take care to 
 distinguish value, or cost of production, from price or selling price, 
 which is casually affected by sacrifice and speculation.) 
 
 The tendency of the law, as stated in the third proposition, to in 
 crease the relative share of labor up to its equitable proportion in 
 the profits of industry combined with capital, is too obvious to need 
 illustration, provided labor wages do not suffer an abatement equiva 
 lent to, or greater than the reduction in the exchange value of the 
 commodities. The argument of this point may be put thus : The 
 laborer must receive his share, or wages, out of the product to which 
 he contributes. That share depends upon the quantity of such 
 product. The larger this is, the greater the fund on which he 
 draws. When he hires the capital, his share is the residuum after 
 paying the capitalist his interest, or profit, upon the investment. 
 This is certain when the laborer is his own employer; and his profit 
 is found in the enhanced productiveness of his labor due to the aid 
 of capital. 
 
 When the capitalist hires the labor, which is the more general 
 state of the case, a like equitable division of profits is possible, or in 
 other words the fund is created for such equitable dividend, and it 
 is made possible for him to receive the due advantage of his coopera 
 tion in the enlarged yield of his industry. This increased produc 
 tiveness results from the substitution of instruments, machinery, and 
 artificial motor power, which is capital s share of the agencies em 
 ployed; and the laborer s advantage is in his release from low-priced 
 drudgery, and in the employment of his higher faculties the wages 
 of skilled industry being always proportioned to its advancement 
 above mere animal power. 
 
 The ability of increased productiveness to afford increased wages 
 is clear. What of the impelling or disposing motive in the em 
 ployer of labor ? To say nothing of the reserve of compelling 
 power that there is in the laboring class, and the over-ruling force 
 of the sentiment of justice embodied in public opinion, and cor 
 roborated by the ever-active working of providential beneficence 
 for the welfare of the world ; it is found in such considerations as 
 these : 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 89 
 
 The human machine, like the inanimate, and for the same reasons, 
 yields results to the employer in the measure of its capabilities and 
 conditions. Its highest condition is necessary to its highest work 
 ing worth. But beside the food and clothing of the one, corre 
 sponding to the fuel, or other motor power, and the structural 
 materials of the other, the human producer has his most availing 
 force in his moral and rational faculties. The cultivation of these, 
 up to their highest serviceableness, demands the opportunities of 
 some leisure, the refinement of some luxury, the cordial stimulus of 
 current comfort, and the excitement of future hope. Such develop 
 ment can come only from a liberal surplus of wages after provision 
 is made for the common necessities of the mere animal life. The 
 policy of parsimony, which denies these conditions, is as unwise as 
 the saving of fuel which would keep a steam engine restrained to half 
 its working power. The work of a man who is aiming at a seat in 
 the American Congress is worth much more than that of the Euro 
 pean drudge whose prospect is the poor-house. The ox has more 
 brute force, the engine more mechanical power, yet these are always 
 had at a cheaper rate in their kinds of service than the labor market 
 gives for the use of those high human qualities on which capital 
 depends for the largest enhancement of its profits. Hence policy 
 induces equity, and the effective partnership of the workman secures 
 him a growing dividend of a growing productiveness. From the 
 reason of the thing, therefore, there is a fair inference that wages 
 must rise with productiveness step by step, and keep pace in im 
 provement with the yield of cooperating capital. The percentage 
 of the labor share in the yield must be carried up with the growing 
 value to which it is an indispensable contributor. 
 
 There is, moreover, an overruling law which secures this result 
 a law established by all the facts of human experience : in ad 
 vancing communities nothing can increase in value except land and 
 labor. The increasing power and worth of these reduce the labor 
 cost and exchange value of all other things. The one being the 
 raw material, and the other the converting agent, in the production 
 of all commodities, their worth rises just in the ratio that the value 
 of all other things declines. Value is simply the measure of the 
 resistance that labor and skill meet in subduing natural objects to 
 human use. The converting power must rise in utility in the degree 
 of its growth, and it must also rise in exchange value in proportion 
 7 
 
90 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 to the cost of its own production, which iii the case of labor is the 
 cost of its education and training. Land necessarily rises as its 
 elements are advanced from uselessness, or resistance to use, 
 toward the serviceable states and forms that minister to man s 
 requirements, and the cost of its improvement measures its 
 value. A surface acre of ore unwrought, has no other than a 
 prospective value; converted and carried up to its best forms, it 
 realizes a market value of hundreds or thousands of dollars in the 
 currency that commands all the means of human subsistence. In 
 like manner, and for the like reasons, the labor of bones and 
 muscles may be had at the price that barely supports life ; that of 
 the artisan commands the means of advancement; and, the highest 
 skill, united to taste, talent, and science, brings the rewards of the 
 highest rank of service in the finer manufactures, in the fine arts, 
 and in the learned professions. In all possible applications the 
 definition is true value is the cost of production/ or of reproduc 
 tion at the time; and all increase of skill and competency must 
 have its proportioned price. 
 
 The facts of history in the past, and all observation of the 
 present, are in proof of these propositions. Ever since the sys 
 tem of villenage was abolished in England, the laboring masses 
 have been rising into better conditions very slowly in the days of 
 the Stuarts; something faster under the reigns of the Georges; and 
 with accelerated rapidity since the beginning of the present cen 
 tury. A full array of the evidence would require a separate trea 
 tise, but the pivot points of this history are entirely sufficient. 
 
 WAGES, NOMINAL AND REAL. 
 
 Wages, in report from such records as exist, are, like the prices 
 of other things, expressed in the money of the time ; but money 
 has itself a very variable exchange value at distant periods ; and, 
 to understand its worth, we must know its purchasing power, or its 
 command over the commodities required for consumption. Money 
 is no more a standard of the things exchanged in the market than 
 is any other commodity. It is the common medium of exchange, 
 of all historic times, but it has been much more variable than any 
 thing else called, or used, as a measure in the world s business. 
 Measures and weights yards, bushels, and pound-weights do not 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 91 
 
 enter into the exchanges of the things which they gauge, but 
 money does, as a thing of intrinsic value, or as representative of 
 some valuable medium. Its variableness in value, therefore, re 
 quires a reduction to its equivalents in the commodities of the 
 time, or, as it is usually expressed, to its purchasing power, which 
 must be ascertained if we would understand the real under the 
 nominal value. This equivalence must be kept in mind, and be as 
 well ascertained as may be, in an inquiry into the relative rates of 
 wages paid at different periods. 
 
 For our purposes we must depend upon the authorities in the 
 statistics of labor. As it would only burden the examination to 
 carry it back into the time of feudalism in Europe, or even to the 
 transition from bondage into the modern condition of civil freedom 
 of the working people, we shall take the seventeenth century for our 
 starting point, and for the facts of that date, we may with great con 
 fidence rely upon Mr., afterwards Lord, Macaulay. He fixes four 
 shillings a week, without food, as the average agricultural wages, 
 at any time between the Restoration (A. D. 1660) and the Revo 
 lution (1688). In 1685 the Justices of Warwickshire, under 
 authority of an act of Elizabeth, fixed the wages of the common 
 agricultural laborer, during the spring and summer, at four shillings 
 a week, without food, and at three and sixpence for the fall and 
 winter months. In the south of England the rates were a little 
 higher, and about the centre and near the borders of Scotland some 
 thing lower. In the county of Essex and the vicinity of London, 
 the Justices allowed six shillings in winter, and seven in summer, 
 for the year 1661, which our author says was the highest remunera 
 tion in a period of twenty years, but it happened that in that year 
 the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at 
 seventy shillings the quarter* (eight bushels), which he adds, would 
 even in 1848 be considered as almost a famine price. 
 
 The pay of workmen employed in manufactures is always higher 
 than that of tillers of the soil. In 1680, a member of the House of 
 Commons said that " the high wages paid in England make it im 
 possible for the products of the English looms to compete with those 
 of India. An English mechanic, he said, instead of slaving like a 
 native of Bengal for a piece of copper, exacts a shitting a day. It 
 
 * The average of the monthly prices for 15 years, 1846-1860, was 53s. %\d. 
 " " " 9 " 1857-1865, " 48s. 4d. 
 
92 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 is true he often works for less, but this sum is his demand." Mr. 
 Macaulay, from all the evidence, concludes that, " in the generation 
 which preceded the Revolution (1G88), a workman employed in the 
 great staple (woolens) manufacture of England thought himself 
 fairly paid if he gained six shillings a week." 
 
 Coming down to a later period we find, by the register of the 
 Greenwich Hospital, that the wages of such mechanics as carpenters, 
 bricklayers, and plumbers, had more than doubled in one hundred 
 and twelve years, (from 1730 to 1842), rising very regularly 
 from 2s. Q<1. per day, to 5s. 8(7. , (McCulloch s Com. Diet., p. 1061). 
 
 Thus it appears by this last quoted author (whose doctrines as 
 an economist, as we have given them in a former chapter, were 
 directly hostile to his facts as a statistician), that the wages of all 
 labor estimated in money were in 1730 not quite half of what they 
 were in 1842. Meat was cheaper, in money, it is true, but hun 
 dreds of thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it. Wheat, 
 as early as the last twelve years of Charles II. (1672-1685), 
 a^raged fifty shillings per quarter, and during a like period one 
 hundred and seventy years later (1843-1855), it was about the 
 same price. But the difference, in fact, is, that bread such as is now 
 given to the inmates of a British workhouse, was seldom seen even 
 on the table of a yeoman or a shop-keeper. The great majority of 
 the nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats. (Macaulay s 
 Hist Eng., vol. 1, chap, iii.) 
 
 Here, then, we see that in England, whose limited territory makes 
 her dependent upon foreign countries for full one-fifth of her food, 
 in this prime necessary of life, the wages of labor have risen largely 
 above the prices of the required supply, while in all other things 
 necessary to ordinary comfort, prices have gone down immensely, 
 bringing such commodities as are the produce of tropical countries, 
 and of the mines and manufactures of the country, within the pur 
 chase of the laborer in proportionate abundance. Sufficient proof of 
 this is found in the fact that the prices of all the manifold exports 
 of Great Britain declined sixty per cent in thirty-five years, from the 
 year 1817 to 1852 ; that is, of all the articles of British and Irish 
 produce now exported to foreign countries, comprised under a hun 
 dred general heads or classes in the export entries, and of a thou 
 sand specific varieties, one dollar will now purchase as much as two 
 dollars and a half would in the year 1817. Cottons only are ex- 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 93 
 
 cepted, and even these are twenty-five per cent lower than in 1817, 
 .and will take rank in reduction of price again when the cotton 
 supply of our Southern States shall be restored to its state before 
 our civil war. 
 
 Now, if the wages of such a country as England doubled in 
 money in one hundred and twelve years, and wheat and all other 
 breadstuff s remained at about the same price, while only flesh meats 
 became dearer, and all the multiform products of the mining, manu 
 facturing, and mechanic arts fell sixty per cent in the last thirty-five 
 years of the period, and all the products of tropical climates greatly 
 decreased in price also, is it not fully established that labor rises in 
 market value in the ratio that productiveness increases and products 
 abound ? 
 
 Tried in the United States, where labor beyond the supply is in 
 demand, the rise of wages is proportionately greater than in coun 
 tries not so favorably circumstanced. 
 
 We shall not here insist upon the arithmetical precision of the 
 statistics which must of necessity be employed, nor need we ; our 
 aim is only to show conclusively that wages do rise in keeping with 
 the profits yielded by labor combined with capital in the modern 
 system of production, and in proportion to the joint productiveness. 
 First, then, as the question stands in the United States, we have at 
 least an approximate valuation of the elements of our problem in the 
 census reports of 1850 and 1860. The latter being more accurate 
 than the former, its data will be more particularly relied upon. 
 
 The total products of manufactures in 1860 were valued at 
 $1^85,861,676. The annual cost of labor was $378,878,266, 
 which is twenty and one-tenth per cent of the value of the pro 
 ducts. The cost of the raw materials was $1,031,6.05,092, which 
 leaves but $854,256,584, of which labor took forty-four and three- 
 tenths per cent, leaving to capital fifty-five and seven-tenths per 
 cent of the value of the products over the labor wages, to cover 
 interest upon an investment of $1,009,855,715, interest of raw 
 material until sale of the products, taxes, superintendence, losses 
 upon sales, repairs, insurance, expenses, and net profits. 
 
 The number of hands employed was one million, forty thousand 
 three hundred and forty-nine males, and two hundred and seventy 
 thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven females. The proportion 
 of wages of males to females was ascertained in 1850 to be as nine 
 
94 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 to five. We have taken the same ratio here for the year 1860. 
 This rule would distribute the wages of the year thus : aggregate 
 wages of all males employed $330,996,917, which is $318.16 per 
 annum averaged to each, or $1.02 for every working day (three 
 hundred and twelve in the year). To the women, a total of 
 $47,881,349, giving to each an average of $176.75 per annum, or 
 fifty-seven cents per day. 
 
 In the year 1850, according to the census, there were engaged 
 in manufactures in the United States seven hundred and thirty-one 
 thousand one hundred and thirty-seven males, and two hundred 
 and twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty-two females. 
 The total wages paid were $202,066,770 to the male operatives, 
 which gave them an average of $276.37 per annum, $5. 31 2 per 
 week, and eighty-eight and six-tenths cents for each working day; 
 to the women, 8153.54 for the year; $2.95i per week, and forty- 
 nine and one-fifth cents per day. Comparing these rates with 
 those of 1860 we find that wages had increased fifteen and twelve- 
 one-hundredths per cent in ten years, at which rate they would 
 double in forty -seven years. Wages of skilled labor in England, 
 as we have seen, stood at double after one hundred and twelve 
 years. Our wealth grows now at the rate of eight and one-half 
 per cent; British wealth at three and one-half per cent per annum. 
 Here we have a remarkable correspondence. As forty-seven years 
 is to three and a half, so is one hundred and fourteen years to 
 eight and one-half. In other words, if English wages grow in 
 the same proportion to the growth of English wealth, that wages 
 in the United States keep to their increase of wealth, they should 
 double in one hundred and thirteen years; we have just seen that 
 they do in one hundred and fourteen years. This looks very like 
 the effect of a universal law, that is ; a law ruling the relation of 
 the wages of skilled labor to the general wealth of the nation, but 
 it is by no means the law of the relation of wages to the capital 
 employing labor in manufacturing industry. Here wages not only 
 keep pace with the profits of capital, but gain upon those profits, 
 at a rate of constant increase that will not be arrested until such 
 advance shall be checked by reaching the point at which capital 
 can yield no more of its profits to labor. Let us see whether we 
 can find the facts that prove such a law in operation among the 
 data afforded by our census reports : 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 95 
 
 The wages paid in i860, as already stated, were an advance of 
 fifteen and twelve one-lmndredths per cent over those of 1850, 
 the aggregate increase amounting to 857,286.494. Did capital 
 suffer the loss of this sum in reduction of its former profits ? Or, 
 if it neither did or could do so, how was this fifty-seven and a 
 quarter millions provided for? The cost of material and wages in 
 1850 was equal to seventy-seven and seven-tenths per cent of the 
 value of the products, but in 1860 these items of expense fell to 
 seventy-four and seventy-nine one-hundredths per cent of the total 
 yield. This saving refunded to capital $54,830,464 of the advance 
 of wages, and left a loss of only $2,456,030, which is but a fraction 
 over one per cent of the product. Whence came this fifty-four and a 
 quarter millions? Not from an increased yield of the material, 
 for curiously enough, the materials used in 1850 bore the proportion 
 fifty-four and forty-seven one-hundredths per cent to the value of 
 their products, and those of I860 only two-tenths of one per cent 
 more, or, we may say, exactly the same. 
 
 The following tabular statement shows the sources of the fund 
 supplied to meet the advance of the wages : 
 
 In 1850. In 1860. Decrease. 
 
 Labor took of the products 23.23 per cent. ..20. 10 per cent. ..13. 80 per cent. 
 
 Labor took of the enhanced \ 
 
 value of products over cost I ...51.07 " ...44.35 " ....13.16 " 
 
 of material j 
 
 Capital took of the enhanced "J Increase. 
 
 value of the product over > ... 48. 93 " ...55.64 " ...13.71 " 
 
 the cost of the material J 
 
 Capital took of the enhanced ^ 
 
 value of the products over I ...22.29 " ...25.20 " ...13.05 " 
 
 cost of materials and wages. ) 
 
 The apparent loss of labor and gain of capital in their respective 
 shares of the product shown by this table, very accurately provides 
 for the actual advance of wages in 1860 (fifty-seven and one-quarter 
 millions) out of the actual gain of capital (fifty-four and eight-tenths 
 millions) in the products, with the loss of the trivial difference 
 before stated (two and four-tenths millions). This gain in products 
 here set to the credit of capital, did not come out of an increased 
 yield of the materials, nor could it have come out of the wages of 
 labor, for these were greatly increased; it must, therefore, have 
 resulted from improved machinery and methods of conversion sup- 
 
96 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 plied by capital, and at its expense. The sum. fifty-four and eight- 
 tenths millions, is equal to a fraction less than three per cent of 
 the value of the products, and that amount of improvement in the 
 apparatus and management of the manufactures of the nation in a 
 decade is every way probable. That we put the credit to the right 
 account is further supported by the fact that the wages bore the 
 proportion of forty-one and forty-one one-hundredths per cent to 
 the cost of the materials used in 1850, but in 1860 fell to thirty- 
 six and seventy-two oce-hundredths. Thus forty-eight and one- 
 third millions worth of work at the rates of 1850 was transferred 
 in 1860 from human hands to machinery, and at the advanced 
 rates of 1860 would amount to fifty-five and seven-tenths millions, or 
 barely nine-tenths of a million more than the sum transferred to 
 the credit of the capitalists who supplied the machinery. Subject 
 to the inseparable errors of statistical data, so large and complex as 
 ours, these results may be regarded as the exactest proofs that such 
 subjects are capable of. 
 
 The noteworthy results of this inquiry are these : the substitu 
 tion of artificial labor, in the form of steam or water force and 
 machinery, for muscular toil, relieves the laborer of so much mere 
 muscle force, which is low priced, and remits him to the higher 
 styles of skill, which always command correspondingly higher rates 
 of wages, which, in every way that concerns his advancement, is so 
 much in his favor. Again : machinery adds a rate of speed, and 
 in many cases a degree of precision in the execution of manufac 
 turing processes which human hands cannot command, increasing 
 the quantity and value of the products, and so increasing the fund 
 from which wages must be paid; which, under the operation of 
 other laws ruling the case, insures him an increase of his distribu 
 tive share. 
 
 These propositions on their face seem at first view paradoxical, 
 but like other paradoxes, in abstract statement, opens up its essen 
 tial facts in the simplest forms of truth. 
 
 We must get accustomed to look through the alarms of innova 
 tions that attend the progress of economical affairs. A wagon road 
 displacing the pack-horse system of transportation across the Alle- 
 ghenies, threatened destruction to the horse-breeders of the time. 
 The railroads that followed, menaced a total loss of occupation to 
 the same interest. What has followed these changes ? Horses dis- 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 9T 
 
 charged from this drudgery have been advanced to work requiring 
 higher qualities, and, behold ! their numbers and individual value- 
 have been multiplied many times. In like manner, when a machine 
 is introduced that displaces nine in ten of the laborers before oc 
 cupied in the work to be done, it is hastily inferred that capital is 
 dispensing more and more with human labor; yet all experience 
 shows that wages rise, employment enlarges, and products cheapen 
 at the same time, and the benefit to the poor is in the aggregate 
 much greater than to the rich ! Else why have the masses risen in 
 condition, step by step, with all improvement in the agencies intro 
 duced into the modern industries ? 
 
 Another result of the calculations here submitted remains to be 
 noticed. We found by our figures that the capitalists in 1860 
 received a trifle less from the enhanced value of the products over 
 the cost of material and labor than the increase of the wages paid 
 the sum of $2,456,030. To this must be added the interest upon 
 the increased capital employed ($482,646,522), and the interest 
 running upon the increased value of the materials ($476,481,370), 
 from the date of their purchase until the sale of their products, 
 with whatever of other increased expenses the extension of the busi 
 ness added. These items cannot be calculated from any data at 
 hand, but they must have aggregated at least fifty millions. 
 
 Again comes the question, did the capitalists lose this estimated 
 fifty millions, or suffer such an abatement of their former profits ? 
 Let us for the purpose of trying this question, call the difference 
 between the cost of materials and the cost of labor together, and the 
 value of the products, profits. It appears that such profits in 1850 
 were equal to twenty-eight and seven-tenths per cent of the total 
 yield, but in 1860 they rose to thirty-three per cent. The gain in 
 amount is a trifle over eighty-one millions, and the fifty millions 
 additional expense here estimated, would leave to capital a clear in 
 creased gain of thirty-one millions. 
 
 Thus, on the basis of the facts and figures here used, is demon 
 strated the increased yield to both capital and labor of improved 
 methods of conversion in manufacturing, mining, and mechanical 
 industry; labor gaining fifteen and twelve one-hundredths per cent 
 upon its smaller principal in ten years, and the capitalist upon his 
 greatly larger principal but five per cent. 
 
 Mr. Carey s general statement of the law of distribution is thus 
 
98 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 verified iu one grand province of its operation. It may be found 
 supported by the context with great amplitude of demonstration in 
 his "Social Science," vol. iii.. p. 139. We here condense his 
 formula : " With the growth of wealth and numbers, the power of 
 " combination increases with great increase in the productiveness of 
 " labor, and in the power of accumulation every step in that 
 11 direction being attended by decline in the power of the already 
 " existing capital to command the services of the laborer, and by 
 " the increase of power on the part of the latter to command the aid 
 "of capital." 
 
 " The proportion of the increased product of labor assigned to the 
 " laborer tends, thus, steadily to increase, while that of the capitalist 
 " tends as regularly to decline. The quantity assigned to both in- 
 " creases that of the laborer growing, however, far more rapidly 
 11 than that retained by the capitalist." 
 
 " The tendency to equality is, therefore, in the direct ratio of the 
 <l growth of wealth, and consequent productiveness of labor." 
 
 We cannot leave this discussion without calling attention to its 
 highest and happiest result the harmony of interests really sub 
 sisting and working toward the most beneficent issue, under the 
 system of relations between capital and labor which are unhappily 
 marked by so much hostility of the parties as the world still wit 
 nesses the employer gaining larger profit from increase of the 
 wages paid, and the laborer sharing in the product from the aid of 
 capital cooperating, and on both sides, in proportion to all improve 
 ments in the processes attained, with the assurance that their pro 
 spective fortunes are under the government of the same law. 
 
 Let us now look at the operation of this law as it rules among 
 different classes and conditions of laborers. That the wages of men 
 have doubled as reckoned in money in the United States since the 
 general introduction of steam and modern machinery, say in the 
 year 1814, will be readily admitted; but it is equally true that the 
 wages of women have tripled in the same time; and this not alone 
 by the transfer of their industry from the household to the factory, 
 where capital directly aids its efficiency, but domestic service has 
 received an equal increase of remuneration, as measured by the cir 
 culating medium. The reason of this is, that a rise in value in any 
 branch of business necessarily pulls up all related branches with it. 
 It is plain enough that if a new demand is made for the labor of 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 99 
 
 women, all are invited to accept its tempting offers, and those who 
 remain in their accustomed engagements must be made to find their 
 account in it. There is also a less obvious influence always at work 
 which tends to level up all the members of a class toward the con 
 dition of the most favored. Opinion has much to do in fixing values 
 in all things, and whatever people generally believe they must have 
 for their work, they must get, if the employers can afford it. Those 
 who need the best service pay its higher price, and this becomes the 
 standard of demand, and soon regulates the opinion and conscience 
 of the pay-masters. 
 
 But there is another reason why the lowest rank in earnings 
 should rise faster than those more advanced. The better part of 
 any class of laborers always have received as high prices as the em 
 ployer can, or thinks he can at the time afford, and the rise of these 
 will just keep pace with the rise in worth of their work, while those 
 who formerly could command nothing, nor make any terms with 
 those who gave them employment, when changed conditions come, 
 and they begin to be wanted, shoot up more rapidly in proportion 
 to the greater distance they must rise. For this very reason we 
 may look for a greater celerity of progress among the lately emanci 
 pated negroes of the South, than we can expect for the people who 
 made an earlier start where the capital is small, accretions of the 
 same value are a much larger per cent of increase, than where a 
 little is added to a greater amount. The addition of one to two 
 makes an increase of fifty per cent, the addition of one to a hun 
 dred is but one per cent. 
 
 We are as nearly correct as the nature of the question admits of, 
 in stating that the labor wages of artisans in the United States in 
 creased one hundred per cent in money value from the year 1814 to 
 to 1860. We take the year 1814 for the first of the new era of 
 manufacturing industry, because the power loom was first intro 
 duced at Waltham, Massachusetts, in that year, and steam began 
 soon after to be generally applied in the various processes of produc 
 tion in the mechanic arts ; and for the further reason that, from and 
 after that year the remarkable fall of prices is noticed in the reports 
 of British exports in all the manufactures of the United King 
 dom ; and we take the year 1860 for our latest date, in order to 
 avoid the general disturbance of our home markets by the war of 
 the Rebellion, and by the suspension of specie payments at the close 
 
100 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 of the following year. Whoever will look over the lists of current 
 prices of the principal commodities for any period of twenty or 
 thirty or forty years within the present century, will be convinced 
 that there are many causes of fluctuation, casual and temporary, 
 which disturb his estimates of permanent and normal changes, and 
 render the figures commonly quoted by partisans of conflicting 
 theories so liable to yield support to either side of any question for 
 which they are appealed to for confirmation. The statistics, by skill 
 or blunder in selection of dates and periods, may be manipulated 
 so as to prove anything that the uncandid or the incapable may 
 choose to demonstrate. Indeed, nothing but the most general and 
 the most comprehensive views derived from the records deserve reli 
 ance. Periods worthy to be examined for instruction, or quoted for 
 proofs, ought to be large enough to embrace all the changes which 
 time and chance usually can considerably modify, in order that the 
 fluctuations of rise and fall may be embraced in all their bearings 
 upon the question at issue. 
 
 For instance : common English bar iron in England varied 
 from 8 per ton in 1822 to 15 in 1825 ; from 5 10s. in 1832 to 
 10 15s. in 1836; from 4 10s. in 1843 to 10 in 1845; and, from 
 9 10s. in 1847 to 5 5s. in 1849. In such an up-and-down flut 
 ter as this, specialties run into contradictions, and deductions are 
 confused and false. But such facts as these broader ones are not 
 doubtful : in 1783 mineral coal was substituted for charcoal in the 
 manufacture of bar iron, and in the following year the rolling mill 
 was invented. Previously, for many years, the price of iron had 
 been steady at from 17 to 18 per ton. In 1829 the hot blast 
 was used, effecting a great saving in fuel, and the price went down 
 to 7 10s. for the next six years; and a succession of improve 
 ments through the ensuing fifteen years marks the tendency down 
 ward by rates running as low as 7 5s. in the first half of the 
 period, and an average of 6 in the closing year 1850. 
 
 Iron has been, perhaps, subject to greater and more rapid vicis 
 situdes of price than any other article, for the reason that it was 
 put under constantly increasing protective duties by the policy of 
 England from 1787 (about the date of the great improvement in its 
 manufacture) until 1826. A part of this period of near forty years, 
 its most important forms were prohibited in terms, and the duty 
 rising through the period to full fifty per cent upon the kinds 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 101 
 
 admitted, was in effect quite as prohibitory. After safety from 
 all foreign competition was secured its price was, and is to the 
 present day, still more wildly variable under the policy of holding 
 its foreign markets by gorging them at losing rates, and recovering 
 the losses again by enormous changes in price, when, and as long 
 as it could, hold them monopolized. 
 
 But all commodities are influenced more or less by the policy of 
 the mercantile and manufacturing nations. Such manufactures as 
 depend for their raw materials upon the seasons ; as they variably 
 affect the agricultural products used ; and, again, by the effect of 
 the seasons upon the food required by laborers ; and, again, by 
 wars, periods of mercantile speculation, and the condition of the 
 currency all these causes play upon prices, and vary them from 
 the lowest possibilities of the producer, to the highest prices that 
 the consumer can bear. 
 
 For all these reasons we would avoid the incertitude, as well as 
 the imposture of the arithmetic of market statistics, by choosing 
 our data from the broadest and safest groups of facts; and, while 
 we do not refuse the assistance and the guidance of such records, 
 carefully examined and interpreted, we resort with still more confi 
 dence to the clearer and truer experiences which get no record 
 except in general observation. 
 
 We have said that women s wages have risen threefold in money 
 price since 1814. It will be recollected that fifty years ago house 
 service did not command more than sixty-two and a half cents per 
 week, and rose in the average to at least $1.75 in 1860. To show 
 the value of these prices, respectively, we submit the following 
 statement of the market values, and the quantities of certain 
 articles of clothing required, which these different amounts of 
 wages would command : 
 
 Money Wages in 1814, 62-i cents. Money Wages In 1860, $1.75. 
 
 1 yard of dimity at 62 cents 7 yards at 25 cents. 
 
 2 " sheeting " 31i " U " 12i " 
 
 2i " calico " 25 " 14 " 12^ " 
 
 2i shirting " 25 " 17* " 10 " 
 
 Other articles of dress, if not equally, had at least very greatly 
 fallen in the market. With the price of food and lodging she was 
 not concerned, in any way, except as to quality, which, with other 
 things, was constantly improving. In general terms, we will be 
 
102 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 sustained by the memories that cover the whole period of this great 
 change, in saying that the hired women reached in these fifty years 
 enjoyments that would have cost them at least six times the amount 
 of their wages at the beginning of the period. 
 
 With respect to the advance in the real wages of men, it is to be 
 remarked that the doubling of their remuneration gives them at 
 least a fourfold command of all that part of their consumption 
 which has undergone the improved methods of production. Four 
 fold is not enough to allow when we recollect that all the multiform 
 productions of British industry have fallen sixty per cent, which 
 increases the purchasing power of the same money two and a 
 half times, and the wages being doubled, we have a fivefold pur 
 chasing power as to these items. Some other indispensable things 
 he has now for nothing, and the best of them at rates that put even 
 the lowest rank of self-supporting people on a level with the wealth 
 iest of fifty years ago. He has these things in a free system of 
 common schools ; in the street accommodations of light, and police 
 security; in travel and transportation, cheapened down to his means ; 
 in the newspapers, periodicals, and books which formerly only the 
 wealthy class could well afford ; in the accessibility of other means 
 of instruction, refinement, and enjoyment, not forgetting the general 
 respect and its advantages, which so great an improvement in per 
 sonal conditions insures. 
 
 Thus much as a hint, for it falls very short of an array, of the 
 benefits brought to every man by the joint achievements of labor, 
 capital, skill, and science in the last half century. 
 
 The proportion of food to all necessaries other than house rent, 
 is, of course, a variable quantity, but it is safe to say that under the 
 normal rates of the period previous to 1860, it did not overpass the 
 cost of these, and that such food as was used in 1814 was as costly 
 then as the better supply of the later date. The groceries of tropi 
 cal climates had greatly declined in price ; so much so, that tea and 
 coffee had come into universal use ; sugar had fallen at least fifteen 
 per cent; flesh meats increased, perhaps, twenty-five per cent; vege 
 tables, generally; and flour fluctuating considerably, but hovering 
 about the same rates at the beginning and end of the period. If 
 this is correct as to food, that is, if the improved food cost no more 
 in the aggregate than the inferior supply of fifty years ago, that 
 portion of the wages which must be so applied, being doubled be- 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 103 
 
 tween the dates assumed, was, in effect, reduced to one half the 
 real expenditure, or allowed a double indulgence. Food in the con 
 sumption of the tolerably circumstanced artisan is not the half of 
 his consumption of commodities; therefore, for more than half his 
 wants he has a fivefold provision in his enhanced real wages, and 
 in respect to food, twofold. These surpluses leave a very large 
 margin beyond the increase of his house rent. 
 
 The calculation would stand thus : as against the purchasing 
 power of wages in 1814, that of 18GO was, after reducing the other 
 items equally to make up for the probable doubling of his rent 
 
 $50 worth of food in 1814 $ 85 47 worth in 1860. 
 
 50 worth of other commodities in 1814... 1J4 53 " " 
 
 58 house rent in 1814 110 00 " " 
 
 $158 annual wages $316 00 annual wages. 
 
 This division of the excess of the wages applied to food and other 
 commodities is not given as the determinate distribution that would 
 be made of it. The two classes (food and other commodities) are 
 here put at equal sums fifty dollars each in 1814, and probably 
 the necessity of the case arising out of the limits of the fund would 
 oblige as great an expenditure for food, at the expense of a severe 
 economy in clothing and the like things, but the greater stock of 
 wages, ($200 against $100), and the greatly less cost of textile 
 fabrics and other manufactures in 1860 would allow $100 for food, 
 and the other hundred, as it now purchases two and a half times the 
 quantity afforded by 850 in 1814, would permit expenditure in this 
 direction to be pushed to this limit in this class of commodities. 
 The ratio of appropriation would be a matter of choice, or would 
 be determined by circumstances. We are only concerned to show 
 that the wages of 1860 provide a surplus of $100 over those of 
 1814. If this is clear, then, our point is made, that the support 
 ing or purchasing power of wages doubled in forty-six years as to 
 all things except house rent, and including house rent, increased in 
 real value sixty-three and one-third per cent. 
 
 We have said that wages double in money price once in forty- 
 seven years. But in real value, when surcharged with the increas 
 ing value of land, and of its rent, it will take fifty-five years to 
 double, at the rate of change in prices of rent, of commodities and 
 labor, during the last half century. All of which accords with 
 
104 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the primary propositions : wages are the index of productiveness, 
 the former enhancing, by a law of the subjects, with the increase 
 of the latter ; and, the other general principle, that in progressive 
 communities nothing can normally increase in value but land and 
 labor. 
 
 It will be observed by those who have a turn for the figures of 
 statistics, and especially by those who innocently imagine that 
 arithmetic gives its own exactitude to the measure and meaning of 
 the facts to which it is so applied, that we have spoken of the 
 doubling of American money wages as requiring a period of forty- 
 six years when estimating their purchasing power over commodi 
 ties other than food and lodging in the years 1814 and 1860; and, 
 that we extend the period to forty-seven years, when we estimate 
 the period of duplication by the rate of their rise in the decade 
 1850-60. 
 
 We let these differences stand. It would be easy to force a com 
 promise agreement, and deliver a definite and, perhaps, even a more 
 exact result. The data are in their nature elastic enough to admit 
 of equalization ; but the inexpert would only be deceived into an 
 undue confidence in the cipherings of political economy. It is im 
 possible to decide whether 1813, 1814, 1818, or 1820 marks the 
 effective beginning of the new era in manufacturing productive 
 ness. Nothing so sudden ever takes place, all over the civilized 
 world, as will fix the precise year when some grand epoch in discovery 
 gets itself realized in business affairs. We have taken as we must 
 take, some definite date the year 1814 for the point of departure 
 for the reason that then the products of British industry commenced 
 that permanent drift of cheapening which has since gone forward 
 with great uniformity in spite of all disturbing influences, until the 
 increase of converting skill and agencies have reduced the average 
 price full sixty per cent. If the decided change began a little 
 later in the United States, it has progressed proportionably faster 
 in the whole compass of the period. 
 
 Further to clear up the data adopted, it should be seen that the 
 average expenditure of artisans, fixed for the year 1814, is exposed 
 to cross-questioning from various positions which critics may as 
 sume. One hundred and fifty-eight dollars wages per annum is an 
 average, or is intended for an average, only; though based upon 
 the official reports of the census-takers of the time; and, as an 
 
LAW OF WAGES. 105 
 
 average, will accord with the observation or experience of very few 
 individuals. The same things are true of the average three hun 
 dred and sixteen dollars for the year 18GO. Yet objections, how 
 ever well taken to the specific sums allowed, are nothing against 
 the deductions drawn from them. Though they be wrong in 
 amounts, they are very probably right in proportion to each other, 
 and rectification of such amounts will not affect the percentage of 
 increase, which is the thing required in this discussion. 
 
 The distribution of the wages among the classes of necessary ex 
 penditure is more embarrassing, and more important, in reaching 
 the actual result. Food is much cheaper in some parts of the 
 United States than in others, while manufactures are not materially 
 different in price. The proportions of expenditure upon these 
 classes of commodities must, therefore, vary accordingly; and this 
 will affect the real value of wages. Again : even in the same place, 
 and at the same prices, the circumstances and the taste of the 
 laborers will induce a various relative proportion of expenditure 
 upon them, and so produce a difference of surplus to meet the 
 enhanced charge of rent. 
 
 Moreover, the sums or amounts of annual wages allowed for both 
 periods are obviously too low, and this must be rectified to the cases 
 before a just judgment can be formed. Nevertheless the point to 
 be met remains unaffected the positive increase of wages, and that 
 they increase in the ratio of the general increase of the national 
 wealth, but much more rapidly than the profits of capital employ 
 ing labor in the manufacturing, mining and mechanic arts; and at 
 various rates in other industries, with a tendency in all branches to 
 a fair equality of dividend in the fruits of labor and capital com 
 bined. Under these modifications the proposition that wages are 
 the index of productiveness, is made good. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MONEY AND ITS FUNCTIONS AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 
 
 Money and its function as an exchanger of values : Production denned. 
 Nature s forces in the mastery of natural substances. Instruments employed in 
 effecting changes of form and place. Transportation, difficulties, and cost of; 
 social effects; improvement of in proportion to increase of population and 
 wealth. Improvement in distribution of products ; freight the impediment. 
 Transportation and conversion improve pari passu. Drudgery and slavery. 
 Emancipation by machinery. Freedom of exchange and freedom of man. 
 India enslaved by cost of freight. Abridgment of transportation and elimina 
 tion of middle-men. Simple barter the type of a true commerce. A common 
 representative of values required to remove impediments. Money, the medium 
 of exchanges. Kinds of money. The precious metals; their befitting quali 
 ties. Change of exchange value in long periods, but still the best security for 
 creditors, although it lessens the value of debts. Small coins. Money as an 
 agent of transportation. Money not a standard of value ; only a conventional 
 standard of payment. Why. Great change of market value in long periods. 
 Estimates difficult. Prices two centuries ago, and change of nominal value in 
 coins. Reduced value since the eleventh century, reduced cost of production 
 in the period. Exchange value of silver eighteen hundred years ago. A com 
 mon and permanent standard of values impossible. The labor cost of precious 
 metals not ascertainable; causes specially affecting cost of mining them. 
 Equivalence of value in the supply of money and totality of things in ex 
 change, fallacious. False analogy to paper money the differences. Excess of 
 paper money explodes it as a currency. No increase of coin lessens its ex 
 change value. Prices of other things decline under its increase the reverse 
 of its supposed effect. The law of "supply and demand" at fault here. 
 Coin in exchange is payment ; paper money only a promise to pay. The 
 one an existing real value; the other an anticipation of values. Business 
 alarms depreciate paper, but appreciate metallic money. Value of coin 
 fluctuates only under changes in cost of production. Increase in Europe, in 
 three centuries, thirtyfold. Coinage in England before and after 1850 in the 
 United States seven times greater. No depreciation under so vast and rapid 
 an increase. Adam Smith s testimony. Demand not fixed independently; 
 relation to supply wanting. Money not consumed ; consumption of the things 
 it buys quite immeasurable. Outlets for its use. Thousands of millions of 
 commodities ready to absorb hundreds of millions of added money. Cash 
 payments in lieu of credit. Not the value of money, but the credit system 
 affected by its influx. The use of money supplanted by other means of pay- 
 106 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 107 
 
 ment. Money of account. Clearing houses pay by offset. New York banks 
 thus settle ninety-five per cent of their mutual claims. Money only needed to 
 pay profits. Business in England done with less money, in inverse proportion 
 to values in exchange. Rapidity of circulation does not explain the fact. 
 
 THE power of man over matter is limited to change of form and 
 change of place. Both these changes are necessary, in various 
 degrees, and almost universally, in his use of the primitive sub 
 stances which nature furnishes for his service. Change of form, 
 including change of properties, and change of place> are both 
 included in the word production. Ore or coal or lime delivered 
 at the pit s mouth, are produced. The ore and coal and lime being 
 put through the furnace, iron, by change of form, is produced. 
 The iron transported to a distant market is there, by change of 
 place, produced. By the change of form, utility is subserved ; by 
 the change of place, use is effected. 
 
 Production, whether in form or place, looks to exchange of values 
 for all marketable commodities beyond the consumption of the 
 producers. The whole life of man is a round of exchanges between 
 his body and the elements of subsistence between the individual 
 and his kind, in services moral, mental, and material, in their 
 varied ministries. 
 
 Man compels nature into service, for the most part, by the use of 
 power-multiplying instruments, thus employing the forces of nature 
 in one form against her resistance in another. Mind is qualified for 
 its proper sovereignty by its power of converting some of the natural 
 agencies into simper-natural forces, and all of them by ingenuity of 
 application into controlling forces. 
 
 The instruments employed in effecting changes of form are such 
 as ploughs, mills, furnaces, steam engines, and generally, all mechan 
 ical and chemical agencies of which he has the mastery. The in 
 struments of transportation are such as horses, wagons, rail car 
 riages, ships, currents of water, air, and electricity. 
 
 When these have performed their offices the producers are ready 
 for exchanges of values, or, in more suggestive terms, exchange of 
 services, as these are embodied in their commodities. 
 
 In the earlier and ruder stages of commerce the change of place 
 is generally the greater part of the cost of production. Navigable 
 waters abridge the expense of transportation, but inland or overland 
 carriage absorbs nearly the whole prime value, or doubles the cost of 
 
108 QUESTIONS OP THE BAY. 
 
 the product. Improvement and extension of navigation in this state 
 of trade makes princes of merchants, as in ancient Tyre, and in 
 middle age Venice and Genoa, and producer and consumer are alike 
 kept poor. Monopoly of transportation and of exchange have the 
 Bame mischievous tendency in the most advanced states of society. 
 
 The natural process of improvement follows increase of popula 
 tion and wealth. The foot-path widens into a carriage road ; then it 
 is graded and paved, and finally, iron tramways diminish friction, 
 and the locomotive engine replaces the six-horse team as it had 
 supplanted the pack-horse. Now the transporter takes less and the 
 producer gets more of the price given by the consumer for the 
 articles produced at market. It must not be forgotten, however, 
 that the cost of carriage ever remains so much dead loss to the 
 prime producer, and an equivalent tax upon the Consumer. Freight 
 is the thing to be diminished, and, wherever it can be, entirely 
 abolished, in the progressive improvement of necessary exchanges. 
 
 There is a corresponding progress to be effected in the work of 
 changing the forms of things for use, and these two changes are 
 found going forward in a near approach to equal measure. In the 
 savage state the quantity of labor required to convert grain into 
 bread is very great it means drudgery and enslavement. The 
 stone pestle and mortar must give way to the flouring mill; the 
 hand-wheel and loom to the spinning-jenny and power-loom, and at 
 last, hammers, saws, and files to steam-driven rollers, lathes, saws, 
 and chisels. Labor must be saved in manufacturing and forward 
 ing in change of form and of place. Capital accumulated must 
 work for those who have worked for it. The reluctant natural 
 agents must be yoked to machinery in production, in relief of toil 
 and in the elevation of labor in uses and benefits. Society must 
 be organized; its members must be so related in industry and in 
 commerce, that all impediments to the freest, cheapest, directest 
 possible exchange of services may be removed. 
 
 The poverty of India, once the leading manufacturing people of 
 the earth, is explained by the fact that the policy of British rule 
 forces its people to send their cotton wool five thousand miles 
 direct, or more than twice as far by the Cape of Good Hope to 
 find the spindle, and to bring the cloth all the way back again, for 
 such market as it may find at Bombay. Calcutta, or Delhi, at the 
 foot of the Himalaya Mountains. 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 109 
 
 The gains of a close neighborhood of the prime producer and 
 consumer are larger, greatly larger, than those to be expected from 
 the greatest possible improvement of roads and conveyances; for 
 closeness, pro tanto, abolishes transportation and eliminates tlie 
 middle-man, and with him, his frauds and profits. It is best even 
 in the rude stage of commerce in which services are exchanged 
 through their representative commodities, without the intervention 
 of the merchant class. 
 
 This simple barter is the type of a true commerce, for it is the 
 very thing to be attained ; and the best method of effecting such 
 exchange is the aim, and remains the hope of the highest civilization. 
 
 The natural hindrance to this, the purest and best form of ex 
 change, is that, the man who has blankets to spare may not want 
 the venison or furs which the hunter must buy them with ; and so 
 of the millar, the blacksmith, tailor, doctor, lawyer, and preacher. 
 They cannot take exactly the thing, or the exact quantity of the 
 thing, which the customer has to give in exchange. Somebody 
 else, however, wants the venison or furs, which the hunter offers 
 for the cloth, cutlery, or other commodity or service, required; and 
 if all the producers could be brought together, in fact, as at a fair, 
 or in effect, by some other means, more frequently and conveniently, 
 the needed exchanges could be made to the mutual advantage of 
 all the parties. If some representative of values, and of all values, 
 capable of fitting itself in amount to all desired exchanges, and 
 always, and for all purposes, commanding them, the legitimate ends 
 of commerce would be accomplished by such an instrument, and it 
 would be an instrument of association as well as of barter. 
 
 This predicament instantly suggests the familiar medium which 
 we call MONEY money in all the senses in which the word is em 
 ployed coined metals; representative paper money; money of 
 account, or credit money of all kinds, answering the purpose, and 
 each in turn better than the other, in circumstances specially 
 adapted to its use. 
 
 The necessity of such a representative of values in the business 
 of exchange is shown by the fact that the North American Indians 
 adopted beads, made of small and variously-colored shells ; Africans 
 and East Indians still use shells, called cowries ; the ancient Romans 
 employed cattle, and bars of copper, and the Spartans, iron. All 
 these were money, as real as the precious metals in use elsewhere; 
 
110 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 for they passed at their labor cost and commanded all other com 
 modities in exchange in the communities using them as a circulation. 
 They were just as much a measure of values, and perhaps not less 
 constant in their own exchange value. 
 
 The necessity for some common medium of exchange is obvious. 
 That its service, and its influence upon society is not confined to its 
 convenience in barter we shall see as we advance. For the present 
 we stop to consider the eminent fitness of the precious metals to 
 supply the requirements of commerce in the range of exchanges to 
 which they are adapted. 
 
 1st. Their scarcity and high cost of production has the effect of 
 compacting large value in a small compass and light weight, com 
 pared with other substances anywise adapted to such use. Precious 
 stones greatly excel them in these qualities, but in others are 
 altogether unfit for currency. Gold and silver have also capabili 
 ties of storage and concealment which are great advantages added 
 to their portableness. 
 
 2d. They have a certain approach to constancy of value, for their 
 cost of production does not vary very much during the periods that 
 private contracts for payment usually run. In long leases, carrying 
 a money rent, and in national funds, particularly such as the Eng 
 lish consols, standing for nearly two centuries, the pound sterling 
 loses very largely its original correspondence to a fixed weight of 
 pure gold or silver; but this objection is relieved by two good con 
 siderations : the value of all other commodities of the market 
 diminish much more rapidly; and, national debts and long-lease 
 rents and annuities have no equitable claim to an invariable exchange 
 value more than other things. Society cannot be asked to insure a 
 permanency of value for debts that does not and cannot attach to 
 any other property. As coin grows cheaper the burden of debt 
 grows lighter, which is so far a remedy for the evil to the debtor, 
 and is no injustice in the workings of Providence upon the interests 
 of the creditor, who, in such case, and so far as he is a creditor, is 
 simply a sleeping partner in the world s business; and, as he sup 
 plies none of its current industry, and takes none of its risks, or of 
 the risks of any other form of capital invested, he cannot expect to 
 be provided or cared for by the system which governs the business 
 of the working generations of men. Moreover, the change in the 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. Ill 
 
 value of any other medium of payment, except land and labor, would 
 be incalculably greater. 
 
 3d. The precious metals are, in a certain sense, indestructible, los 
 ing nothing by rust or other waste, except wear, from which they 
 are sufficiently well defended by alloys of more durable metals. 
 
 4th. Their divisibility into very small portions, and their capa 
 bility of reunion or restoration to larger bulks and values without 
 loss, rank among the best of their intrinsic qualities. This point is 
 made very clear when small coins are withdrawn from circulation 
 by a suspension of specie payments. The lack of one, two, five and 
 ten-cent pieces is a greater inconvenience than the absence of ten- 
 dollar pieces or ten-dollar notes, or any large denominations of cur 
 rent money. Bankers checks or drafts would answer for the pay 
 ment of large sums, but there is no acceptable substitute for small 
 money in daily and hourly purchases by the great mass of the people. 
 
 For a three-cent piece we obtain a required share of the service 
 of thousands of people who build, equip, and run our railroads, in 
 the carriage of our letters ; and for a less piece or sum we have a 
 fraction of the labor of the hundreds that produce the daily news 
 paper these infinitesimal portions of the great agent, spread by 
 minute division and " they operate unspent." 
 
 5th. These metals acting as money, may very well be classed 
 among the instruments of exchange, with wagons, rail-cars, and 
 ships, for they in effect transfer the property in things, and thus 
 bring the things themselves to the consumer to an extent that dis 
 penses with the transportation of manifold the quantity of the things 
 which otherwise must be carried from place to place. The man who 
 has wheat to give for iron, need not send it to the forge and bring 
 the iron back, he can convert it into money and buy his iron at the 
 nearest store ; and so of a thousand other things, for which the whole 
 circuit of travel and transportation would have to be traversed for 
 the supply of a hundred wants a day, but for the service of this 
 greatest of all exchangers. 
 
 6th. By virtue of their intrinsic value they pay, not promise to 
 pay, all international balances of trade. 
 
 7th. They are capable of receiving and retaining such stamps, 
 engravings, and impressions as readily and truly certify their value 
 at sight, without chemical tests or incessant weighing. Something 
 of their real value is in these qualities, just as paper in quires and 
 
112 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 reams, cloth in pieces of determinate length, and flour in barrels of 
 settled weight, are worth more than without the forms of packages 
 and ascertained quantities; provided, always, that governments 
 honestly fix the legal quality and quantity at their real value. 
 
 All experience proves that no other substance, having in itself 
 equivalence of value, possesses at the same time so many qualities 
 of a good medium of exchange for universal circulation, as are 
 found in gold and silver. It is to be noted, however, -that the 
 precious metals, in any condition, whether estimated by weight or 
 accepted at legal-tender value, are not, in a strict sense, either 
 a permanent standard or measure of the value of other things. 
 They are only a conventional standard of payment. At fixed rates 
 they cannot measure the natural price of commodities whose labor 
 cot is varying every day; and they are not any truer equivalents 
 of long postponed payments of debt. Such standard or measure 
 they cannot be, so long as their own cost of production is change 
 able. They have not the measure permanency of the yard-stick or 
 pound-weight, which are measures and standards, simply because 
 they do not themselves enter into the act of exchange the pound- 
 weight does not pass to the purchaser of the commodity which it 
 measures, but gold and silver are the things exchanged for the 
 things whose value they are at the same time used to measure. In 
 considerable periods of time their value varies so greatly that the re 
 duction is one of the most difficult undertakings of accountants and 
 historians. Writers usually put the intrinsic value of these metals, 
 as measured by their purchasing power, in the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth of England, or about three centuries ago (A. D. 1509- 
 1547) at twelve times greater than now. But for want of a stand 
 ard to measure the intrinsic value or labor cost of the metals them 
 selves, there is no proof of any tolerable exactness in the estimates 
 that are made, even by the most capable persons, of the change of 
 value of an ounce of gold or silver after the lapse of centuries. 
 And, if it is difficult for long periods, the v rate of the process from 
 day to day or year to year is no less so, though of less moment. 
 
 The price of horses in England in the year 1696 Mr, Macaulay 
 puts at fifty shillings. The pound of silver was at that time coined 
 into sixty-two shillings, now into sixty-six shillings, so that fifty 
 shillings then contained within a fraction of as much silver of the 
 same fineness as fifty-three and one-quarter shillings now, which 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 113 
 
 gives us the average price of horses in England one hundred and 
 seventy-four years ago as the equivalent of $12.92 in American 
 gold in 1870. The horses of that day, however, were not really 
 worth, and would not be worth more than half the price of English 
 horses now, if so much. This estimate would put the comparative 
 average value of horses now in England at but little more than 
 twenty-five dollars in the money of 1696. 
 
 If the change be pursued still further back, we find that in the 
 year 1066 the Tower pound of silver was coined into twenty shil 
 lings^ equal to eighteen and three-quarter shillings of the Troy pound 
 adopted in 1527, and, that thereafter- the same quantity, or Troy 
 pound, underwent the following striking changes : In 1527, forty 
 shillings; in 1553, sixty shillings; in 1600, sixty-two shillings; in 
 1816, sixty-six shillings. Here we have the legal tender and ex 
 change value of silver increased to more than double in five centu 
 ries, and three and a half times in eight centuries; the real value, 
 or the labor cost of production, declining, if not regularly through 
 the whole period, at least very greatly in those eight hundred years, 
 and still more and more rapidly within the last twenty years. 
 
 Going still farther back into the past, a still greater change in 
 the money value of silver may be safely inferred. The Disciples 
 estimated the value of bread that would suffice for one meal for five 
 thousand hungry people in the wilderness of Judea, eighteen hun 
 dred years ago, at two hundred pence (Mark vi., 37). The Roman 
 penny, then and there in circulation, was equal in quantity of silver 
 to seven and a half pence sterling now, or about fifteen cents of 
 American money. Two hundred pence were therefore equal to 
 thirty dollars. This is an allowance of just three-fifths of one cent 
 for the bread of each person. It would probably cost thirty cents a 
 head to supply such hungry men now. If so, money has only one- 
 fiftieth of its purchasing power after the lapse of eighteen centuries. 
 But there are no means of calculating the relative commercial value 
 of gold and silver at any distances of time, either long or short, be 
 cause in the intervals all other values are undergoing changes which 
 are at once fluctuating and incapable of measure. The attempt is 
 like measuring a flying cloud on a windy day with an elastic string; 
 yet, one can be sure without such a standard, that the day is more 
 cloudy than a clear one. 
 
 The general fact is indisputable that silver and gold have grown 
 
114 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 several times cheaper intrinsically than they were before the dis 
 covery of America by Columbus ; and it is clear that they must have 
 cheapened materially since the mines of California and Australia 
 were opened not because of their greater abundance in use, but 
 from the reduced labor cost of their production. Yet this fact does 
 not even help to determine their purchasing power now, as compared 
 with three hundred years ago ; because, in all that period, land and 
 labor have been enhancing in value faster as measured by them, 
 than the metals have been declining in cost of production; and 
 manufactures have been at the same time cheapening certainly very 
 much faster than they possibly could, for they are not equally under 
 the power of cheapening processes of production with the commodi 
 ties made of the useful minerals and of the raw materials of textile 
 fabrics. 
 
 As we insist that what we call the labor cost of these metals settles 
 their commercial value, might an estimate be made with approxi 
 mate results from such data as the business of production affords ? 
 Here again great difficulties, and equally great uncertainties are en 
 countered. Gold and silver mining is now marked by all the char 
 acters of gambling, except its fraudulent intention. It is in the 
 main a desperate game. The risks of loss and the hopes of gain 
 engender a recklessness that belongs not so much to an industry as 
 to a speculation, dependent upon the incalculable changes of fortune. 
 Success in discovery and yield must compensate for the labor in 
 vain which so often goes before, and is always likely to follow. The 
 expense of machinery and water-supply, the varying cost of pro 
 visions, and the capriciousness of the workmen under the constant 
 seductions of better luck in promise, and other influences, in char 
 acter with the wild speculative spirit of the enterprise, altogether 
 put calculation at defiance. Such is the unsteadiness of the whole 
 business that no one can calculate upon compensation or profits 
 except the brokers in the Pacific coast cities and metropolitan money 
 markets of the Atlantic coasts in Europe and America. The labor 
 cost of this intractable subject is as difficult as its exchange value in 
 the ever varying markets in which it plays the go-between of protean- 
 priced commodities. 
 
 There is yet another way of vaguely estimating or imagining the 
 value of the precious metals. This is by the supposed effect of 
 their changes of quantity in use. This idea rests upon an assumed 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 115 
 
 equivalence of the money in circulation to the whole value of the 
 commodities in exchange; an assumption utterly unwarranted, as 
 we shall presently see. The doctrine, or notion, that an increase of 
 quantity must diminish value in these metals, helps itself to some 
 thing mistaken for proof, in a supposed analogy to the workings of 
 paper money. It is not questioned that paper money is cheapened 
 by its abundance and depreciated by its excess. But if this were 
 so, and the measure were accurate, there is this grand difference 
 between the two currencies: the value of paper money bears refer 
 ence to its redeemability, or convertibility into coin. Gold and 
 silver have no such dependency. They are not in the category of 
 credit. They are not convertible or redeemable in any other value 
 upon which their own depends. We have had several experiences 
 of excess of paper money in the United States, and it appears that, 
 whenever its circulation exceeded the steady-going amount as much 
 as twenty-five per cent, an explosion resulted. Now we need not say 
 that any supposable increase in metallic money would not utterly 
 destroy its value as money, and we may very properly and perti 
 nently point to the fact that the whole increase of coin money be 
 tween the years 1850 and 1860, which could not be less than 
 double the amount in use at the beginning of the period, did not 
 put up the aggregate market price of the whole range of commodi 
 ties in our markets. On the contrary, the price of thirty out of 
 sixty articles reported in New York, declined through a range of 
 principal items in the list, from forty-four to twelve per cent in the 
 five years 1855-60, when the gold influx was at the highest. The 
 quantity of gold so greatly increased, helped, besides, by an in 
 crease of thirty-three per cent of paper circulation in the ten years 
 1850-60, had not the effect of depreciating the exchange value of 
 either, and especially of the coin circulation. Whatever force there 
 is in the law of " demand and supply " it manifestly had no appli 
 cation to the money conditions of this remarkable period, which 
 can help us to measure the effect of quantity of money upon either 
 its intrinsic or exchange value. 
 
 The argument, borrowed from the history of paper money, we 
 must insist, has no proper application to the operations ^>f a coin 
 circulation in the respect now under consideration. The difference 
 lies in these particulars : circulating notes have not any intrinsic 
 value (beyond the cost of their production, and that only while 
 
116 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 they answer their designed use). They are merely pledges of 
 credit the credit of governments, or banks, and of the bor 
 rowers from them, and being, to a very great extent, mere anticipa 
 tions of values not yet realized, the holders under such uncer 
 tainties of security, and especially in periods of alarm, will push 
 off such notes for anything better secured; they will realize by in 
 vesting in property more secure, willingly paying the premium of 
 such insurance; that is, they will give higher prices for safer 
 property, and so, paper money depreciates. Specie never depre 
 ciates for such cause. Its abundance never touches its solvency, 
 and we must look elsewhere for the fluctuations in its value. Only 
 one cause remains, and that has the great strength in this argument 
 that it is the sole cause of value of all industrial productions that 
 are exchanged among men the cost of its production ; that is, of 
 its reproduction at the time when its value is the question. If it 
 were as easily obtained as water, its market, or exchange value, would 
 be only the cost of transportation from the rivers to the consumer, 
 or the cost of sinking and working the wells, and of conveyance 
 when it must be found beneath the service. When it is found as 
 abundant as iron, and as easily produced in condition for use, it 
 will be as cheap by the ton, whether it be more or less fit for like 
 purposes. 
 
 Some idea of the increase of metallic money in circulation in 
 Europe may be had from Humboldt s estimate, which is accepted by 
 experts as approximately correct. He puts it at more than thirty 
 times the quantity in the eighteenth century over that of the 
 fifteenth. This period of three hundred years covers the compara 
 tively vast addition derived from the American mines, which fol 
 lowed the discovery of the New World. The rate of increase upon 
 the previous supplies within the present century, may be guessed at 
 by the coinage before and since California and Australia have been 
 opened. The British mint, in the fifteen years 1816-30, coined 
 gold and silver to the value of fifty-five and three-fourths millions of 
 pounds sterling. In the fifteen years, 185165, to the amount of 
 ninety-six millions of pounds. Taking later and fairer periods for 
 contrast^ in the United States the mint and branches coined one 
 hundred and six and a half millions of dollars in the fifteen years 
 1825-49; and in the fifteen years 1851-65, seven hundred and 
 forty-nine millions. 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 117 
 
 It is known that such multiplication of the amount in use as 
 these figures show has not yet depreciated the exchange value of 
 money made of these metals. So we say again that whatever force 
 the law of supply and demand may be allowed, it helps nothing in 
 determining either the intrinsic value or purchasing power, or, so to 
 speak, the market price of the precious metals in use, as they have 
 operated in past or present times. Nearly a hundred years ago, 
 when the matter was as well in view, and the facts of experience as 
 strong to the point, as now, Adam Smith said that the importation 
 of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty millions of 
 francs per annum for more than a century, with all the substitutes 
 for metallic money added in that time, had not depreciated the ex 
 change value of the precious metals in Europe. 
 
 The source of error in the customary reasoning on this subject 
 lies in fixing or finding a standard of supply, and making no allow 
 ance for the variance of demand which such supply induces. Even 
 if the limit of consumption or use were ascertained, or ascertaiuable, 
 or imaginable, the application of the law to money would be a mis 
 take. A community cannot consume more than a certain quantity 
 of food, but who can fix a limit for the use or consumption of news 
 papers, furniture, clothing, or of vehicles for travel and transporta 
 tion ? And how can a gauge be invented for the use of money ? 
 As concerns the present and probable supply of the precious 
 metals, the possible requirement is the subject of such conditions 
 as these : 
 
 The wealth of Great Britain is growing at the rate of a thousand 
 millions of dollars a year ; France and the United States, together, 
 twice as much, without embracing the rest of the continents of 
 Europe and America. These three thousand millions of added prop 
 erty in their markets can easily make room for an addition of two 
 or three hundred millions a year without altering prices, or pro 
 ducing a relative depreciation of a farthing in the hundred pounds 
 worth. Nay, they may employ, besides, double their ordinary 
 amount of bank paper, keeping it sound the while, and by adopting 
 cash payments in lieu of the usual run of credits for sixty, ninety, 
 or one hundred and twenty days, or for six months or a year, 
 such increase of circulation would be all u demanded" and the 
 medium would not depreciate, whether metallic, or paper, or mixed. 
 Furnish the money in any increase of quantity that the market will 
 
118 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 absorb and, not its value, but the credit system among buyers and 
 sellers will be proportionately affected. 
 
 But a metallic money and its representative, convertible circula 
 ting paper money, together are not the only mediums of payment in 
 use. There are other agencies working in their stead, and toward 
 their exclusion from this office and service, which greatly affects 
 their supply, and their sufficiency relatively to the requirement or 
 " demand" in the business of exchange. This is money of account 
 in ledgers, checks, drafts, bills of exchange, negotiable notes of hand, 
 or, in whatever form private and bank debts and claims are evi 
 denced. These, to a great extent are settled without the use of any 
 thing that is called money or circulation. Clearing houses strictly 
 so called, in the principal cities, and banks of discount and deposit 
 everywhere, perform this office they settle debts and claims by the 
 process that in law is called set-off. During a year ending in Octo 
 ber, 1869, the banks of New York settled mutual claims of debtor 
 and creditor, occurring among themselves, which amounted to one 
 hundred and twenty-five millions dollars per day ; the balances paid 
 on these transactions averaging about four per cent, seldom rising 
 to five per cent of the whole amount of the claims so adjusted by 
 set-off. In other words, they paid to each other about one hundred 
 and twenty millions every day without using a dollar of money of 
 any kind, other than this money of account expressed in drafts, 
 checks, and bills. 
 
 Country banks do exactly the same thing for their customers 
 which the banks of the cities do for each other they balance debts 
 against each other by charges and credits on their books, and to the 
 extent of such balances, no money of coin or bank notes, whatever, 
 is paid by or to any body. Wherever business is well organized 
 all credits may be liquidated without the use of more money than 
 the profits of business which may vary from five to ten or fifteen 
 per cent, and for the amount of such profits only can any one need 
 money of any kind where any form of the clearing house agency is 
 employed. Accordingly currency is in greater demand, relatively 
 to the business done, where no such set-off system is available, and, 
 where it is employed money is proportionately eliminated. 
 
 By virtue of this agency of the clearing house in England, the 
 necessity for money of any kind is diminishing relatively to the 
 amount of business transacted. For example and proof: the ex- 
 
MONEY AS AN EXCHANGER OF VALUES. 119 
 
 ports of British and Irish products, in the year 1840, were valued 
 at fifty-one and a half millions of pounds; the note circulation of the 
 United Kingdom in that year was thirty-six and a half millions of 
 pounds. In 1865, the like exports amounted to one hundred and 
 sixty-six millions, and the note circulation stood at thirty-seven and 
 a half millions. Taking the exports of 1865 to indicate the general 
 increase of business, and the necessarily equal increase of some or 
 all the methods of payment, we find this result : the business of 
 the Kingdom increased in these fifteen years two hundred and 
 twenty-four percent; the circulation only two and three-quarters 
 per cent. Evidently the service of money in exchanging values, is 
 totally misunderstood when its quantity is supposed to be the equiva 
 lent of the values exchanged. People confuse themselves with the 
 fact that the same piece of money may be used in a dozen, a hun 
 dred, or a thousand payments in the year. But here the same, or 
 within a fraction of the same amount of money served the business 
 of producing and purchasing more than three times the quantity of 
 goods after a lapse of twenty-five years. Did it circulate more than 
 three times faster ? The goods bought and sold with money, change 
 ownership, or circulate just as often and as fast. A dollar s worth 
 of goods passes with every dollar paid for them, and one dollar can 
 not do the exchange work of three in cash sales. But we will 
 understand the subject more clearly, when we shall have ascertained 
 and considered those other functions of money which are not seen 
 in its simple office of exchanger of commodities in market. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MONEY A PRODUCER WHILE ACTING AS AN EXCHANGER 
 OF VALUES. 
 
 Money a producer, while acting as an exchanger of values : How money stimu 
 lates production. It is not dead capital. Money in civilized labor the 
 primum mobile of industry. Production proportioned to capital employed. 
 Productiveness not in arithmetical, but in geometrical proportion to the money 
 impulse. Error, vulgar and scientific, of the equivalence of value of circulating 
 money to the things exchanged in commerce. Hume. Mill. Money the 
 pendulum of prices, Mill s formula, contradicted by obvious facts. Not one 
 dollar of money in any country to sixteen or twenty in value of commercial 
 exchanges. Increase of circulation does not pro tanto increase prices. In 
 nothing else do gluts and deficiencies affect prices in simple arithmetical pro 
 portions. Prices of wheat in excess and deficiency of supply. Ratio of money 
 to prices in sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, by Arthur Young. 
 In the nineteenth century prices have fallen as money increased in quantity 
 in England, sixty per cent in thirty years in New Y^ork, in a range of from 
 forty-four to twelve per cent in five years, under an increase of the currency of 
 twenty-two per cent. Land and Labor have risen by increase of their intrinsic 
 worth. Prices of manufactures fall food remains stationary, because the vital 
 laws are less understood than the mechanical. Land and Labor rise, and their 
 products fall in price. What is meant by land what by labor. Without capi 
 tal, land, labor, and people worthless. Sparseness and poverty of savage popu 
 lations. Causes of Indian extinction. Without property in the land, no labor; 
 without labor, land worthless. Nature subdued through her own agencies, 
 man and land enriched. Renovation of the earth conditioned upon obedience 
 to the Creator s laws. Money embodies all forms of capital, and is efficient in 
 proportion to its amount and movement. It employs wasting labor, and raises 
 prices of commodities and wages to par, but never higher. Afterwards reduces 
 prices by increased production. Par value of money defined. The assump 
 tions of Mill s theory are impossibilities. Money of account its equivalence 
 to values exchanged precise, because it is itself their ideal measure. Results of 
 the argument. The supply of money and labor always hitherto short of the 
 service required from them. All increas^of both beneficial, except in its effects 
 upon creditors. These effects, nevertheless, not inequitable. Debt-holders 
 have no right to a perpetual release from the labor of self-support. Effect of 
 lessened cost of their production upon the precious metals. Their use till they 
 have performed their uses. How they widen their sphere of use till their service 
 is fulfilled. 
 120 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 121 
 
 Ix every Kingdom into which money begins to flow in greater 
 abundance than formerly," says David Hume, " everything takes a 
 new face; labor and industry gain life; the merchant becomes 
 more enterprising, the manufacturer more diligent and skillful, 
 and the farmer follows the plough with more alacrity and attention." 
 This statement is true, and the reasons for it are especially worthy 
 of attention. We must understand why money is such a stimulant 
 of industrial production and of activity in trade. Labor is capital, 
 unless the cause is lost in the effect. Labor power is the result of 
 the consumption of other capital in the form of food ; clothing, and 
 other means of support and development. But labor power, like 
 that generated in steam, perishes instantly upon coming into exist 
 ence. If not instantly employed it is lost. Money is in the same 
 predicament. Its productiveness is in its activity it must yield 
 interest or profit, and it must be made to yield profit in order to pay 
 interest. "Time is money" to money itself, as it is to labor. It 
 solicits employment, and prompts, while it aids, industry. It is a 
 motor power to labor of all kinds; heads and hands, men and 
 things are put to use, that otherwise must remain idle, and while 
 idle, useless and wasting, though life and its necessities go on with 
 their demands through poverty to destitution. 
 
 The conditions of human life are such that its indispensable sup 
 plies, comforts, and luxuries must be drawn by perpetual new crea 
 tions from the elements of the earth. Labor, in its largest sense, 
 is the cost of these supplies. Among civilized men in advancing 
 conditions these necessities are ever increasing in extent and variety. 
 Civilization is progress, and progress means growing control of 
 material things, and this, again, means a growing demand for them. 
 Money stimulates, promotes, and assists the production that meets 
 the enlarging wants, and is far from being passive in its use a 
 sign, a counter, or a mere measure of the values of other things. 
 
 Capital in the form of money, or credit representing money, is 
 the yoke-fellow, the cobperator of labor in all production in ad 
 vancing stages and conditions of society. Men cannot work with 
 out implements ; they cannot work profitably or availably without 
 all sorts of machinery; and they cannot work at all without current 
 subsistence. They cannot wait a day for the conversion of their 
 special products into the clothes they must wear, and the food they 
 must eat. And above all, they cannot wait, without loss and suf- 
 9 
 
122 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 fering, for the labor by which they live. Capital is thus the prime 
 condition with labor, just as labor is the first consideration with 
 capital. Married they are, for better or worse, in mutual and equal 
 dependence ; and on that marriage depends their issue for its exist 
 ence, quantity, and quality. A certain amount of coin or credit 
 money is indispensable to adequate production. It may, indeed, 
 be called the primum mobile the first cause of motion in all 
 civilized industries ; for here, as in the Ptolemaic system of the 
 planetary circulation, it is the outermost revolving sphere which 
 gives motion to all the rest. 
 
 Money (coin and credit) is the power which puts all the wheels 
 of the great machine of business into motion, and, accordingly, 
 their velocity and force correspond to the force of the propelling 
 current, or to the force of the currency. Hume states the effect of 
 an abundance in general terms sufficiently descriptive j but it 
 should be understood that the measure of increased activity in 
 business is not an arithmetical ratio, or a dollar s worth of in 
 creased effect for every dollar added to the sum of the force. The 
 proportion of increase in the motor power is not a dead numeral 
 multiplier. It is an impulse generating force by its own action, 
 and producing a movement best described as accelerated ve 
 locity. To this character or quality of its law of increase cor 
 responds the action of its deficiency, which, with constantly and 
 rapidly growing effect at every stage, tends to fall below the power 
 of moving the machinery at all ; the stand-still being anticipated 
 long before the supply is totally expended. Nothing is so sensitive 
 to prospective changes as money capital. The apprehension of 
 diminished exchange value puts it to unwonted activity of produc 
 tive effort. It quickens its movement just as its use cheapens, 
 until at last it goes begging for work. On the other hand, under 
 the prospect of a rise in its exchange value, it tightens its out 
 goings ; its interest rises; debtors, to escape bankruptcy, and non- 
 capitalists, who cannot afford to be idle, must have it at whatever 
 sacrifice they can bear; and accordingly its rate of hire, and its 
 purchasing power, rise relatively to all other capital, including 
 labor, in far more than the arithmetical ratio of its own scarcity. 
 
 This is all so plain that no argument is required to establish its 
 abstract truth ; but we want the force of this truth for most im 
 portant and greatly-needed uses in considering the functions and 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 123 
 
 influence of money at large. Just here we have to meet a preva 
 lent error of the unskilled, backed by the authority of a school of 
 economists, who hold the popular ear by the easy terms of furnish 
 ing logical formula) for the verification of acceptable notions. 
 
 Money is a mystery enough so in itself, but all the more that the 
 mystery is muddied with a parcel of aphorisms which are allowed 
 to obstruct the light that might clear up some of the fundamental 
 principles of its true theory. 
 
 For instance, it is currently held that the amount of money in 
 circulation represents the value of all property in exchange ; that, 
 no matter whether the quantity be great or small, it is equally, and 
 in all cases, the measure of prices. Hume made this mischievous 
 blunder seventy years ago, and J. Stuart Mill repeats it in the last 
 edition of his " Political Economy." He says, " the doubling of the 
 money in use would do no good to any one ; would make no differ 
 ence except having to reckon pounds, shillings and pence in greater 
 numbers. It would be an increase of values only as estimated in 
 money, a thing only wanted to buy other things with; and would 
 not enable any one to buy more of them than before." And he goes 
 on to say, " this ratio would be precisely that in which the quantity 
 of money had been increased. If the whole money in circulation 
 was doubled, prices would be doubled. If it was only increased one- 
 fourth, prices would rise one-fourth." 
 
 How like clock-work this thing is calculated ; and with what con 
 fidence the notion is delivered! Thus, if the pendulum beats two 
 strokes for one in the second, the hands will traverse the dial-plate 
 twice as often in twelve hours as they do, but they would measure 
 only the same length of time. But, is money the pendulum of 
 prices, and are its scarcity and its abundance measured by arith 
 metical multipliers and divisors on the price-current dial-plate of 
 the market ? Or, is the .whole thing an assumption a bundle of 
 assumptions, having nothing to recommend it but the arithmetical 
 symmetry of its dogmatic statement? 
 
 lu the first place, the money of no country in the world is either 
 equal, or bears any constant proportion to the total values in that 
 country s markets. The gold, silver, and bank paper of the United 
 States never, before the great Rebellion, reached beyond four hun 
 dred millions of dollars. Nay, if the inactive specie be subtracted, 
 three hundred millions was the extreme limit of the money in use. 
 
124 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 But, the annual products of industry were at least worth four thou 
 sand millions, of which if but three-fourths were bought and sold, 
 and another thousand millions worth of real estate went into 
 market, and still another thousand millions were paid for all pro 
 fessional, educational, and artistic services, we have five thousand 
 millions to be paid and received, by means of three hundred millions, 
 Qt by one dollar of money for every sixteen and two-thirds of values 
 only once exchanged! 
 
 Now ; if one to sixteen expressed the proportion in 1860, at some 
 givn day in that year, would an addition of a hundred millions of 
 currency, made the next day, being one-third of the sum existing 
 the day before, put up all prices thirty-three and one-third per cent? 
 or, would it certainly enhance by so much the price of any com 
 modity whatever, by its own proper operation, that is, by the effect 
 of such addition ? 
 
 The radical error of this doctrine is in the assumed fixed equiva 
 lence of the money in circulation to the commodities in exchange, 
 and it becomes ail the more strikingly palpable as it is applied to 
 varying quantities. There is no such ratio of effect in the excess or 
 deficiency of any other thing, as is here assumed by the alleged 
 principle, and expressed in the detailed statement. Grluts do not 
 proceed in cheapening, nor deficiencies in enhancing, market values 
 in arithmetical proportions. Ten per cent deficiency in wheat will 
 enhance its price thirty per cent; the supply being reduced to one- 
 half, the price will go up to a four hundred and fifty per cent in 
 crease. Mr. Mill is himself aware of this fact, and formally states 
 and affirms it elsewhere. The like variance of price with difference 
 of supply happens when the market is overstocked the decline in 
 price of that which is anxiously seeking purchasers, is not measured 
 evenly by the percentage of surplus. 
 
 Tfye proposition which affirms a constant equivalence of money 
 with the market values of other things, is answered in its own terms, 
 thus : Arthur Young estimates the increase of money in the six 
 teenth, over the amount in the fifteenth century, at two hundred and 
 eighty-two per cent, and of general prices in the same time at forty- 
 two per cent; in the seventeenth century at seven hundred and 
 seventy-five per cent of money, and ninety-six per cent of prices; 
 and in the eighteenth over the fifteenth century at one thousand 
 and nineteen per cent of money to one hundred and ninety-two 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 125 
 
 per cent of prices. Here we have money increased fa ster than prices 
 rose six and three-quarters times in the sixteenth, eight times in the 
 seventeenth, and five and one-third in the eighteenth century. 
 
 Since the epoch of modern improvement in industrial production 
 we find that prices fall, and fall immensely in the face of a vast in 
 crease of the money supply, just as on our theory they should fall in 
 inverse proportion to the force of the great agent affecting them. 
 Take, for example, the thirty years between 1817 and 1848 : in 
 this time England retained for use an average of ten millions of 
 dollars per annum of the precious metals which she imported ; in the 
 whole period, adding three hundred millions to her stock. Did 
 prices go up in proportion? Were her traders put to counting 
 pounds, shillings, and pence in greater numbers for the same quantity 
 of goods ? On the contrary, the prices of all the multiform products 
 that enter into the British exports fell sixty per cent, fell from a 
 dollar to two-fifths of the dollar ! In the presence of this three hun 
 dred millions of increase in the precious metals, the exports, which 
 at the prices of 1817 would have cost three thousand two hundred 
 millions, were valued at only one thousand two hundred and eighty 
 millions in 1848. 
 
 The notion tried again at a later period and nearer home in the 
 United States : the bank notes in circulation and the bank deposits, 
 which also perform the functions of credit money, together amounted 
 to three hundred and seventy-seven millions of dollars in the year 
 1855, and in 1860 they had risen to four hundred and sixty millions 
 twenty-two per cent. Were market prices twenty-two per cent 
 higher on this account ? As before stated, thirty of the sixty prin 
 cipal articles on the price-lists of New York had in those five years 
 actually fallen some forty-four per cent, others twelve per cent, and 
 others more or less between these rates. Ou the other articles, the 
 changes were too slight to have any bearing upon the point at issue, 
 and they were, besides, generally such articles of foreign supply as 
 would be affected by many other causes. 
 
 The history of prices in England of manufactured goods such as 
 she exports, under the influence of a doubled quantity of gold and 
 silver in the country ought of itself to be conclusive. 
 
 With respect to labor, it is admitted that its wages rise as money 
 increases; not, however, because more pieces of an aggregate equal 
 
 trol 1/1 n c-t \ a. nr\ftr\(\f\ no tV> n or 111 Iff- 1 n f r\F mr\v\r 
 
126 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 but because tlfe money added to the employing capital increases the 
 productiveness, and with it the, rewards of the laborer. In the like 
 circumstances, land also appreciates, but not more than the real in 
 crease of its productiveness made by the industry of the period 
 by improvement in cultivation and convenience of market; both 
 being effected by the employment of increased capital and labor. 
 The general statement is, that, under an influx of money, the prices 
 of all the commodities commonly called manufactures fall rapidly 
 and greatly. Food remains nearly stationary, with a natural tendency 
 to fall in price, but is subject to a slower and less certain reduction, 
 for the reason that its production depends upon the laws of vegetable 
 physiology in which but little advance of knowledge is yet made ; 
 while those laws which are concerned in the arts of conversion, 
 generally having dead matter for their subjects, are more and more 
 mastered day by day; leaving land and wages as the only things 
 that naturally enhance in value under the stimulus of capital applied 
 in their employment and development. 
 
 Have we fallen upon a paradox "here ? Meaning, by a paradox, a 
 proposition seemingly absurd or self-contradictory, but true in fact. 
 Probably. And this apprehension warrants an attempt at a fuller 
 exposition of the principles and facts intolved. We take the ground 
 that land and labor, and only land and labor, can and must enhance 
 in value under the appliances of capital in their employment, and, 
 that their products, in forms of use, must as continually decline in 
 value. Baldly stated : land increasing in value lowers the cost of 
 its products; wages growing in cost, their products decline in price; 
 always supposing that both the one and the other are intrinsically 
 improved by the aid of capital. By land, we mean all primitive sub 
 stances belonging to the material globe timber, water, soil, minerals, 
 and the like, with all their spontaneous products; by labor, the 
 muscular power of man, the intelligence which directs it, and the 
 moral qualities which contribute to its efficiency. 
 
 Now let us see how the argument runs : 
 
 The gold of the Rocky Mountains was as useless as their iron 
 ores or their fossil coal, or the latent electricity of the earth and air 
 to the savage Indians; and the Indians were as worthless to the 
 world and to themselves, just because their land was as nearly good 
 for nothing as they were. Land and labor are bound together for 
 good or ill. The soil, indeed, gave them a little maize, the waters 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 127 
 
 a few fishes, and the forests fire-wood, wild fruits, and game ; but the 
 brute elements and spontaneous food starvingly maintained a declin 
 ing human stock, tending constantly to extinction. The richer 
 soils of the Mississippi valley and of the Atlantic slope did scarcely 
 better for them. In all that region which now supports eight mil 
 lions of people, reaching from Connecticut to Lake Erie, and from 
 the chain of the Lakes to the Potomac river, Colonel Parker, the 
 best authority we have on the subject, says, there were not more 
 than twenty-five thousand Indians when Columbus discovered the 
 Continent. The maize culture was deficient the wild herds failed 
 them; they had no commerce, either in furs or manufactures; and 
 famines, diseases, and the wars of hungry rapacity were rapidly 
 destroying them. Earth and man worthless to each other; poverty, 
 sterility, despair and death, described them both. Making no ac 
 cumulations of the means of subsistence, they had no capital. 
 Having no capital, they had not the indispensable agent for the sub 
 jugation of nature s forces to their service. 
 
 In this state of things there was nothing in land worth claiming 
 in individual ownership, except for temporary occupation, and the 
 fee simple of the territories was not worth more to the tribes collect 
 ively than the powder, blankets, and glass beads for which they 
 sold it; nor was the whisky, which acted so largely in the extinc 
 tion of their title, much more insalubrious than the untamed forces 
 of nature to which they were exposed. 
 
 But change the scene the coal becomes fuel, the fuel becomes 
 power. A ton of it does the work of fifteen hundred men for one 
 day; three hundred tons are equal to their work for a year. The 
 capable soil, the power of the running streams, the mines, with all 
 else which the earth holds for human use are all utilized, and the 
 desert becomes the property and the home of millions of men. The 
 thorns and thistles of the primal curse are displaced, and the soil, 
 baptized in the sweat of the face of labor, brings forth bread in 
 abundance, and, behold, it is once more " very good," even as when 
 the approving smile fell upon the first garden. The recreated in 
 its degree, approaches the new created earth. The original con 
 ditions of human sovereignty are observed ; the command is ful 
 filled " Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and 
 subdue it." How striking the mutuality subsisting between laud 
 and labor, with this appropriate advantage that the human agent is 
 
128 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 much more improved than the material things joined with, and sub 
 ject to his advancement. The earth has physical and vital proper 
 ties for his service; man has these and moral, intellectual, and 
 religious endowments, besides, to spread a world-wfde distance be 
 tween his savage state and his highest possible earthly development. 
 All that there is great and happy in his destiny is conditioned 
 strictly upon the application of his powers to the capabilities of 
 nature, and is achieved in proportion to the agencies employed. 
 These agencies are all comprehended in the signification of the word 
 capital. Money represents them all, and its efficiency is in the 
 measure of its amount and activity. 
 
 Is there a man in the nation idle idle for want of capital to 
 employ him ? Are there a million of men and women thus unoc 
 cupied ? Is half the available time of all, in the average, thus 
 wasted ? Why ? Do they answer as they stand in the labor 
 market, "Xo man hath hired us?" Then double the capital; put 
 them all to work ; and will a dollar of the required increase of 
 capital then be acting only in reduction of exchange values? 
 No; under the quickening touch of invigorated industry, rendering 
 the whole people able to obtain and consume the added products, 
 instead of starving and economizing, prices will not rise further 
 than to restore from depression the natural values of labor and 
 commodities. The first effect will be that the minerals, which 
 before lay idle, will come into market; the commodities, that gorged 
 the markets before, will find purchasers, and all prices will rise 
 to the level of general prosperity, until cheapened processes of pro 
 duction and conversion shall reduce them, but without abating the 
 remuneration of either capital or labor, now made capable of larger 
 results by the employment of the same forces through better means 
 and instruments. 
 
 Money coming into larger and more active service, and setting 
 idle hands and minds to work, by finding employment for all, will 
 give wages to the unemployed, and raise the wages of those who 
 have been underbidding each other for work, and so, will raise the 
 labor cost of industrial products and their raw materials to living 
 prices to par. In its scarcity money was at a premium and man 
 and property at a proportionate discount. An adequate supply 
 gives a resumption of values. Money has not depreciated, but 
 returned to its normal value, by regaining its proper producing 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 129 
 
 operation ; its par value being determined by its ability to put all 
 hands to work and fairly reward them for it. 
 
 If metallic money were nothing else than a medium of exchange, 
 and at the same time the only medium of exchange, or, in the 
 language of Mr. Mill, "a thing only wanted to buy other things 
 with," and if, as he holds, it had such elasticity of exchange value 
 as to be always equal to all varieties of quantity of other things, it 
 must, of necessity, rise and fall in value in the ratio of its supply 
 relatively to the property exchanged by it; and the same thing 
 would be true of its convertible representatives. Its scarcity and 
 its abundance would then work like an elastic measure, and be 
 always equal to all quantities of things exchanged by it. These 
 ifs, however, cover just as many absurdities and sheer impossi 
 bilities. 
 
 Even confined to its office as an exchanger of values, it is not 
 the only medium in use ; and so far as it does serve in this oifice, it 
 also acts at the same time as a producer of the values to be ex 
 changed, thereby furnishing the increase of subjects upon which 
 it is to operate as an exchanger in the market, and thus maintaining 
 its own equiponderance. 
 
 There is one sort of money the money of account that, ex 
 pressed in the ledgers of traders, which has an exact equivalence 
 to the total value of the commodities which they deal in. Such 
 equivalence it has because it is an ideal money only, and 
 not in itself a valuable thing or substance. When such ac 
 counts are settled by set-off, the exchanges are effected by simple 
 indirect barter, in which circulating money has no place, and the 
 nominal values are wholly indifferent to the question in hand. But 
 money having the value of its labor cost in itself, or in the thing 
 which it represents, is subject to the general law of value, which is 
 the cost of reproduction, and has no other equivalence than its 
 comparative labor cost; in other words, it is no more, nor other 
 wise, the equivalent of marketed goods and things than wheat or 
 iron is. 
 
 It results from the examination of the whole subject that only 
 ideal money, such as the money of account, employed in indirect 
 barter by set-off, is the sliding-scale equivalent in exchanges ; and 
 that all other money, having in itself intrinsically or representa 
 tively, a value of its own, and having, besides, the functions of 
 
130 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 capital in production, is not a simple exchanger, even when acting 
 in this one of its offices, and for these reasons, is subject to varying 
 price in exchange only as all other commodities are. 
 
 Thus far we have been considering money as it is and has been. 
 A history marked by this conspicuous fact there never yet has 
 been enough of it. Let this fact have its due force. Its assigned 
 office is to put the whole world of men to work upon the whole world 
 of matter. This it has by virtue of its universal acceptance as the 
 representative of all accumulations of wealth, which accumulations 
 are the instruments and agents of all civilized industry. In the 
 hitherto, and present state of human industry, neither labor nor 
 capital have even tolerably approached the full performance of their 
 duties each defective, in lack of the aid of the other. Insufficiency 
 and inefficiency of labor argues insufficiency and inefficiency of 
 money. Therefore, no casual, or fluctuating, or steady increase in the 
 whole of the medium ever could hitherto have had the character or 
 force of an excess, or overplus supply. 
 
 The growing quantity has never done anything but good, tending 
 always towards better and better service to the world. An excep 
 tion the only one might be taken to its effects upon the contract 
 value of debts, to which it is a sufficient answer, that in this, like 
 all other valuable things, the precious metals follow the law of labor 
 value. The original creditor gave something services or goods, or 
 lands, in exchange for the obligation. If he had kept these proper 
 ties till the maturity of the debt, they would have been worth no 
 more than the like things produced at the time, and he must take 
 just the quantity of gold or silver that he bargained for, though at 
 the end of the term it is produced at half, or any less, labor cost, 
 and will command only the same or some other proportion of prop 
 erty and service. Moreover, it is well that the burden of old 
 debts annuities and national debts lose much of their burden in 
 the progress of Imman affairs. If it were not so, the coming gener 
 ations would be wofully oppressed by the debts of the present and 
 past. The interest of some of these debts has already supported 
 several successive lives, and no harm will be done in equity if their 
 successors shall have to do something for their own support. All 
 things else "perish with the using;" why should debts remain in 
 tact perpetually? 
 
 But the supply of the precious metals has always heretofore been 
 
MONEY AS A PRODUCER OF VALUES. 131 
 
 below the requirement, because of the difficulty of their production, 
 or, what is the same thing, their scarcity ; and this has been the 
 cause of their high value in exchange, as it must necessarily be. If 
 ever they shall become as plenty as iron, will they not be as cheap, 
 and thereby be depreciated in value till they exchange by the ton 
 instead of by the ounce troy, as now ? We answer, that their labor 
 cost will always be their standard of exchange value, and when they 
 lose their convenience as a medium of payment, they will cease to be 
 so used, and then there will be no question of the effect of their 
 abundance upon the value of other things. 
 
 But they will never be produced in excess of the demand for 
 such uses as they can serve; for beyond the point of paying, as well 
 as other things, for the labor employed in their production, it must 
 cease ; and in the mean time, while advancing toward such point, 
 they will be more and more dispensed with, by the growing use of 
 those other kinds of money, which are already carrying the world 
 of business towards the type form of exchange, simple barter, by 
 the intervention of credit money, which is so much better, cheaper, 
 and more convenient than gold and silver. Except in international 
 dealings, and the small change of daily expenses, these are now but 
 little used, and are destined to a continual process of elimination, as 
 business is better and better organized. 
 
 Until metallic money and its convertible representatives shall 
 have reached the point of increasing by their active agency the 
 production of commodities to their utmost amount and utility, they 
 cannot decline in permanent value, so as to require the counting of 
 more pieces in payment for the same thing in market, for they are 
 found to cheapen such products much more rapidly than their own 
 value declines by added quantity. They of course will not be 
 multiplied in the payment of debts; for the debt-dollar stands 
 unchanged through all changes in other things ; and nothing 
 remains to take the effect threatened by the theorists of equiva 
 lence, but land and labor. These, indeed, will require larger amounts 
 as they improve ; not because money is cheapened, however, but 
 because they have become worth more of it than they were while 
 it was scarce, or comparatively scarce, and was therefore less effi 
 cient for their advancement to a higher real value. 
 
 The necessary action of its growing quantity is the opening of 
 new industries, and improvement of the old. While there remains 
 
132 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 a useful substance in the earth, or sea, or air, not utilized to its 
 highest worth while an improved apparatus of production is still 
 wanting while a brain requiring the means of sustenance, and the 
 command of opportunity, and of implements, has yet a latent 
 thought capable of human service capital in the form of money 
 will have ample scope and verge enough to spread without weaken 
 ing its value. It will go on constantly cheapening the ultimate 
 products, but its own accretions will all be demanded in calling into- 
 existence additional values, greater quantities, and better qualities; 
 and this work will absorb it all without a depreciating remainder 
 of supply. 
 
 What remains to be said on this subject will be considered in 
 the chapter upon banks of discount, deposit, and issue. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAPER MONEY; AND, INCIDENTALLY, OF BANKS OF DEPOSIT, 
 DISCOUNT, AND ISSUE. 
 
 Bank paper, not banks, the subject: Banking, an instance of cooperation. 
 Money an exchanger and producer of values. Exclusive metallic money and 
 barter. Hoarding. Depositing at interest in early times. English bankers 
 of the seventeenth century. Negotiable certificates of deposit, their service. 
 Convenience of metallic money increased in its substitute*. Basis required 
 for representative money. Limited analogy of the circulating medium to the 
 circulation of the blood. Figures of speech need watching. Plethora of 
 money, a mischievous phrase. No measurable ratio between quantity and 
 rapidity of money circulation and their effects upon business. Exchange value 
 of money, the cost of its production, or of the things it represents, not 
 affected by its quantity. How deposit bankers affect the money supply aud its 
 service. Bank of Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. Banks of Genoa 
 and Venice in the twelfth century. Difference of effects between the transfer of 
 money and of the property in it. Representatives of money begin in deposits, 
 and depend upon them; credit system arises. Miracle power of faith in com 
 merce. Multiplying power of credit. Faith-force over and above fact-force. 
 Brotherhood in business affairs corresponds to brotherhood in spiritual things. 
 Deposit banks, sources of profit and creators of credit. Instances in illustra 
 tion. Concentration of capital brings credit with it. Elements of the banking 
 business. General Benefits. Credit makes capital of character. Abuses of 
 the credit system. Evil is inverted good. Civilization and liberty rest upon 
 credit. Bank notes, their convenience greater than that of checks and drafts. 
 Special adaptation to ordinary uses. The money of the common people. The 
 bank note as a traveler. Circulating notes issued by the United States Govern 
 ment their amount in 1864 aud 1871. Irredeemable currency six hundred 
 and ninety millions in 1870, against two hundred and fourteen millions in 
 1857. Extent of depreciation. The wrk done by this currency. Prosperity 
 under its use. Paper money the resort of nations in theiikdays of trial. More 
 loyal and cheaper in its service than funded debts. Service of deposit banks. 
 Exemption from runs. Safe proportion of loans and circulation to amount of 
 capital aud deposits. Profits upon bank capital. Average of twenty-eight 
 city banks. Banks enhance the service of money three and a half times. 
 Development of the banking system in serial order. Benefit, risks, and neces 
 sity of banks. Credit system indispensable to be amended, but not re 
 stricted. English system unimproved in the last two centuries. Balance of 
 good and evil in favor of banks. Distribution of banks. In Scotland- 
 
 133 
 
134 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 average area of her bank districts in the United States. Excellence of the 
 Scottish system its popularity. Popularity of the greenback currency. 
 Governments cannot administer a general banking system. United States 
 National Banking system requires amendment. Banking should be as free as 
 any other business. Convertibility, exclusively aimed at, hinders reform. 
 Failure of Bank of England charter. Safety, not convertibility, the essence of 
 the bank note. Inconvertible paper better tha# a deficient sound currency. 
 Loss by discount as nothiug to an arrest of industry. The mystery of money, 
 no mystery to currency cobblers. 
 
 IT must be understood that we have no room here, and no use 
 for an exhaustive treatise upon banks and banking. "We are occu 
 pied with money and its functions ; and banking systems are but 
 little more concerned in our investigations concerning bank paper 
 money, than gold and silver mines, their geology and practical 
 history, are involved in discussing their products, which are em 
 ployed as a medium of exchange. 
 
 The pivot point of our inquiry is the service of coins and cir 
 culating notes in the world s business. This must be kept steadily 
 in view in order to avoid distraction and confusion of thought; 
 just as it is necessary to keep the eye fixed upon some stationary 
 point, lest the head grow giddy, when all around is reeling in 
 counter currents of shore and stream, as one crosses a rapid river. 
 The policy of banking systems as one of the cooperation move 
 ments by which associations of capitalists combine and enhance 
 their force in commerce is, however, so immediately in our track of 
 thought, and so pertinent to the general issue of our work, that 
 even here some of the plainer and more important features of the 
 subject will be in place, though the treatment be an anticipation 
 of the orderly consideration of the associative movements, growing 
 more and more conspicuous and efficient with all progress in 
 civilization. 
 
 Asking the reader to carry with him all the while, the steadying 
 idea that money is at once the agent in universal use for effecting 
 exchanges of services and of commodities, by which the results of all 
 labor are distributed among men in fitting quantity and kind, ac 
 cording to their several necessities, and at the same time, that it acts 
 as exchanger, is also the agent of capital of every kind in its office 
 of producer of all commodities in civilized life we may proceed to 
 consider the means by which it is supplied for use, and by which its 
 circulation is promoted. 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 135 
 
 Assuming a state of society in which coins of the precious metals 
 alone are in use, as representatives of exchange values, and at the 
 same time, assuming that they are employed only as other commodi 
 ties are, iu simple barter, such coins passing at every purchase and 
 payment in business transactions, it will be immediately perceived 
 that we are involved in a condition of barbarism of a low stage 
 barbarism bordering upon savagism so closely as scarcely to be dis 
 tinguished from it. In such a condition of things money must be 
 idle in the hands of the owners during all the intervals between 
 sales and purchases. It is for such periods hoarded and useless, and 
 so would indeed be, what Adam Smith calls, dead-stock, or rather 
 stock in a state of suspended animation. But the holders naturally 
 desire to have it at once active in their service and safely at their 
 command, and for this purpose, a depository must be found in which 
 it will yield some profit to the depositor, either directly, in the 
 shape of interest, or indirectly, in the common benefit of the whole 
 community. Accordingly we find a bank in which money could be 
 deposited, so that the owner after an interval might require " his 
 own with usury" mentioned as a well known "existing institution as 
 early as the beginning of the Christian era, (Luke xix., 23). In 
 deed, scarcely the earliest organization of commerce and industry 
 can be conceived of as possible, without a money exchange or 
 market, corresponding and proportioned to the coexisting com 
 modity-exchange or market, which business of any sort implies and 
 necessitates. The earlier communities had not the institutions 
 which ice call banks; but they had, as they must needs have had, in 
 their place individual bankers, answering in a degree the same re 
 quirements. According to Mr. Macaulay, so lately as the date of the 
 restoration (A.D. 1661), the goldsmiths of London kept the cash of 
 the commercial houses, paid their drafts, and loaned balances in 
 hand, paying themselves for trouble and risk out of the interest of 
 such surplus as experience showed might be loaned consistently with 
 the solvency of the bankers. 
 
 The goldsmith s note or certificate of deposit, says Macaulay, 
 might be transferred ten times in a morning, and thus a hundred 
 guineas, locked in his safe, did what would formerly have required 
 a thousand guineas, dispersed through many tills. Adam Smith 
 makes a similar estimate and statement of the advantage derived 
 from the note of the deposit banker, as he states it, the substitution 
 
136 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 of paper is an operation by which 20,000 in gold and silver, perform 
 all the service which 100,000 could otherwise have performed. It 
 concerns us, however, to observe that the operation of representative 
 paper does not actually increase the fund on which it is based just 
 as many times as the paper is passed from hand to hand. The whole 
 effect is no other than the substitution of a cheap and convenient 
 medium for an expensive and comparatively very inconvenient one, 
 with the great but not easily computed benefit of the increased 
 rapidity of transfer, and the service rendered to so many more re 
 ceivers in the same time. The fund itself is not affected by the rate 
 of its circulation. A thousand pounds in either coin or paper is not 
 a thing so changeable in value, so nominal, so unreal, that it can be 
 increased or diminished at will by any of the incidents of its use. If 
 it were so, then, indeed, any sum in coin might be made to answer in 
 the transfer of any amount of values. London or New York, by the 
 better organization of its circulating system, could make a million of 
 pounds or dollars answer the purposes of a thousand or ten thousand 
 millions. Nay, to push ^he proposition to the extreme, any sum, not 
 so small as to check the circulation of its certificates or representa 
 tive notes too much, would answer all the purposes of money the 
 whole fund of money in any community. The effect of rapidity of 
 circulation bears relation to the quantity of the thing circulated. A 
 hundred making ten revolutions, is not equal to a thousand making 
 ten or five or two, in the same time. 
 
 The idea of circulation, with its obvious allusion to the movement 
 of the blood in the animal frame, may easily be pushed farther than 
 the true analogy warrants. Blood, in the animal economy, is cir 
 culated as the conveyer of nutrient matter for the consumption of 
 the textures, and as a stimulant of their vital functions ; for which 
 purpose constancy and sufficiency of supply, that is, a certain rapidity 
 of movement is required, and for this a certain amount of propelling 
 force. In greatly increased force of propulsion and rapidity of 
 movement of the blood, mischiefs result, for which there is no proper 
 parallel in the circulation of money in the channels of business. 
 Momentum of the blood in the vascular circulation means, besides 
 quantity delivered in relation to time, force of impingement, and 
 pressure upon the vital organs. There are no such mechanical 
 effects attending the changes in the circulation of money, nor any 
 thing corresponding to mechanical plethora or force. The dollar in 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 137 
 
 great rapidity of currency does not strike its objects the harder, nor 
 gorge its receptacles the more, nor, as a result, morbidly exaggerate or 
 repress the activities of the things on which it operates, there is 
 no such disease as money apoplexy and for these reasons, the pro 
 cess called contraction of the currency is not indicated as a remedy 
 corresponding to venesection in febrile or inflammatory states of the 
 animal body. Money circulation cannot by excess over-stimulate 
 industry so as to mar its functions, nor can it arrest them as by an 
 apoplectic congestion. Figures of speech must be watched, or they 
 get themselves substituted in our reasonings for facts which do not 
 exist. It seems to us that both Smith and Macaulay, and many 
 another thinker upon the offices of money, have had their fancies 
 tricked by making their parables go on all-fours in illustrations of 
 very unlike modes of progression. 
 
 We cannot by simple addition or multiplication measure the effect 
 of any increase in the rapidity of a money circulation. Ten times 
 exchanged is not a ten-fold increase in the use of money, equivalent 
 to a ten-fold quantity once moved. The effect of such increase of 
 velocity is indeed immense, but under conditions which render it 
 incalculable by any arithmetical process. It saves time and labor, 
 but it does infinitely more by employing time usefully that must 
 otherwise be wasted. It saves money by making money for money ; 
 it saves labor by employing it more productively and profitably, and 
 all this in various degrees, from the least up to immeasurable 
 amounts, and to effects still more inestimable in their influence upon 
 the social life of men. Our objection is to the multiplying, squar 
 ing or cubing results that are absolutely incommensurable, because 
 of the reflex error that is made to fall upon the management of 
 the factors of the problem. "VVe must take care not to say that 
 a thousand dollars circulated ten times, is just equal in its commer 
 cial or industrial stimulus to ten thousand dollars once moved ; for, 
 by the same rule we can imagine the impulsive power of any sum 
 made equal to any other sum for all purposes in proportioned mul 
 tiples of exchanges, and thus confuse our notion of its proper in 
 herent force. There is an ideal money, or measure, with which logic 
 may deal at will, but there is also a substantial money which has an 
 intrinsic value, requiring us to treat it as we do any other com 
 modity in use. And we must, if we would think to any purpose, 
 keep in mind that the value of this money is the cost of its produc- 
 10 
 
138 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 tion, or reproduction at the time in which it is used in exchange, 
 and that wherever it goes, or however often transferred, it carries 
 with it just its own inherent or representative value; and that for 
 this reason, no particular sum of it can be thought of as equivalent 
 to any other sum or sums moving faster or slower. And, above all, 
 we must not ride to death the loose analogies commonly employed 
 in the discussion. 
 
 Now let us see what modification of use and operation a banker 
 or deposit bank produces upon the money of a community. In the 
 first place, the depositary gathers up the unemployed surpluses from 
 every point, as a river collects the thousand rills of its vicinity, and 
 gives them the flow and the force of accumulation. The affluents, 
 too feeble singly for effectiveness and direction in use, become a tide 
 of power, ready for every diversity of productive employment. The 
 difference is that between threads and the cable which they com 
 pose ; between the rills of the hill sides and the current that turns 
 the mills of the valley. 
 
 Money seeks profit and security. A bank or a banker offering a 
 moderate interest or only safe keeping and prompt delivery, invites 
 deposits by the confidence reposed in him, more than by the 
 amount of interest allowed; and such advantages to the owner draw 
 out the thousand little hoards into an aggregate that, well and wisely 
 distributed from a central position, gives life and power and the best 
 direction to the enterprise and waiting labor of the whole mass of 
 the community. Beside the service of adepts secured by the in 
 terposition of depositaries selected for their acquaintance with the 
 business of the country and its requirements, and with the enter 
 prise and abilities of customers, the bankers are generally such as 
 are themselves large contributors to the fund which they administer, 
 and so, are in all respects qualified for the great business of turning 
 the master wheel of the general business machinery. To secure all 
 the requisites, many corporators are, as a rule, preferable to a single 
 person in this function. From such combinations we have what in 
 modern times are called banks of deposit and discount incorporated 
 institutions put under the general control of their stockholders, who, 
 in other words, may be termed permanent depositors, taking profits 
 instead of interest, and standing as joint debtors to the outside de 
 positors upon interest, and joint creditors to those who borrow the 
 money and credit of the institution. 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 139 
 
 The Bank of Amsterdam, established in A. D. 1609, was the 
 earliest considerable institution of this kind which looked to the 
 promotion of commerce among the people; its predecessors of the 
 twelfth century, in Venice and Genoa, having been chiefly devoted 
 to the management of state finances. This bank was guaranteed by, 
 and was under the authority of, the city. It continued to serve the 
 public, and to promote the prosperity of the city for nearly two cen 
 turies. It failed in 1790. With the particular provisions of its govern 
 ment and principles of its management, we are not here concerned, 
 nor with the causes which specially led to its establishment, further 
 than that the abrasion of the coins previously in use, and the other 
 injuries to which they were exposed, put them as a currency at eight 
 or ten per cent discount. These things, with all the troubles and 
 vexations attending the exclusive use of coins in payment, drove the 
 business community into the necessity of contriving a plan by which 
 coins should serve as pledges for payment, while the certificates of 
 deposit were substituted in transferring the property in the corns, 
 without passing the coins themselves from hand to hand, after the 
 manner of barbarous commerce. 
 
 A simple depository for money not necessarily used in the smaller 
 affairs of business, or in transactions with strangers, or persons igno 
 rant of the security of the fund is in its narrowest sense a place of 
 safe keeping where the money is held ready to answer the demand 
 of the depositor. If the identical coins, bars, or notes, so deposited, 
 were to be returned, and must lie idle till called for, the whole 
 operation would be merely a matter of custody, and could produce 
 no other effect upon the money function than if the several sums 
 were kept under the private lock and key of the owners. Security 
 might be increased and some inconvenience avoided, and for these 
 advantages the depositor would be justly and necessarily chargeable 
 to the value of the service rendered to him ; but there follows of 
 course the right of transferring the property in the deposited money 
 from the owner to others at will, without any movement of the de 
 posited money itself. At this point the business of banking opens. 
 
 Banking, in all its kinds, rests upon this power of transferring 
 the right to the thing without touching the thing itself, and here 
 the representative certificate, or note, or draft, takes the place of 
 the substance; the substance is converted from use as an active 
 agent into a pledge; the certificate, or note, or draft, becomes a 
 
140 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 promise, serving instead of a payment, and serving just as well, 
 but with an ingredient in it unknown to business effected by 
 actual transfer of money in payment the ingredient of Credit, 
 which implies confidence and fidelity. This credit principle is the 
 faith that removes mountains. It is the miracle power that changes 
 water into wine; the multiplying power which feeds five thousand 
 Ineti with five loaves, and leaves a basket full for each of the agents 
 of distribution. 
 
 A common note of hand, negotiable in its terms, payable to 
 assignee or bearer, performs the function of money to its nominal 
 amount for as many transferees as will accept it in the faith that 
 it will be paid by the promisor to the holder. The draft of a de 
 positor, where the like faith is given to him and to the banker, 
 serves at every turn instead of the money which it represents, and 
 so, the abstract property in the money of a community, gathered 
 together and secured through the operation of market-faith, multi 
 plies indefinitely the service of the great instrument of all produc 
 tion and exchange. 
 
 Faith in the fulfillment of promise, made by the substitute, is 
 the power that moves the mass of human business, as the com 
 pound pulley lifts weights vastly disproportioned to the hand power 
 which puts it into motion : the indirectness of action in the credit 
 system, and in the mechanical machine, being alike evasive of the 
 resistance to be overcome, and alike triumphant by virtue of such 
 evasion. As a single man lifts a ton s weight, so a single dollar may 
 move a thousand in values, by the magical power of adapted in 
 struments. 
 
 How far faith goes in business is apparent when any medium of 
 exchange, having no intrinsic value in itself, is employed, whether 
 the instrument be a draft, bank note, note of hand, or a book-of- 
 entry charge ; how much further than the actual pledge warrants, 
 was shown by the fact that the Bank of Amsterdam carried on its 
 immense business for full fifty years after the great bulk of its 
 capital had been secretly loaned to the Government of the States 
 General, to the East India Company, and to the city of Amster 
 dam; none of which were in condition to make instant restitu 
 tion, and so the bank failed or exploded, though it had been doing 
 a business of not less than five thousand millions of dollars a 
 year so long as faith held in the security of the deposits or funds 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 141 
 
 on which its paper rested. The treasure amassed in its vaults was 
 estimated at not less than fifty millions, and the property in this 
 value moved by the bank one hundred times a year makes the 
 enormous amount of the exchanges here stated. 
 
 We do not know the amount of loss, or the amount of deferred 
 payment, with the incident loss of the holders of its paper, when 
 the discovery of its mismanagement was made, but for half a 
 century faith in its solvency had maintained the commerce which 
 it conducted without check or loss, or other disadvantage; and, if 
 the ultimate losses could have been distributed in fair proportion 
 among all its customers during the two centuries of its service to 
 their business, they would have been still immensely its debtors for 
 benefits received. After all, the Just live by Faith. The higher 
 the truth the higher the life, and all the losses by the abuses of the 
 principle are in the end as nothing to the issuing benefits. The 
 principle at work here, aye, even in the banking system, is that of 
 cooperation the brotherhood of business, the community of risks, 
 for the sake of the community of profits ; in which, as in the 
 things intended by the Apostle " Look not every man upon his 
 own things, but every man also on the things of others" (Phil, 
 ii., 4), the policy of the secular exactly corresponds to that of 
 spiritual life, and is put under the same laws ; for, though corpora 
 tions, and especially money corporations, have made themselves a 
 proverb of selfishness and injustice, they nevertheless have hold of 
 the miracle power, and "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
 on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," who 
 alike faithfully employ the agencies which provide the harvest. 
 
 Banks serving as depositories for the spare money of those who 
 confide in their solvency, by adding to the simple safe keeping of the 
 fund the further function of discounting the paper of borrowers, 
 may employ such amassed deposits in various proportions to the total 
 on deposit, according to the range of their business, the strength of 
 the stockholders or permanent investors, and the reputation of the 
 institutions. There always will be unclaimed balances in the vaults 
 of the banks, while they have the public confidence, say from one- 
 fourth to one-third of the temporary deposits, and they may lend, 
 besides, upon the capital paid in not only the whole amount, but a 
 further amount equal to the capital itself in well established institu 
 tions. Here there is a source of profit, which enables them not only 
 
142 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY." 
 
 
 
 to hold money for safe keeping free of charge to the depositors, but 
 to invite more investments, and for longer periods, by paying an in 
 terest upon them less than the rates at which they lend, of course 
 but large enough to induce the holders of idle money to leave it with 
 them. Certain banks in our eastern cities, dealing exclusively upon 
 their capital and deposits are able to divide ten or twelve per cent 
 to the shareholders. One such bank reports above a million dollars 
 in its deposit accounts, for which it pays no interest, while the capi 
 tal is no more than $-00,000. It appears quite possible to make 
 large profits above expenses, when it is seen that this bank reports 
 loans to the amount of 81,371,592. Here its capital is twice loaned, 
 and quite one-half of its deposits besides ; and the bank is thus re 
 ceiving perhaps six per cent upon nearly a million over and above its 
 paid-in capital. But its undivided profits amount to a surplus fund 
 of one hundred thousand dollars. Including this sum in its effective 
 capital, it is doing business upon above two and a half times the 
 amount that it owns. 
 
 But our business is now with the effect of credit added to capital 
 by the operation of concentrating money, and by turning their com 
 bined forces into the channels of business. The elements of this 
 business are 1st, the accumulation of unemployed money at centres 
 of deposit, where all the inconsiderable and inefficient supplies are 
 combined into effective forces ; 2d, the activity given such funds in 
 graduated portions, under the direction of adepts in business, by 
 loans to those who will employ them as capital in production ; which 
 brings the waiting labor of the country and the raw material lying 
 idle into the service of the community; 3d, the enhancement of the 
 proper power of the aggregated fund, by the percentage of credit 
 which it brings to the bank or banker who administers the fund; 
 which, while it is kept within safe limits, is not an unreal capital, but 
 an anticipation of the product which it will in good time make 
 actual and available, a process by which nothing but time is bor 
 rowed, that it may not be wasted ; or, the sum which might be 
 realized is made actual by anticipating the capital required to effect 
 the answering production. 
 
 This addition which credit adds to capital, by being well based 
 upon it, is the grand feature of the policy. In it lies the master 
 power, to which the growth of the general wealth is due, and especi 
 ally is it the beneficent element in the business life of men, which 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 143 
 
 mitigates the inequalities of individual wealth. Credit acknow 
 ledges the worth of character. The man who has no other property, 
 is made capital in himself, for his own benefit, and talents and in 
 dustry are thus lifted out of the disabilities of poverty into their ut 
 most serviceableness to society. Credit is the motor force that raises 
 indigence into wealth, and so converts selfishness into beneficence in 
 its effects, and greatly tends to conform the sentiment to the ex 
 cellence of the providential results. This excellent thing, however, 
 is much abused. Used in bad faith, it is at the bottom of all the 
 pecuniary mishaps of business life. But this is just because it is so 
 essential in the economy of business that it must be active for good, 
 and is therefore always present and liable to be perverted. 
 
 As much may be said, and said no less foolishly, against liberty 
 moral, political, and social. The means of advancement must be 
 capable of mischief, if they have anything of good in them for use. 
 Steam power is just as liable to do mischief, and in the very pro 
 portion of its capability for good service. Is there any endowment 
 of mind or morals; any instrument subject to human discretion, 
 which is not exactly as mischievous as beneficial in its possibilities? 
 The sins of the credit system are the best indications of its capa 
 bilities of good. A big evil cannot be made out of a little thing. 
 Evils are strictly nothing but abuses. 
 
 A society without a credit system is simply savage. A business 
 economy, whose capital should be limited to material property, would 
 be a despotism of property, as inflexible as Hindu caste, and as dead 
 as the insensate earth, where all that is precious is in the fixity of 
 crystals, and all that is common, is as incapable as the rocks in which 
 the gold and silver are coffined. 
 
 All of which leads us the further step in the question of currency 
 that embraces the bank note ; which in itself differs nothing intrin 
 sically from the check, draft, or certificate of deposit used in trans 
 ferring the property in money on deposit. But it does differ in 
 form, convenience, availability, and range of circulation, materially. 
 These are very important differences; for, as money itself has its 
 chief serviceableness in its convenience, whatever affects this prop 
 erty is no less important than anything intrinsic belonging to, or 
 wanting in it, as a medium of exchange. 
 
 It is obvious that a certificate of deposit, which, like a circulating 
 note, is a promise to pay money, must necessarily be for some specific 
 
144 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 sum, and nine times in ten must be unadapted for use except by 
 men engaged in considerable business. It is not the thing to carry 
 to the market-house, to a railroad office, or a grocery store, nor will 
 it meet the little current expenses of every day; and worst of all, it 
 would not suit for the payment of wages. If broken up into con 
 venient portions for current use, it would be bank notes to all in 
 tents and purposes ; and only because a credit or deposit in bank 
 needs to be so used, is the evidence of the claim, shaped into notes 
 of such denominations as will serve the more general and most needed 
 purposes of such credits. The draft of the depositor follows and 
 conforms to every variety of transfers desired, and usually is sent to 
 the bank to be there changed into notes for common use. 
 
 The transfer of determinate sums, especially of sums larger 
 than those most commonly required in every day affairs, or among 
 people having no mutuality of dealings, or those who cannot, or do 
 not, meet in any sort of clearing-house operations, can be very well 
 managed by drafts upon deposit banks. These facts help us to see 
 more accurately the office of the bank note. It is plainly limited to 
 the smaller businesses, to daily expenses, and is, therefore, peculiarly 
 the money of the people who live from day to day upon their daily 
 or weekly receipts. Banks do not use them among themselves, ex 
 cept for redemption. Merchants use them only for change, and 
 manufacturers, only for payment of wages in their business. Like 
 specie they come into service only in the odds and ends of affairs, 
 and so, differ from coins only by being so much more convenient for 
 use. 
 
 Bank notes are credit money ; but they are substantially limited 
 to credit in retail. The wholesale credit money has no such uses 
 and needs no such forms. They are, therefore, the money of peo 
 ple of limited means, and of others for limited expenses. They 
 make the payments of every day and hour, and are ever on the 
 wing. They have not time to earn interest for any owner except 
 the issuing bank, and for it only when they are loaned upon time. 
 The travels and adventures of a bank note would be such a 
 history of society as never yet was written, and never will be. If 
 it were as nearly omniscient as it is ubiquitous, government, phi 
 lanthropy, political economy whatever of thought and endeavor, 
 concerned with human affairs, would find in its journal an encyclo 
 pedia of facts, which they all need more than they need anything 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 145 
 
 else. The freest play of fancy, in following its wanderings, will 
 help somewhat in the estimate of its utility. 
 
 By the lank note, when spoken of in general terms as an instru 
 ment of exchange, is not intended a distinctive designation of 
 paper money issued by money institutions, whether corporate or 
 incorporate. The term means, in this general sense, the circulating 
 note, and as the paper currency of most countries, and at almost all 
 times, consists of the paper of such institutions, exclusively, the 
 term is sufficiently accurate. But in the experience of the United 
 States since the beginning of the late civil war, a supply of circu 
 lating notes rising at one time (April, 1864) to the sum of four 
 hundred and sixty millions of dollars, and standing on the first of 
 January, 1871, at three hundred and ninety millions, issued by the 
 Federal Government, served the same uses to the public as the 
 bank notes of ordinary times. These notes, along with a great 
 mass of other evidences of national debt, in other forms and for 
 greatly larger amounts, were issued and circulated on no other basis 
 or pledge for redemption than the faith of the Government. They 
 were not even made convertible on demand into gold and silver. The 
 only form of redemption on demand specifically promised was the 
 engagement to receive them at the Treasury and Sub-Treasuries for 
 all public dues, except import duties. Some additional value was 
 given them by making them a legal tender in all the business 
 transactions of the people, among themselves and with the govern 
 ment, except in the matter of import duties and interest upon the 
 public debt. This money was issued as evidence of indebtedness 
 when the expenditures of the nation greatly exceeded its receipts, 
 and it must necessarily be continued in circulation until it can be 
 either redeemed in specie, or vested in a more permanent form of 
 indebtedness, absorbed in taxes, or withdrawn by all these means 
 combined. Its quantity, in use for four years running, was more 
 than double the amount of paper money in circulation at any time 
 before the war; and after ten years its amount is still (1871) one 
 hundred and seventy-six millions, or eighty-two per cent greater. 
 Beside this great amount of paper, irredeemable on demand, we 
 have had an additional three hundred millions of national bank 
 notes in use, which, as to basis of redemption and convertibility, 
 may be described as in the same predicament; for those national 
 banks, thus responsible to the public for three hundred millions of 
 
146 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 currency, have held nothing besides United States bonds and notes, 
 real estate, and a little over twenty-three millions of specie, to meet 
 their liabilities to the note holders and to their depositors, which 
 last indebtedness aggregates above five hundred millions. 
 
 During nine years specie has been demonetized. It has stood as 
 a commodity of the market, ranging in price, through almost the 
 whole period, from one hundred and twenty-five to two hundred and 
 eighty-five dollars in currency for one hundred in gold. If this 
 difference is taken to be depreciation of the currency, then, it was 
 passing at a discount of from twenty to sixty-five per cent, through 
 the range of fluctuation, which covers quite seven of the last years 
 since the suspension of specie payments in December, 1861. 
 
 Here we have the vast business of a nation of over thirty-five 
 millions of people, worth twenty thousand millions in capital, during 
 a war period involving an expenditure of five thousand millions 
 beyond the ordinary business of times of peace, and carrying on, 
 besides, a system of internal improvement of unparalleled outlay, 
 and all effected through the agency of a paper circulation usually 
 styled irredeemable, and, at any rate, for the time inconvertible at 
 the par of gold. That war period has been passed quite six years, 
 and as yet we have had no revulsion no general or remarkable loss 
 of individual prosperity; no catastrophe to the general industry; and 
 so far from a failure, a positive and constant improvement of the 
 public credit. This picture, if complete, would show to the full the 
 service there is in the circulating note, as a medium for effecting the 
 exchanges of commodities and services, among a people who, in this 
 time of trial, have lived through the ordinary experiences of fifty 
 years in the space of ten, every day indeed may be counted a week 
 of the ordinary business life of a people, and every day of this 
 history will tell as a week in the future of the nation. 
 
 Is there anything in all this story, or, is there anything yet to 
 come of it, to keep in countenance the financial disesteem of theorists 
 for the circulating note ? Is there enough, in all the frauds and 
 follies incident to paper money, to balance its services in all times, 
 whether they be of war or peace ? 
 
 Surely there is nothing in the nicknames, depreciated currency, 
 irredeemable rag money, paper promises, unreal, or the like terms, 
 that can settle the policy of commerce and finance as it is concerned 
 in them. Paper money is the resort of all nations under severe 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 147 
 
 trials let this fact have its due force. There is no such opprobium 
 attached to National, State, or Corporate stocks, though they are all 
 debts resting upon the present and prospective solvency of the issu 
 ing party, as much as are national and bank circulating notes, and 
 in no case, a whit more secure, or less liable to abuse, or followed by 
 any other or lesser mischief; but differing from such stocks in one 
 grand particular for the better, in that they are not exportable to 
 foreign countries, nor do they carry with them, as stocks do, a profit 
 to foreigners, who bear none of the burdens. of the country which 
 must pay them and their current interest. 
 
 We have already claimed for the circulating note the character of 
 being specially the money of the common people, upon whose in 
 dustry the general welfare so largely depends; and here we think it 
 worth adding to its claims, the fact that it has been to us the only 
 form of money which in our greatest exigency did not desert our 
 service, by going into that of any foreign people. Intelligent 
 patriotism will find in this specialty of the greenbacks and the 
 national bank notes, a title to the name of American money, while 
 philanthropy accords to them besides, the distinctive designation of 
 the money of the common people. 
 
 We have seen that a bank of deposit and discount, without issu 
 ing a circulating currency, can well maintain itself upon its profits 
 over and above all expenses, and even with an allowance of interest 
 equal to one-half or two-thirds of the rate at which it lends its funds 
 and credit; and that, even while thus limited in its banking func 
 tions, it serves excellent, even indispensable, uses to the community, 
 to the depositors, to the borrowers, and to all the dependent indus 
 tries. We have noticed, also, that it is indifferent to the operations of 
 a bank whether it issues its obligations in the form of certificates 
 for the varied amounts of the credits it gives, or in the form of cir 
 culating notes of such denominations as best answer the common 
 purposes of small money dealings among the people. Whatever 
 it promises to pay on demand may take any form which does not by 
 contract alter the liability of the issuers. In practice, however, the 
 circulating notes expose the bank to a run when any reason arises 
 for converting them into specie, whether it be on account of a rise 
 in the value of, or increase in the demand for, the precious metals, or 
 apprehensions for the solvency of the bank, or doubt of its ability 
 to redeem them on the instant of demand. For such reasons, cer- 
 
148 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 tain banks in the great centres of trade, which can command a suffi 
 cient deposit business, prefer to use no circulation for whose redemp 
 tion they are responsible. 
 
 The profit of a circulation is all in addition to the earnings upon 
 capital and deposits, because this profit is made not upon funds held, 
 but upon credit loaned, for which the reserve for redemption need not 
 be any greater in proportion than upon the deposits. The national 
 banks are not required by law to keep inactive more than twenty- 
 five per cent of their total demand liabilities, in order to meet them. 
 
 The aggregate loans of twenty-eight city banks (in November, 
 1869) yielded, at the average minimum rate of six per cent per 
 annum upon their loans, twenty per cent upon the par of the 
 capital, and their aggregate of circulation and deposits amounted to 
 843,269,000 for the payment of which they held but $13,713,000, 
 so that these city banks were able, under existing circumstances, to 
 lend twice the amount of their capital by the aid of their surplus 
 funds, and thirty-three per cent of their deposits. 
 
 Bank deposits, so called, consist to a large amount of mere credits 
 on the books of the banks, being their loans to borrowers. It is safe, 
 perhaps, to estimate their sixteen millions of capital as serving for 
 thirty-two millions of money, another eleven millions of deposits 
 (one-third of the total) consisting simply of bank credits, and 
 ten millions more of bank debts in the form of circulating notes, 
 based upon eleven millions of national debt; and we have in effect 
 a sum of actual money consisting of sixteen millions of capital and 
 six millions of surplus funds, amounting together to twenty-two 
 millions, made to serve as fifty-three millions, or within a fraction 
 of two and a half times the amount represented. 
 
 The preceding calculations were made from the bank reports 
 of November, 1869. On the 22d of May, 1871, the same banks 
 report their capital at sixteen millions, four hundred thousand, 
 their loans at fifty-five millions, and deposits at thirty-seven mil 
 lions four hundred thousand. If their aggregate surplus funds 
 stood at six millions, they were able to lend their effective capital 
 twice, and twenty-seven per cent of their deposits. 
 
 So much for the mere credit element of the existing money sys 
 tem, and of its capability, in favoring circumstances, of enhancing 
 the service of the actual money of the country in its industrial and 
 commercial affairs. 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 149 
 
 To resume. The agencies by which the service of money is utilized 
 by accumulation, multiplied in rapidity of movement, and distrib 
 uted effectively through its focal centres, are in serial order of 
 adoption and in rank of service : 1st. The simple depository in 
 which money is held for safe keeping, and returned, as it was de 
 posited, to the owner; the property in it being transferable only by 
 actual delivery. 2d. The deposit bank, holding the money and 
 issuing negotiable certificates, or answering drafts, payable to 
 drawee, assignee, or bearer ; by which method not only such 
 drafts or certificates become a circulation within a limited range, 
 but the depositary may safely issue his notes or certificates to an 
 amount considerably exceeding the sum in his vaults, either by dis 
 counts or by accommodation loans; thus not only increasing the 
 rapidity of the actual money employed, but enlarging its force to 
 the extent of the margin taken. 3d. A depositary for the spare 
 money of the community, making loans upon it, by accommodation, 
 and by discount of assigned debts not matured, and by issuance of 
 the circulating notes which constitute the paper money currency of 
 modern business policy. 
 
 All these businesses distinctively, and the whole of them com 
 bined, in the functions of the banks of the last two or three cen 
 turies, and at the present time almost universally in use, being 
 based in the simplest and earliest form upon the reputation of 
 the depositary: and, in the more complicated and complete! form, 
 upon actual capital pledged to about one-third of the active amount, 
 and for the other two-thirds, upon credit only. 
 
 This being substantially the monetary policy of leading nations, 
 and approximately the proportion of capital to credit in the basis 
 of the banking system in its most general forms, we are not left at 
 a loss to see its advantages, on the one hand, and its risks on the 
 other; nor can there be any doubt of its necessity to the economy 
 of productive and commercial industry. 
 
 Business must be done upon trust. It is impossible to conduct, 
 or to forward, the affairs of civilized men, without such trust or 
 confidence as expands itself from the simple confidence involved in 
 all exchanges of commodities and services, into the most artificial 
 and aggregative range of the credit system that has yet been 
 adopted. A hand-to-hand exchange system of direct barter is pos- 
 
150 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 sible or suitable only to such a state of savage society as subsists 
 in a hand-to-hand battle order of the parties. 
 
 There is no resting place between the absolute distrust of the 
 unorganized business of barbarous states, and the most unreserved 
 commitment to credit, as the condition of all economic transactions. 
 Nothing can be done to any purpose by narrowing the system. 
 Everything of improvement is wholly that of providing such 
 securities as it admits of. England has employed to exhaustion all 
 the sagacity and experience of two hundred years, in contriving 
 avoidance of the abuses of her banking system ; yet it is safe to say 
 that it is now as liable to objections, and as frequently mischievous 
 as in the first year of its institution. Nevertheless, it has never been 
 for a moment in danger of being abandoned on account of its evils. 
 It has never been admitted that the evils experienced and feared 
 were necessary attendants of the monetary system. It has always 
 been clearly known that some form of credit-money is indispensable, 
 and it is acknowledged, also, that the balance of good and evil has 
 ever been in its favor ; for it is seen that immense private and 
 national prosperity has, nevertheless, resulted from it. Still there 
 hangs over the whole matter a mystery which embarrasses the man 
 agement. Every jar in the working of the machinery provokes 
 the best and brightest of the business, and of the thinking, world to 
 the most strenuous endeavors at amendment, which are never for 
 any long period relaxed ; but as yet without any tolerable approach 
 to complete correction. The trouble at the bottom of the whole 
 business seems to be this : the money that everybody believes in 
 the money that needs no redemption the money that has a value 
 in itself is liable to at least two grave complaints : first, it is not, 
 and cannot be made, adequate to the work required of it by those 
 who would dispense with its substitutes, to escape their insecurity ; 
 and, second, it is so inconvenient and expensive that the exclusive 
 use of it, could it be increased to tolerable adequacy, would be wholly 
 unendurable. An exclusive metallic currency in the money market 
 would block the wheels of the commodity market, and throw the 
 world back to the economic conditions of barbarism. There remains, 
 therefore, no choice, but to hold by the credit system, and the only 
 hope left is in its amendment in the wisest and most practicable 
 way. 
 
 Men must make up their minds to employ unreal money, and 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 151 
 
 they must in some way make it as capable and reliable as they can. 
 The students of the credit system of business cannot fail to see how 
 a banking system of some kind or kinds is indispensable to the 
 organization, the force, and convenience of industry and commerce, 
 and how the general exchange of services is promoted by its agency. 
 
 There follows as obviously these necessary consequences : that 
 every locality requires such a money institution a centre for every 
 district where spare money may be deposited for safe keeping; 
 where a moderate interest may be made upon sucji deposits ; where 
 mutual debts may be set-off against each other ; where the actual 
 amount of money gathered may be enhanced in its operation by 
 such supplemented credit as the banking institutions can safely 
 command; where adepts in business may distribute the activity of 
 such gathered capital and incident credit, through the channels of 
 productive industry, wisely and conveniently, by loans or discounts, 
 to the general benefit of the community, and the profit of the 
 bank ; and, where the use of coin may be spared by the substitu 
 tion of representative circulating notes, of assured soundness, and 
 of denominations required in the smaller transactions of every-day 
 business. 
 
 We cannot too frequently recur to the leading idea of money 
 that its most essential and central quality of service is in its con 
 venience, as an exchanger of services and commodities. This is 
 clear in the abstract, and it rules the policy of the money system 
 through all its actual details. Banks being the agencies or ma 
 chinery of the money system, it is clear that as depositories, as 
 clearing houses, as reservoirs for the distribution of currency into 
 the channels of its proper work, and, as necessary administrators of 
 all these offices, they are required to be made of and for vicinages 
 of such areas and activities as will bring them home for all their 
 uses. Their number should be limited by no other considerations 
 than necessary convenience of location, and conformity of expense 
 to the service they are to perform. 
 
 The organization of banks best approved by thorough experience 
 is that of Scotland, where there are forty banks with three hundred 
 and forty branches, or bank offices, distributed over an area equal 
 to only two-thirds of that of the State of New York, and with a 
 population thirty per cent less. Here there is a banking office 
 for every eight thousand three hundred of the people of the King- 
 
152 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 dom. Suppose these banking houses to be each allotted to equal 
 areas, it would make the radius of each banking district but four 
 and a half miles; or, if the half of them are located in the cities and 
 principal towns, the distribution in the villages and rural districts 
 would bring the most distant individual within nine miles of the 
 money centre. These offices, however, are doubtless distributed 
 with regard to necessity for their service, governed by the condi 
 tions of business which regard the interests of the banks.* 
 
 The striking points in the history of the Scotch banks are their 
 freedom from disturbing fluctuations in the amount of the currency 
 which they circulate, the immense amount of their deposits when 
 compared with those under different policies in other countries, and 
 the exemption they have enjoyed from those general failures which 
 have visited England so frequently. 
 
 They allow interest on deposits only about one per cent below the 
 current rates, and they lend money freely on bonded securities : a 
 plan by which the parties accommodated get their operating capital 
 in advance, instead of having to wait until they have the proceeds 
 of their enterprise in notes, which they must discount ; that is, it is 
 not on values produced or earned, but on those to be earned by aid 
 of credit, that the borrower receives his accommodation from the 
 banks. Besides all these conveniences provided for the business 
 and industrious public, they issue notes as low as one pound; for, in 
 the whole constitution of the system, and in all its working pro 
 visions, it looks to the convenience and aid of the common people. 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that in Scotland there is no horror of 
 banks; no distrust, and none of that perpetual endeavor after change 
 in policy which agitates England and the United States. 
 
 It is not at all within the scope of our work to treat the banking 
 
 * Scotland has 1 bank to every 84 square miles of territory. 
 Pennsylvania 1 " " 232 " " " 
 
 New York 1 " " 150 " " 
 
 Massachusetts 1 " " 38 " " " 
 
 Rhode Island 1 " " 21 " " " 
 
 Ohio 1 " " 296 " " " 
 
 The territories divided into equal squares would give a radius or half diameter 
 to: 
 
 Scotland of four and a half miles; to Pennsylvania, seven and a half miles; to 
 New York, six and one-eighth miles (but the rural banks would have a radius of 
 seven miles); Massachusetts, three miles; Rhode Island, two and three-tenths 
 miles ; Ohio, eight and a half miles. 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 153 
 
 system. We notice these institutions only as they are, or might be, 
 instruments of the money function in its bearings upon the general 
 welfare. Any wider view of the subject involving them, would 
 overtask our powers, and only exhaust the patience of those to whom 
 this work is specially addressed. 
 
 One other specialty may properly be noticed here : the popularity 
 of the " greenback" circulation, for many reasons which need not be 
 mentioned, inclines large numbers of those who are concerned, or, 
 who concern themselves, with the supposed advantages of national 
 banks, to recommend some modification of our present currency 
 system, in such manner as would make the government the source of 
 the supply of our circulating notes. This proposition, if we are right 
 in our apprehension of the machinery and uses of banks, is every 
 way objectionable. There was no fault, under the circumstances 
 which required the issue of the government notes, and their con 
 tinuance in circulation, or in putting the debt of the nation into the 
 form of a circulating medium but the government cannot make of 
 its exchequer, or sub-offices, depositories for the inactive money of 
 the people ; it cannot lend, as business everywhere requires, upon 
 individual securities, or discount the business paper afloat. Two 
 thousand or three thousand banking houses would be required for 
 the purpose of accommodating the localities with convenient places 
 of deposit and loans. The government could not appoint and 
 supervise the administrators of such a trust. It cannot, and will not, 
 be trusted or burdened with this business in all its required breadth 
 and action. Corporations of the vicinage alone are competent. 
 Their circulating paper can be secured to the holders, absolutely, as 
 is proved by experience of the national banking system, now some 
 years under trial;* and for all other matters of complaint the pub- 
 
 *The national banking law, for which we are indebted to Mr. Secretary Chase, 
 secures the redemption of the circulating notes absolutely, but leaves their conver 
 sion into coin dependent upon the general resumption of specie payments. The 
 government supplies the notes to the sixteen hundred banks, organized under the 
 law, in a certain proportion to their several capitals, and upon the security of 
 national bonds, deposited in the federal treasury in the ratio of one hundred dol 
 lars to every ninety dollars worth of such notes emitted. Thus the circulation of 
 each bank is limited to ninety per cent of the securities pledged for its redemption. 
 On failure of the bank, the United States Treasury redeems them, if demanded, 
 and sells the pledged securities to reimburse itself. The note holder is made in 
 very event safe against any loss, for the notes of a broken bank are. just as good 
 11 
 
151 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 lie and the authorities must find either complete relief, or such miti 
 gation as the subject admits of. A government might indeed 
 provide paper circulation, but it cannot distribute it directly among 
 the people. It cannot be a bank of deposit, discount, and issue. If 
 it has the wisdom to devise, and the authority to establish, the re 
 quired instrumentalities, its powers and capabilities can go no 
 further j and, as there is nothing in the proper offices of banks 
 which can be dispensed with, they must be conformed as nearly as 
 may be to this necessity, and the risks and injuries attending them 
 must be borne till removed or abated as evils accompanying an in 
 dispensable service to society, which withal, leave behind a vast 
 balance of benefits. 
 
 The inference from all these views seems both easy and inevita 
 ble, that banking cannot rightly be made a monopoly, as it is by 
 law in the United States, and by contract in England and France ; 
 and in effect, by limitation of the circulation and its arbitrary dis 
 tribution, as under the national banking system of the United 
 States, without inducing many of the abuses complained of, and, at 
 the same time, disappointing the intention, perverting the action, 
 and crippling the agency of the great money function, upon which 
 all business prosperity and stability depend. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the experience of generations will soon 
 cure the public of the notion that the instant convertibility of the 
 circulating note is the one thing to be secured, at the expense of 
 whatever uses the banking system serves cured, if not by a 
 sound view of the general uses of banks, at least by the uniform 
 failure of all attempts, contrivances, and safety-guards employed to 
 
 as those of a sound one, and the notes of all the banks, wherever situated, are of 
 uniform value throughout the United States. 
 
 The grand fault of the system is in its restriction of the amount of the circula 
 tion allowed. As this provision at first stood, the amount being taken, the benefits 
 of the law are monopolized. The amount should be limited only by the amount 
 of the securities pledged for the redemption of the notes, and so be practically 
 limited only by the requirements of business. In other words, banking should be 
 as free as other businesses and, especially, free to all localities. With respect to 
 the security of depositors; that is left, as it should be, to the care of the depositors 
 themselves, and they are not permitted to affect the solvency of the circulating 
 notes, as under the old state banking system they so frequently did. Depositors 
 have no just claim for security from the government. Theirs is a private business 
 with the banks. For the authorized circulating money, the Government is every 
 way responsible, and it is also eminently capable of fulfilling its trust, 
 
CREDIT MONEY. 155 
 
 accomplish that one thing, endeavored in so many ways, at so 
 great losses and catastrophies, as have always awaited the occasion 
 for discrediting the attempt. 
 
 The charter of the Bank of England means nothing, and intends 
 nothing specially, except a desperate effort, by desperate means, to 
 prevent a suspension of specie payments. It went into this ser 
 vice in tho year 1844, and, behold, the anti-suspension provision 
 has been already three times suspended by the violent intervention 
 of the privy counsel of Her Majesty, under the compulsion of the 
 very exigencies which it was designed to prevent or overrule. Sir 
 Robert Peel, by and with the advice of the " sound currency " 
 savans of the realm, believed he was constructing a safety valve for 
 the paper-money medium of the nation ; yet, in the first and every 
 subsequent exigency that put it into operation, it turned out to be 
 a trap, that had to be let up and set again, to serve again only so 
 long as it should be useless, and, therefore, harmless. The fact 
 that the Scotch banks had gone safely and steadily through the 
 crisis of 1793, and that of 1825, when so many of the provincial 
 banks of England were swept off, and not a single Scotch bank 
 gave way, and the failure of all devices everywhere, and at all 
 times, to maintain the redemption on demand of bank paper, when 
 that is made the master idea of the machinery, might induce 
 theorists and financiers to look somewhat more deeply and broadly 
 into the general question. Convertibility is a convenience, but it is 
 not the essence of the circulating note. Solvency is quite another 
 thing, and this secured, there is no people under the sun who will 
 not require the note, even at the depreciation which it suffers 
 during the suspension of specie payments, in preference to doing 
 without it. It is probable that if everything else in the banking 
 system were well cared for, the ultimate solvency of the notes 
 secured, and the whole system set free from the restraints that are 
 imposed solely with the view to keep the paper at the par of gold 
 and silver, the convertibility would take care of itself, or, at worst, 
 prove a matter of trivial importance. 
 
 The evils of a depreciated currency, when admitted to the full, 
 are as nothing to the lack of a money supply that keeps productive 
 industry active to the full. Creditors paid in it lose in proportion 
 to its diminished purchasing power, but the mischief stops there ; 
 and, what is the difference between the normal and the nominal 
 
156 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 value of debts, to the losses suffered by the interruption, diminu 
 tion, or suspension of a nation s industry ? If half a year s labor 
 is lost in the United States for want of active capital to keep it 
 employed, and this is valued at but half a dollar a day, there is a 
 loss to those who can bear no loss without suffering, of three hun 
 dred and ninety millions by five millions of people, and a corre 
 sponding loss to twenty or thirty other millions of people. Will a 
 ten, twenty, or thirty per cent decline in the value of debts, to those 
 who may be presumed able to bear it, be a greater evil ? The danger 
 of the arrest of production and of trade, in England, has three 
 times in twenty years driven merchant, manufacturer, and artisan 
 to pray government to give them irredeemable bank notes instead. 
 And the greenback, that does not even promise to pay its face 
 value on demand in gold or silver, or in anything else but taxes 
 and old debts, has won for itself, in the loyal States of America, 
 an everlasting remembrance in praise and blessings. 
 
 There is mystery in money, there is magic in it. Abstractly every 
 body admits this, but in specialties, touching its movements and 
 effects, hardly one man in a thousand will refrain from repairing 
 the machine, though he knows that the regulator and the motor 
 force is to him inscrutable. 
 
 If any one doubts this, so broadly stated, we would suggest that 
 he tries his divining power upon tight and easy money markets, 
 alternating every week ; on the premium on gold without alteration 
 in the volume of the currency highest when the national debt was 
 less than half its maximum amount, and declining in an inverse 
 proportion to the measure of the public burdens. Or why, with 
 out any perceptible change in the securities, it sells at 135, 165, and 
 125 within two months ? Perhaps all these questions could be 
 disposed of without being answered, if this other question were 
 answered why should gold gamblers be allowed to fix the standard 
 for measuring the value of national notes at will ? 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 Commerce: Faulty definitions of the term. Whately, McCulloch. Territorial 
 division of labor. Production subordinated to trade. Benefit of division of 
 labor exaggerated. Glorification of trade. Fundamental errors of English 
 Economists; practical and theoretical mischiefs resulting. Idols of the Den. 
 Bias of nationality in the philosophy of business affairs. Commerce is direct 
 exchange, Trade is exchange through intermediates. Trade disintegrates, 
 Commerce develops the man and the community. Monstrous results of the 
 Trade theory. The Trader s policy of production. Rule of climatic law. 
 Trade law. Trader s definition of political economy Its true meaning and 
 scope. False claims of foreign trade; spoliation its aim, in conformity with 
 the spirit of the times; effected formerly by force, now by fraud. The motive 
 borrows the credit of the good in the results. Association without freedom is 
 domination, not commerce. Commerce is immediateness of intercourse and 
 exchange. Impediment of space. Home commerce might suffice in the United 
 States. The policy of commerce is a national, not a cosmopolitan concern. 
 Value of imports before the Rebellion ; value of domestic exports. Commerce 
 of the East and West loyal States in 1862. Estimate of total domestic ex 
 changes. Consumption of domestic, ten to one of foreign, products. Differ 
 ence between economic, and market, value. Foreign goods displace home 
 labor. Statistics of trade imperfect official figures unsafe. Data and differ 
 ences of European authorities. United States census reports their defects 
 they afford only a basis for approximate estimates. Proportional market value 
 of foreign and domestic products. Difference of economic value in transporta 
 tion and trade profits. More than half our imports give no employment to 
 domestic labor and capital in further production. Economic value of foreign 
 imports; they give no employment to domestic labor and capita.l in further pro 
 duction. Economic value of foreign imports as only one to twenty-three of 
 domestic products. Kinds of foreign imports which exclude home industry, 
 enumerated. Their cost, fifty-seven per cent of our total imports. Balance of 
 international trade unfavorable balance, not in the market value, but in the 
 kinds of commodities exchanged the mischiefs. Difference in kinds and 
 values of labor resulting from different kinds of imports. Educating and 
 enriching labor. Money values not the guide in international trade. Charac 
 teristics of legitimate trade. Sound international trade is supplementary, not 
 competitive. Unrestricted trade in natural products, only across climates. 
 Cosmopolitan and national economists. Political economy not a science, but a 
 system of expediencies it has no universal or permanent principles its scien- 
 
 157 
 
158 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 tific pretensions everywhere at fault. Competition the regulator of disorders in 
 the trader s school of economists Bastiat. Trade in manufactures and works 
 of art. All foreign trade compulsory there is no such thing as free foreign 
 trade. 
 
 WE have exact and exhaustive definitions of the term commerce 
 in dictionaries verbal definitions ; and, in the authors concerned 
 with the subject in its practical relations, moral, political, and eco 
 nomical, much of effort at logical exposition and elucidation, but 
 withal, less certainty of meaning and availableness in use than 
 ought to be secured. It is among the terms of art, in the system 
 or systems of political economy of which Archbishop Whately says : 
 " hardly one of them has any settled and invariable meaning, and 
 their ambiguities are perpetually overlooked." (Elements of Logic, 
 p. 354.) That the subject is not as clear in the minds of the au 
 thorities as one would naturally expect, is plainly intimated by the 
 care that J. Stuart Mill takes to settle the respective claims of 
 Bicardo and Torrens to the authorship or discovery of one of the 
 causes which determine international exchanges. The authorities 
 have, therefore, been very lately illuminated upon that particular 
 point ; and their high appreciation of a very small matter shows how 
 little command of the question they had previously obtained, and 
 suggests, besides, that it may not yet be thoroughly mastered. 
 
 J. R. McCulloch speaks of commercial intercourse as beginning 
 to grow among men as soon as individuals cease to supply themselves 
 with all the products of labor required for ther own consumption. 
 He adds " it is only by exchanging that portion of the produce 
 raised by ourselves that exceeds our own consumption for portions 
 of the surplus raised by others, that the division of employments 
 can be introduced, or that different individuals can apply themselves 
 in preference to different pursuits." From this point of departure 
 from which he departs never to return again he passes instantly 
 to the consideration of foreign trade, either distant geographically 
 or internationally, and is thenceforth occupied exclusively with what 
 he terms the territorial division of labor, which he says has contrib 
 uted more than anything else to increase the wealth and accelerate 
 the civilization of mankind. In the division of the topics treated 
 under the general title, he gives the first place in order and rank to 
 the agents of trade the mercantile classes ; and the necessity for 
 the wholesale and the retail dealer, is pushed to its last consequence, 
 
COMMERCE. 159 
 
 in which trade is the substance, and production is only its accessory 
 or minister iu civilized life and human progress. Treating of Trade, 
 he is so occupied with the advantages of distance in commerce that 
 he thinks "the territorial division of labor, if possible, even more 
 advantageous than its division among individuals," and of the bless 
 ings of the latter he is so well assured, that he assigns to it no limits 
 beyond which it may be injurious; simply because the more labor 
 is divided the more production is increased and cheapened, and the 
 more subjects are supplied for trade, and the larger space spread 
 for its extension. Unconsciously, it may be, and all the more irre- 
 flectively, the writer s imagination takes wing and prose poetry is 
 pressed into the service of admiration of trade; and roads, canals, 
 steam carriages, all navigable streams, coast and open ocean high 
 ways, are glorified; and even such centralization of industries as 
 conduces most to the infinitesimal division of handicraft occupations, 
 is cited as elements of this most beneficent of all human functions 
 commerce wholesale and retail ! Everything is cheapened, every 
 thing distributed, everything is first carried away from everybody, 
 everything is afterwards brought back to everybody, and trade 
 grows prodigiously. Besides, trade gives competition all possible 
 influence. Everybody is put to working with and against everybody 
 else, and the author is right in concluding an enthusiastic outburst, 
 "all is mutual, reciprocal, and dependant," if he will only allow us 
 to remember that the same may be said of a chain-gang or of a 
 bench of galley-slaves, and to reflect a little before we join in his 
 exultation. For we cannot help interjecting the question : is man 
 made for products and trade, or are products and trade made for 
 man ? Rightly answered, it may appear that the most important 
 element has here been left out of the question, or considered only 
 as subsidiary to things which are properly subordinate. If wealth 
 were understood to be weal, well-being, welfare, instead of finding 
 in the term nothing but vastness of capital accumulated, the politi 
 cal economy of Great Britain would take another character than it 
 bears, and would lose that bias for trade, especially foreign trade, 
 which poisons every spring of thought in all its favorite authors, 
 politicians, and statesmen. But it would seem that there is a men 
 tal infatuation which, like that of alcoholic intoxication, believes in 
 the benefit or necessity of that stimulation which enervates the body 
 politic. The directly resulting pauperism, expatriation, rebellion, 
 
160 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 and all forms of discontent and resistance, teach nothing corrective 
 to a philosophy which holds that " man is a drug and population a 
 nuisance/ and makes them so by addressing all its working influ 
 ences to the promotion of trade at the expense of the human instru 
 ments which supply its stores for the aggrandisement of traffic. 
 
 England, judged by the workings of her economic policy, is of 
 all countries in the world, least capable of furnishing a theory of 
 political economy for the guidance of any people who would escape 
 the wretched practical results of her system. Men are everywhere 
 so prone to worship the idols of the den in which they are bred that 
 nationality clings to doctrine in all spheres of practical affairs, and 
 the flavor of nativity hangs persistently over every dish they cook 
 for the guests at their feasts of philosophy. The economic doc 
 trines of an island that depends for its prosperity upon the industrial 
 colonization of all the rest of the world, must needs tend to the 
 required subservience of its tributaries; and no moral or mental 
 integrity of individuals, under such influences, will save the propa 
 gandists from the vices of thought bred into them tfy the business 
 system in which they live and move and have their being. 
 
 If these free thoughts suggest to the reader the names of Torrens, 
 Ricardo, McCulloch, Cobden, Bright, and Mill, we can only ask that 
 the process of separating the good from the evil be dispassionately 
 performed, and the presumptions of fair reasoning be allowed due 
 weight, until a careful scrutiny shows the truth or error of this 
 exception to the nationality of a cluster of honored names, which 
 it must be admitted, are at least remarkably national in matters of 
 commercial policy. 
 
 It would be well if distinctive terms could be employed for the 
 exchanges of services and commodities effected by men immediately 
 and directly, and that other manner of exchange, made through 
 intermediates, middle men, agents, or merchants. Mr. Carey uses 
 the word commerce for the exchanges of services, products and 
 ideas by men with their fellow men, in exclusion of all interme 
 diate agents; and employs the word Trade to distinguish exchanges 
 made by intermediates for the principals commerce,, describing the 
 most direct interchanges, trade, the more or less indirect. The two 
 terms have hitherto been so constantly used interchangeably that a 
 difference of application and force cannot be easily made familiar. 
 And the further difficulty arises from the customary use of the word 
 
COMMERCE. 161 
 
 commerce, in application to the more indirect trade, and the greater 
 distance between the parties, while the better use would be exactly 
 the reverse. 
 
 The difference in the respective consequences of the more, and 
 the less direct exchanges ought to be kept clearly in view, and 
 must be, if we would understand the subject advantageously. The 
 mutuality, reciprocity, and interdependency of exchange, limited in 
 its aims to products and trade, as its central object, and driven to its 
 utmosts, in the confidence that the governing principle leads only to 
 perfection, and cannot, therefore, be mischievous, even in its ex 
 tremes that is, when its results are piled up in forms of material 
 wealth will work very differently from the leading idea that all 
 discipline and development should be directed to the growth of in 
 dividuality, as well as to association, in the societies of men. As 
 sociation could be effected in the trader s meaning of the term, and 
 up to the entire scope of his purpose, by the process of disintegrating 
 the individuals concerned in its operations, so far as to suppress all 
 that is common and general in men, for the purpose of enhancing 
 the special in each. The division-of-labor doctrine, while it does 
 provide for the most effective employment of the varied aptitudes of 
 the mass of laborers, may be pushed, under the governing idea of 
 productiveness, to an excess which would change men into a distor 
 tion of their physical powers, not unlike to monomania in mind. 
 For an example: a noble-looking old man, employed in one of the 
 cutlery factories of Sheffield, has been for forty years employed 
 exclusively in counting twelve, during twelve hours of every day. 
 Doubtless, the knives and forks were the more accurately and 
 expeditiously assorted in dozens, by this sort of automatic life of the 
 man; but what was the reflex effect upon the man himself? Trade 
 was promoted, but do heaven and earth depend upon trade ? The 
 man that spends his life in pointing brass pins, will never learn, 
 because he need not, and had better not learn, even how the head is 
 made or put on. Such division of labor drives him back into the 
 single element of the work which is arbitrarily apportional to each 
 among a dozen or twenty hands, and lo, a pin is produced ; and all 
 men wonder at the miracle. Every .second of time is pin-pricked 
 into infinitesimals, and the multiplication table breaks down under 
 the prodigious results ! 
 
 This process may be pushed to the disintegration of the proper 
 
162 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 human nature, so as to throw in turn every faculty out of gear, and 
 so, out of use, until a man is decomposed, and a pin-pointer is pro 
 duced ! This is the trader s policy of production ; but he does not stop 
 here in the work of mincing the mutualities of men, dissolving them 
 into their ultimate atoms, and classifying and organizing them by 
 the affinity of their fractions or fragments. He carries the segrega 
 tions forward from the division of labor among individuals into a 
 territorial division corresponding to it. He finds a hill-side that is 
 better for pasturage then for corn-growing, and he provides for its 
 exclusive appropriation and employment according to this one of its 
 adaptations; the people of that hill-side must make beef and mutton, 
 and nothing else, because these are its best spontaneous products ; 
 and the men of that division must limit themselves in their pursuits 
 and their studies to that one art, else they might diminish the 
 traffic arising from the scientific division of labor, according to 
 territory. Other men, elsewhere, can make blankets cheaper, be 
 cause they have no territory at all to work, and everybody else must 
 abstain from their alloted specialty of labor. Men are nowhere to 
 be the masters, but everywhere the slaves, of circumstances, and in 
 these unvaried and unvariable conditions are found the natural 
 laws of commerce ! 
 
 If these theorists would but limit the necessary territorial ex 
 changes of men to the unavoidable ; if they would but say that the 
 north temperate zone must get its spices and ivory from the 
 tropics, and the hot climates must draw their ice from the colder, 
 and always use the word must, and say they should, only because they 
 must, they would have a clean strong grip of a natural law; but 
 when they bring upon us a trade law which looks ever to cheapness 
 of commodities, and pays no regard whatever to the conditions of 
 human welfare, we must insist upon some other meaning and purpose 
 of legitimate commerce. 
 
 Abundant provision for trade as a civilizer, wealth-producer, 
 educator, and organize^ of the world, exists in the naturally necessary 
 interchanges of products, without arbitrarily dividing all the like 
 regions of the earth into totally unlike pursuits, and leaving it to 
 transportation to unite them only in the market places, while it 
 severs them into distinct and different factors or multipliers every 
 where else. But the very definition of Political Economy by the 
 authorities who write in the dominant interest of trade, amounts 
 
COMMERCE. 163 
 
 to nothing more in substance than that given by Archbishop 
 Whately, catallactics, or a science of exchanges, which is very 
 far from the idea that it is concerned with man in his efforts 
 for the maintenance and improvement of his conditioner as techni 
 cally defined, " a system of the laws which govern man in his efforts 
 to attain the highest individuality, and the greatest association with 
 his fellow men" (Carey, Social Science, vol. i., p. 63). It is 
 claimed for foreign trade that it is a peacemaker among the nations. 
 This is not its history in the past. Maritime trade, until within the 
 period of two centuries last past, was simply what we now call 
 piracy. Its occupation was pillage of chattels, enslavement of men, 
 and extension of dominion in the interest, and for the extension 
 of trade. The nobility and gentry of civilized Europe held any 
 form of industry degrading which was not carried on by murder and 
 robbery. Sir Walter Raliegh went abroad upon the high seas with 
 Elizabeth s commission as a privateer, and John Newton served as 
 chaplain in a fleet of slave-traders. The morals of maritime trade 
 were the last to be reformed in the means it employed and the 
 policy it pursued in international relations. When the age of 
 violence had passed, trade long stuck to its purpose, aim, and end. 
 Pillage took the name of international commerce, and made its 
 predatory invasions of the feebler nations without force of arms, by 
 the force of traffic. The superior arms of the strongest are now 
 only occasionally employed to make way for the superior skill of 
 hands ; and invasion of foreign labor markets is effected by pacific 
 means in lieu of the older and ruder warlike invasions, breaking 
 down the defenses of industry by other acts not less effectual than 
 those which use powder and bayonets in the negotiation. 
 
 Changing the method with the changes of the times, and so 
 avoiding conflicts with the spirit of the age and the common law of 
 nations, the leading commercial nation of the world is getting rid 
 of her colonial dependencies, and rapidly changing her foreign 
 political subjects into profitable customers. After the suppression 
 of Napoleon, for the first time in her history, she maintained a peace 
 of thirty years. An episode in the Crimea, and an occasional 
 insurrection in India, have merely thrown a few ripples into the 
 pacific current of her foreign affairs; for it is settled that she no 
 longer aims at the rank of a first-rate power, having seen that the 
 policy of peace is the true line of conduct for the maintenance and 
 
164 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 promotion of her commercial prosperity. The London Times struck 
 the key-note when it declared that England lives in a glass house, 
 and explained the figure of speech by admonishing her that she can 
 not pull a trigger without risking the loss of a customer. Peace 
 with her, means plenty; and trade, she calls commerce, for the hap 
 pier allusions which the terms can be made to convey, and there 
 upon claims credit for all the possible beneficence that may associate 
 itself with a world-wide trade intended primarily to make her the 
 "workshop of the world." 
 
 Voyages of discovery in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as 
 well as the crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth, claimed as their 
 purpose, and are still credited with, all the incidental advantages to 
 the pagan world which Providence has educed from the evil of 
 their motives and of the means employed with very different aims. 
 
 Foreign commerce is thoughtlessly taken to mean association ; 
 and such association to imply reciprocity, mutuality, aggregate 
 helpfulness, organization, unity, brotherhood, and all excellent 
 things in the charities of art and life. But association does not of 
 itself secure any such commerce or interchange of helpfulness. An 
 army is an association most effectively organized ; but, at what 
 expense to the individuals is the effect of combination secured! 
 Military authorities hold that the nearer men in arms can be re 
 duced to machines, the better for discipline and for battle. Indi 
 viduality is here utterly sacrificed for unity; combination is not the 
 free play of the natural relations and dependencies; the mutuality 
 is nothing but cohesion, and accordingly, the bread of bondage is 
 rations, bloodshedding is bravery, and the degradation of manhood 
 must be baptized glory. Let us not be deceived by words. Slavery 
 may lurk in human relations which do not obtrude the auction 
 block ; and combinations may be crushed masses, though made of 
 living men. Aggregation is not association. A sand stone is only 
 a hardened mass of granulated deposits, not a vitalized organism. 
 No union or communion or interchange of men meets or fulfills the 
 purpose of human existence, or provides for its well-being, that does 
 not give free play to all the faculties of each individual, and pro 
 mote their growth. In the light of this truth, commerce has its 
 true intent and meaning. 
 
 Now let us look at our subject with eyes wide open to all its 
 essential aspects. 
 
COMMERCE. 165 
 
 Its central and supreme meaning is in its directness and imrnedi- 
 ateness, which must rule all our thoughts and all our endeavors 
 concerning it. Correspondence by letters is an abridgment of 
 time, but the gain is offset by the difference in favor of personal in 
 tercourse. Quickened by the electric telegraph, it becomes instant 
 aneous, but still not personal, or in the true sense, immediate. The 
 tone and the touch, and the sympathetic adaptation of the parties, 
 are lost, and a message may be an offense or a failure, which a look 
 or a gesture would relieve or remove. Distance in place is in the 
 way, though that of time be annihilated. The communication is 
 still indirect. Mineral magnetism is not the equivalent of that 
 which is mental or personal. Steam and electricity are only good 
 against time, they are powerless upon space. If time were annihi 
 lated space would still be as great an impediment in itself as ever. 
 For all the purposes of commerce it is space that must be overcome. 
 Neighborhood in place is its only avoidance ; and, in whatsoever 
 relative locality is important, whether in the commerce of ideas, feel 
 ings, or the exchanges of services and their products, nearness is 
 the grand desideratum. In economic affairs therefore we must give 
 the first place to the 
 
 COMMERCE OF HOME. 
 
 And first of its magnitude, its value, and its necessity : 
 
 In such a country as ours, or any other as favorably situated 
 and as well provided with materials, labor, and art, it would not be 
 too much to say that, for life and its chief necessities, we have all 
 that we need, and could, without much detriment or diminution of 
 progress, dispense with foreign trade altogether. 
 
 National or political boundaries do not correspond to geographical 
 or climatic divisions, but commerce is, in one aspect, a national con 
 cern, and must be so considered. 
 
 Taking the time before the war of the Rebellion for the sake of 
 seeing the relative value of home and foreign trade, undisturbed, we 
 find the appraised value of all our foreign imports and exports of 
 merchandise, specie exports excluded, at the highest, fall short of 
 $652,000,000. The consumption of foreign imports in the highest 
 year (1860) per head was $10.80. The value of the domestic ex 
 ports were very exactly $10 per head. What are these amounts to 
 the value of the domestic exchanges of the year ? 
 
166 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 We have no official reports of the domestic trade of the several 
 portions of the Union which usually interchange products with 
 each other. The nearest approach to a very partial estimate is that 
 published by the Treasury Department in 1863, in which the 
 transit trade of the Allegheny Mountains and a line corresponding 
 to the central ridge extending northward to the Canada border, 
 and southward no farther than the Potomac River, or the northern 
 boundary of Virginia, puts the value of merchandise transported in 
 the trade between the Eastern and Western States in 1862 at eleven 
 hundred and thirty-eight millions. In this calculation nothing is 
 embraced but merchandise carried eastward and westward at least 
 three hundred miles, or only such goods as were carried from and 
 between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi Valley. Nothing 
 that was carried north and south, between the Atlantic States 
 nothing exchanged among themselves by the Western and North 
 western States. The usual inter-state trade of the Confederate States, 
 south and southwest, and between them and the north, east, and 
 west of the loyal States, were, of course, omitted ; those Southern 
 States being at the time at war with the loyal Union States. This 
 eleven hundred millions worth of through transit in a single direc 
 tion (East and West) is but as the drop of a bucket to the total 
 domestic exchanges in a time of peace and active business. 
 
 We may approach the total value of the commodities exchanged 
 at home by the fact that the products of industry in the Union for 
 the year 1860 were worth four thousand millions. 
 
 The imports for consumption of that year were three hundred 
 and thirty-five millions, or equal only to one-twelfth of the domes 
 tic products. Not all these domestic products, however, went into 
 market. The producers may be taken to have consumed one- 
 fifth, yet most of the goods thus consumed, though not sold for 
 money, were in fact exchanged for services of families and em 
 ployees, especially in agriculture, which now employs nearly half 
 the laborers of the nation. 
 
 We are warranted in our calculation that the domestic commerce 
 is, in money price, as ten to one of the foreign articles consumed in 
 the country. We do not, however, measure the economic value by 
 the market prices of the products of industry and traffic. Far 
 from it. In the United States but little raw material is imported 
 but little that affords the further profits of converting skill, or em- 
 
COMMERCE. 167 
 
 ploys labor and capital in reproduction. Nine-tenths of the mer 
 chandise imported goes directly into consumption. The wines and 
 liquors, the sugar, coffee, tea, jewelry, fancy dry goods, like the 
 toys and trinkets, never take the character of manufacturing stock 
 or materials. And such goods as iron, woolens, and cottons rather 
 displace home labor than furnish it with any form of employment. 
 
 The adepts in statistics, who occupy themselves especially with 
 the production and consumption of nations, and with their accumu 
 lations of wealth, labor and belabor their subject in all possible 
 ways, and failing of such agreement in results among themselves as 
 might commend their conclusions to the inexpert among their 
 readers and students, usually leave no confident or definite convic 
 tions upon the common understanding. The difficulty lies in the 
 want of reliable data for their calculations. In the matter of 
 foreign trade custom-house reports approach the truth, when quanti 
 ties are given, nearly enough for the statistician s use ; but where 
 only values are given, besides the fluctuations in prices, which 
 make wide departures from stable measurements or standards, 
 frauds also greatly increase the errors of fact. So that even among 
 the items of official authorization there is a damaging insecurity 
 a tickly-bender support for the footsteps of inquiry. 
 
 But in the investigation of home production and trade they are 
 all afloat. The European authorities who have, or ought to have, 
 the best means of information, are accustomed to make up their 
 estimates from their tax registers, such as excise duties, incomes, 
 probates of decedents estates, insurances, export values, invest 
 ments in stocks, and the like evidences or indications of business 
 affairs. The distances and difficulties which lie between such data 
 as these, and the results aimed at, it will be perceived are very 
 great, and the worth of the results, like the processes by which 
 they are obtained, is a matter of estimation. That they lack 
 assurance is evident from the fact that the highest authorities are 
 very far apart. One set, following Mr. Gladstone in English 
 wealth statistics, takes the income tax as the best basis ; another, 
 after McCulloch, relies upon the value of the exports to foreign 
 countries ; and a confused crowd of writers, such as Colquhoun, 
 Porter, and Levi, attach themselves to such other indicise as they 
 can find among the various signs of business activities. A moment s 
 reflection will show how inadequate and unsafe all these means of 
 
168 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 calculation must be. The income tax, for instance, is always, and 
 in all countries, infamous for its falsehoods and frauds; besides, if 
 it were faithful and true, according to the intent of the law, it 
 never goes beyond the minimum subject to assessments; as in 
 England, nothing below 100 per annum, and in the United States 
 below $1,000, is embraced, which in both cases leaves out the mass 
 of the earnings of the people, or at least the earnings of the mass 
 of the people. Then again, such a basis as the value of the exports to 
 foreign countries, on account of the vast variations of actual prices, 
 the indifference of customs officers to the declared value of goods 
 not charged with any export duty, the customary under valua 
 tions of such as are subject to ad valorem duties in the ports to 
 which they are consigned, and the multitude of other caprices and 
 tricks incident to trade, only affords at best comparative esti 
 mates of such foreign trade, and has nothing further to do with 
 domestic production, and nothing at all with the home consump 
 tion. Like thermometers, they might give, if they would, the rela 
 tive degrees of movement, but they can show nothing as to the 
 alsolute quantities or forces on which they rest. They have their 
 arbitrary zero, freezing, temperate, and boiling or bubble points 
 marked upon the mercurical -indicator, and so, some guess may be 
 had at the changes, but no knowledge is afforded of the absolute 
 condition of the thing that is changed. 
 
 In the United States, we have another method which has the 
 absolute for its object. Once in ten years we have an official valua 
 tion or appraisement of the accumulations of property, and of the 
 products of the next preceding year; but these assessments are 
 made in the first instance by a thousand different officials, who fix 
 prices and quantities upon such an immense variety of grounds that 
 the census bureau must revise the returns by the lights which its 
 chief officers can command. The estimates, averages, and guesses 
 of all these agents afford us results which we are not innocent 
 enough to believe in. 
 
 For a statement, in detail, of the sources of error in the decennial 
 census reports, and an estimate of their amount, the reader is re 
 ferred to our fifth chapter, (ante, p. 50). 
 
 Notwithstanding all these errors, which are all errors of defect, 
 and of large proportion to the true values, we get a fragment of 
 fact, a point or fraction of basis, from which we can restore the 
 
COMMERCE. 1G9 
 
 parts that are wanting sufficiently well for some purposes ; and 
 among the rest, for the inquiry now in hand, a safe estimate 
 may be made by taking care to keep within clearly reasonable 
 limits. 
 
 Under these cautionary guides, we take four thousand millions of 
 dollars to be the value, in first hands, of our present annual pro 
 duction of commodities. About the half of these are agricultural 
 and mining products. The half of these last are raw material for 
 our manufactures. The whole may be analyzed thus: one thousand 
 millions worth of agricultural products go without much further 
 change of form into consumption. Upon the other thousand mil 
 lions worth of agricultural and mining materials, labor and capital 
 are employed which double their ultimate value. (The average value 
 of the raw material of manufactures is given by the census of I860 
 at 53.26 per cent of the value of the products.) This gives us a 
 rough start of three thousand millions to which we may fairly add 
 a third for the values of products excluded by the minimum rule of 
 the census takers, and labor otherwise employed in production and 
 not embraced in any census schedules. 
 
 This surely is safely within the limits of our actual production of 
 commodities in the year 1860, which is twelve times the value of 
 our foreign imports for consumption (4000 -5- 335 12), and by a 
 sufficient deduction for products which were consumed by the pro 
 ducers, and which did not go into exchange in any way, the account 
 ^stands of domestic trade as ten to one in market price. 
 
 But be it remembered, by no means the same in economic value, 
 this market price in first hands, taken for comparison of the 
 respective values of foreign and domestic products in our exchanges, 
 leaves out of consideration, or as proportiouably equal, the transpor 
 tation of both,* and the occupation of merchants and profits of 
 
 * The exports of the United States to manufacturing countries in the fiscal year 
 1868-9, gold and silver exceptcd, were of the value of $250,000,000. At $125 per 
 ton, this would give two millions of tons, but not the half of this quantity ever 
 touched a railroad or canal on the way to the sea ports. The return merchandise 
 did not reach the amount of seven hundred thousand tons, and of this amount not 
 more than four or five hundred thousand tons came from the looms, workshops, 
 and iron mills of Europe thus one and a half millions of tons weight of transpor 
 tation upon our canals and railroads is enough to allow for the year s foreign 
 trade. But their total traffic amounted to sixty five million tons, and of this thy 
 foreign was certainly not more than two per cent. 
 12 
 
170 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 trade, all of which are manifestly unjust to the trade in domestic com 
 modities, for in the number of removals and of sales, and in the 
 amount of employment afforded by the primitive forms of things, 
 before they reach their ultimate marketable state, or are ready for 
 consumption, there is a vast difference. All these changes and ex 
 changes, with all their accompanying profits, have passed upon the 
 foreign goods before they enter our market, and they here go 
 through none of the stages of conversion for use prior to the point 
 at which they become the sole subject of the trader in finished 
 commodities. 
 
 Recollecting this difference against the economic value of foreign 
 imports generally, as they appear in. the markets of the United 
 States, let us approximately ascertain their status in this respect. 
 
 An examination of the imports of 1860 shows that fifty-seven 
 and one-half per cent of their value was in manufactured goods, 
 ready for distribution to consumers, and only forty-two and one-half 
 per cent in commodities of the kinds which are not native to our 
 own climate, such as spices, dye-stuffs, tropical fruits, coffee, tea, 
 tropical woods, medicines, gums, grasses, and wool coarser than we 
 grow at home. These were either materials for further conversion, 
 or supplementary to our own natural supplies, and thus indispens 
 able and legitimate subjects of international trade. 
 
 Our foreign import trade, therefore, which was clearly legitimate 
 and every way unexceptionable, amounted in value to only one 
 hundred and forty-two millions, exclusive of specie, which was as one 
 to twenty-three and one-half of the value of our domestic products 
 exchanged (3,350 m. -- 142 \ = 23). This latter amount is all 
 that we can logically set to the credit of our foreign import trade, 
 considered in its economic value to us. These goods came to us 
 from countries differing in climate, soil, and industrial products 
 from our own. They came not manufactured further than their 
 preservation and transportation required. They supplemented our 
 resources and ministered to our industries. 
 
 But the British and French dominions in Europe, with Ger 
 many, Holland, Belgium, Hamburg, and Bremen, sent us goods on 
 which the last touches of converting skill had already been ap- 
 
 Three hundred thousand immigrants were worth more to the transportation lines. 
 So much more valuable to the internal improvement interests of the country are 
 live men, than foreign commodities. 
 
COMMERCE. 171 
 
 plied. They were ready, ,not for reproduction , but finished for 
 consumption, and entered into our account, not as stock, but as 
 expenses, to the amount of $193,000,000. They consisted of such 
 articles as these : acids, bleaching powders, clocks and watches, 
 clothing, coal, dolls and toys, dressed furs, hats and bonnets, iron, 
 steel, laces and embroideries, lead, gloves, tanned and dressed 
 skins, sole and upper leather, linseed, essential oils, paints, paper, 
 printed books, salt, silk piece-goods and hosiery, soda, brandy, 
 spirits, wines, chinaware, and manufactures of cotton, wool, worsted, 
 flax, glass, gold, silver, hemp, iron and steel, lead, leather, paper, 
 wood, and zinc. In this list there are no articles which were not 
 of the value of a quarter of a million of dollars. The omitted 
 articles of less annual value are like those that are given all alike 
 of that character which were luxuries or fancy goods, or such as, . 
 while actually of prime necessity, were yet of a kind which home 
 labor and native materials would have afforded us, and jsvhich, as 
 imports, could have been dispensed with ; and they were liable to 
 the further and chief objection that, in the forms imported, they 
 displaced an equivalent value of our labor and capital, and actually 
 to such extent enforced an idleness of industry and enterprise 
 injurious far beyond the cost or the cash disbursed in their 
 purchase. 
 
 People talk of balances in international trade, which they find 
 in the footings of import and export values ; and they express the 
 difference in dollars, or francs, or pounds sterling. This is a sheer 
 misunderstanding of the subject. There is and can be no such 
 balances in money values between the exports and imports of a 
 nation s trade, further than the temporary differences in the trading 
 merchants accounts, which is nothing to the purpose for which it 
 is usually cited. But there is a balance of trade not seen in im 
 porting merchants accounts current, no matter how they stand with 
 their foreign correspondents a balance of vast importance to the 
 parties respectively a balance which nothing in book credits or 
 debits can settle a balance that tells long after the book accounts 
 are all evenly closed. It is a balance in the kind of trade, the kind 
 of exchanges, which is not in its nature measurable by money 
 values. A trade which inflicts a difference in the productive 
 power of a people which takes from them their self-supporting 
 labor, and aggravates the mischief of industrial dependency by all 
 
172 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the moral and social evil of feebleness, ignorance, and paralysis in 
 the industrial interests of the community this is a balance to be 
 deeply considered and vigilantly avoided. 
 
 There is a kind of labor that requires and employs but little 
 skill; -which employs and educates none but the lowest physical 
 powers of the laborer, and repays nothing beyond the means of a 
 mere animal subsistence a labor of slaves, and sure to enslave 
 whoever is doomed to it. There are other styles and kinds of labor 
 whose products are the necessities and enjoyments of the proper 
 human life, which, in their several grades, rising to the highest 
 known in the most advanced societies, employ and educate the 
 better and best and noblest of the human faculties, and repay, in 
 their rewards, a duly-proportioned wealth to those who command 
 and secure them. 
 
 There is evidently in the progress of things in the order of 
 Providence, working for the deliverance of men from the bondage 
 of animalism, and from its limitations in resources and enjoy 
 ments a constant endeavor to substitute the insensate forces of 
 nature for the drudgery of human beings, and to remit them by 
 the route, and through the regenerating power of education, from 
 one degree of skilled industry to another and a higher, until 
 emancipation shall be complete till toil shall no longer fail of its 
 best ends, or absorb any more of the life than is consistent with, 
 and promotive of, the highest style of life of which man is capable 
 on earth. 
 
 Money values are not the guides or governors in this policy of 
 industry, and the loss or gain of trade measured by the footings of 
 mercantile accounts, decides nothing of any moment in the ques 
 tion of welfare which tests the real loss or gain in all labor and 
 trade. 
 
 The world cannot afford more than an ox s wages for an ox s 
 work, or more than a slave s subsistence for his toil, which has no 
 higher aim for him than his mere subsistence; but the world can 
 afford to pay for, and finds its highest interest in employing and re 
 warding, the nobler ingredients in the work of production, which 
 the mind and morals of the laborer offer in the market. 
 
 All this difference lies between skilled and unskilled industry. 
 And in all the difference between the highest and lowest styles of 
 men, and between every degree in the long scale that divides them, 
 
COMMERCE. 173 
 
 there is a choice that concerns all forms and degrees of prosperity 
 to an individual and to a people. 
 
 An international trade that favors the development of a nation 
 in power, rank, and knowledge, takes for itself the character of a 
 natural exchange, and brings along with it all the blessings that 
 philosophers demonstrate, statesmen strive for, and orators and 
 poets glorify, in what they call commerce. 
 
 But foreign trade has another side or aspect, and that is the one 
 chiefly insisted upon by the cosmopolitans of Political Economy : 
 it opens markets for domestic production, widens and enlarges it, 
 they say, and besides, in effect, makes a universal fair of exchanges 
 for all varieties of commodities; barters surpluses in supply of 
 deficiencies; levels the hills and lifts the valleys of industrial facili 
 ties ; interchanges the superiorities of all parties, and gives each 
 the advantage of his own, and participation in that of every other ; 
 serving the aggregate man of all nations as the hand helps the foot, 
 and the eye supplements the ear, in the individual organism. 
 
 Very well : so far as international trade does this, and does no 
 mischief besides, it is just the legitimate commerce which reason 
 and policy commend and necessity itself commands. But is it not 
 plain that all these beneficent reciprocities absolutely imply at once 
 needful and helpful differences between the parties engaged in such 
 commerce ? The very terms of the proposition confine its claims to 
 exchanges of differences, lleduced to its directest logical form, 
 trade between distant regions means supplementary supplies, not 
 competitive traffic. It means the harmony of varieties, not the 
 domination of advantages. It means, if not equal, at least, common 
 benefits, in which each party finds his own interests promoted, with 
 no kind of loss or damage incurred. 
 
 Such trade is conditioned, not unconditional. It must be held in 
 keeping with its proper object. The broadest and most unvarying 
 condition is the necessity of importing whatever cannot be produced 
 on the spot ; in other words, with respect to natural products the 
 temperate zones must bring the exclusive products of the torrid and 
 frigid zones from the climates and soils which yield them, if they 
 would have them. We must get our finer furs from the north and 
 our spices from the south ; therefore, international trade, in the first 
 place must be across climates, as to the natural products of the 
 earth. Under this limitation, and to this extent, trade is supple- 
 
174 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 mentary, indispensable, unchangeable, and always free from intrusive 
 competition. 
 
 Here there is no dispute about its propriety, or its benefits. 
 
 But there are artificial products of labor and skill, which are not 
 marked by this distinction of character, under natural law. And 
 here lies the debatable ground, in which the theorists who set no 
 limit to trade, under their system of cosmopolitanism, differ world 
 wide from those who hold the very different doctrine that Political 
 Economy is a theory of productive power, and that its dogmas are 
 not universal and unconditional, but subject to conditions and 
 necessary adaptations to the exigencies of nations; or, in other words, 
 that, a true practical economy is national as opposed to universal. 
 These latter of course hold, or, consistently, should hold that Political 
 Economy is not properly a science, but a remedial and directory 
 system of policy, or expediency, variable with the varieties of the 
 cases and conditions to which it applies. 
 
 That it is not a science, as chemistry, music, physics, or astronomy, 
 are sciences, is obvious enough, when we call upon its professors for 
 first principles that would command universal assent when we 
 consult them for details of doctrine ; when we try their dogmas by 
 history, or by prophesy, or, when we ask them for a demonstrated 
 doctrine of civil government in respect to their department of 
 inquiry; for a system of currency; of taxation; of education ; for a 
 law distributing the products of industry between capital, skill, and 
 labor; for a philosophy of public benevolences, or, for any principles 
 in any way or degree regulative of industrial relations, or of rent, 
 interest, profits, pauperism, internal improvements, distribution of 
 productive functions, regulation of commodity exchanges, or for 
 any practical workings of the world s necessary business. 
 
 Would anything surprise or disgust the adepts of this so-called 
 science more than to ask them for a formula for the distribution of 
 the products of industry between the capitalist who supplies the 
 money, the skilled artisan who invents or directs the machinery, 
 and the drudge who supplies the muscular power of their joint 
 enterprise ? His system of words and disputes leaves all such mat 
 ters to settle themselves. The favorite avoidance of such a test is 
 to parade the impracticableness of his principles, as a first principle 
 of his science! He tells you that the law of competition (as if 
 competition were not in itself the veriest lawlessness) will take 
 
COMMERCE. 175 
 
 care of the rewards of capital, skill and labor that, in effect, 
 strife, to the exhaustion of the strivers, is the way to harmony and 
 happiness, or that chaos, without the creative word of control, 
 must ferment itself into orderly form. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson said that a pure and simple democracy is the 
 devil s own government. To this pure democracy in government, 
 without constitutional law, without order, rank, or distribution, and 
 limitation of functions, pure and free competition, in industry and 
 trade, exactly corresponds ; and, accordingly, the last best authority 
 among the French economists of the trader s school, declares that, 
 u if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, 
 in a word, consumption, we cannot fail to find that Competition is 
 to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material 
 one/ 7 Frederick jBastiat, Sophisms of Protection, chap. iv. 
 
 Setting aside, then, those natural and necessary exchanges which 
 the laws of soil and sunshine compel, let us examine the principles 
 and policy which should rule in the trade which has artificial 
 objects for its subjects. These, under certain modifications, may be 
 produced anywhere and everywhere; and the practical question 
 arises as to them, under what circumstances should their production 
 be limited to any one region in preference to another, and where, 
 when, and why should the peculiar advantage of their manufacture 
 be neglected by one people and enjoyed by another ? 
 
 The best general answer to these questions is, that such division 
 should obtain just where it must, and only when it must, and so 
 long as it must, of necessity, be so ; which brings us to the still 
 broader declaration that foreign trade is rightfully a matter of 
 compulsion, and never of absolutely free choice. 
 
 This is the law of interchange under climatic necessities. Why 
 not also the law under circumstances which equally allow and 
 enforce it? liightly speaking, there is no such thing as free 
 foreign trade, except as lawlessness gets the name of freedom, or as 
 men are free to violate law. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 TRADE BETWEEN NATIONS IN DIVERSE GEOGRAPHIC AND 
 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 
 
 Systems merely remedial must vary with all changes of their subjects. Political 
 Economy limited to national interests. A logic-built system suited only to 
 conditions in which no system at all is needed. The let-alone theory in place 
 there. Where there is anything at risk, or any choice of policy, self-defense 
 and self-direction are demanded. "Free Trade" allowed while it favors growth, 
 but forbidden when it restricts home industry. Exchange values may rule 
 consumption, but may not ruin productive industry. Prosperity, not prices, 
 rightfully governs policy. Conditions which require foreign trade. A warring 
 trade requires a philosophy of conquest. The British system in history. Our 
 exports in 1860 kinds one-eighth of manufactures, seven-eighths raw com 
 modities. Two classes of American agriculturists broadly distinguished. Our 
 farmers export but two per cent of their products our planters, seventy-five 
 per cent of theirs. Cotton looks to foreign trade, and not to the interest of the 
 laborers or of any other national industry. Cotton has no patriotism 
 always a rebel. Husbandry loyal to all other industries. An additional half 
 million of people at home would consume all our foreign exports. These 
 exports always of- the coarsest and least profitable kinds of our products. 
 Superiority of the homo market. Consuming cost of transportation. The cry 
 for immigrants means the want of a near and constant market. Rivalry in 
 our foreign market for breadstufFs. British islands our only European market 
 for breadstufFs and provisions. Great and rapid changes in the European 
 demand. Our share in England s supplies. Ruinous fluctuations in prices. 
 Home consumption of wheat. England takes one peck per head ; we consume 
 five bushels. Aggregate of exports to all Europe. Exports of tobacco. Only 
 thirty-six per cent of our farmers exports go to Europe; sixty-four per cent 
 to non-manufacturing countries. Importance of the whither and the what we 
 export. The natural drift plainly indicated. Uncertainty, insignificance, and 
 unprofitableness of the market commended to us by the trader theory. The 
 larger quantities are always at the lower prices. lleflex effect of foreign upon 
 home prices. General Jackson on diversification of American industries and 
 on foreign markets for our products. General Grant s concurrence after a 
 lapse of forty years. Extended domestic manufactures would dispense with 
 the worthless foreign demand. 
 
 TAKING the ground that, a system of economy for the direction 
 of a nation s business cannot be uniform or universal in its provi- 
 176 
 
177 
 
 sions that, it is only remedial and directory in its nature, like 
 medicine and civil government, or anything else that has disorder 
 to deal with, and changefulness in the character of its subjects and 
 objects that, it must be guided by expediency that, its most gen 
 eral principles must be accommodated to exigences, and that, there 
 fore, it must necessarily accept the presently practicable, as it stag 
 gers on through expediencies toward the far-off absolute; and, that, 
 its very best and wisest rules wear out in the work which they direct; 
 we, of course, expect that in every difference of conditions ainoug 
 different peoples, and, at every step of progress in the onward march 
 of the same people, a different measure and movement must be taken ; 
 changing with all changes of economic and social conditions, and 
 constant only in the effort of adaptation. 
 
 Surely, it is not too much to say that, a system of national econ 
 omy is properly concerned with its own concerns; and that it must 
 take care of itself, if for no other reason, because no other nation 
 will or can. Accordingly, there can be no universal system for the 
 government of the economic concerns of all the vast varieties of 
 nations. 
 
 There are now existing in the world tribes of men in the savage 
 state; others in the pastoral; others purely agricultural; others 
 mixed agricultural and manufacturing ; arid others who are agricul 
 tural, manufacturing, and commercial; and all these are yet further 
 varied by their respective degrees of advancement in each of these 
 classes. Moreover, some of them occupy the frigid, some the tor 
 rid, and some the temperate zones; with their capabilities and their 
 destinies, either inflexibly fixed, or greatly influenced, by climatic 
 laws. Nor are national differences of character to be overlooked. 
 They are not all equally capable of everything, nor of the same 
 things. The races of men cannot be treated as homogeneous and 
 equal in all things with which economic systems are concerned. 
 Nay, the very same people, if favorably situated, in a temperate 
 climate, with a sufficient extent of country, and variety of industrial 
 agencies and resources, must, in the progress of growth, pass through 
 all the stages, from the simplest agriculture up to the most perfect 
 and complete diversification of productive industry and iuternationa. 
 trade. 
 
 Now, no code of doctrinal or practical economy can be true for 
 all differences of condition in which communities of men are actually 
 
178 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 found; and no system will apply to the same people in circumstances 
 materially changed. 
 
 Within the Arctic circle and between the Tropics, there is such 
 constancy of conditions imposed by climate and soil ; such fixed and 
 narrow limits of industrial enterprise, and, withal, their inhabitants 
 are so far removed from the class of progressive nations they have so 
 little possibility of growth and its incident changes in themselves 
 under the present rule of the world s affairs that they can have a 
 logical law of industrial life a permanent political economy, simply, 
 because they need no theoretical system at all. A people that cannot 
 diversify their industry, or increase its effectiveness, depend upon, 
 and are confined to, a natural monopoly of their special products ; 
 and that condition of things takes the government of their affairs 
 out of their hands. They are helpless ; and the system of political 
 economy which prescribes nothing but competition, and denies and 
 refuses all helpfulness, is exactly the doctrine for them. Their fate 
 and fortunes are at the disposal of the governing nations around 
 them; their dependence upon foreign trade and foreign influence is 
 absolute, for all that is possible above the savage for them. This, 
 by the way, is the sum and substance of the let-alone philosophy. 
 But nations occupying the temperate regions, well provided for pro 
 gress, and with a future before them, have their fate and fortunes 
 to make or mar by their own management. They are in necessary 
 rivalry with the whole historic belt of the earth s surface. They 
 are exposed to military conquest, to political domination, and to in 
 dustrial vassalage to their competitors, of equal powers and similar 
 ambitions and aspirations as their own ; and it is their right, as it is 
 their duty, sanctioned by every principle of natural morality and 
 international law, to regulate their domestic concerns, and manage 
 them in their own way, for their own benefit. 
 
 An agricultural people, at a very early stage, will profit greatly by 
 unrestricted trade with a manufacturing people. But this rule holds 
 not a moment longer, nor a step farther, than such trade ministers 
 best to their own growth in all things that make the well-being of 
 a people; which may be stated, to our purpose, thus: Commerce 
 with superiors is a benefit, even a necessity, up to that point where 
 it begins to repress advancement of the inferiors, and then it must 
 be restricted or ended. 
 
 Legitimate trade is reciprocity, qot dependence and domination,. 
 
THE FARMERS QUESTION. 179 
 
 In nature and reason it is only supplementary to domestic produc 
 tion. Its broad highway is north and south, across climates, not 
 along them east and west. For the rest the accidental, the tempo 
 rary, and circumstantially unavoidable it is the mutual supply of 
 the things in which the respective parties are necessarily deficient, 
 or of which they are at the time incapable. So long only as they 
 are incapable, any people may properly and profitably exchange 
 their coarser labor in the form of raw materials and provisions with 
 foreign manufacturers, or, until their own labor and capital can pro 
 duce them; that is, exchange values may rule a nation s policy of 
 trade while such trade promotes productive power and general pros 
 perity. When trade begins to cripple production in kinds, qualities, 
 or value, it must be subordinated. All of which means that man, 
 not prices, is the proper object and ruling consideration in commerce. 
 Being compelled to dispose of theoretical dogmas which confront us 
 with an authority that is held to be respectable, and is known to be 
 influential, we return from an enforced digression to examine that 
 aspect of foreign trade which lays its claim to the advantages which 
 it affords to domestic industry by giving it an extension of its mar 
 kets. There can be no question of its claims in this respect in a 
 country like England a country which depends in an important 
 degree for its food upon others having more abundant and cheaper 
 agricultural products. Such trade is a necessity of their industrial 
 system. An island that may be covered with a thimble on any good- 
 sized map of the world, determined to make itself mistress of the 
 seas, supreme in the maritime carrying trade, and at the same time 
 " the workshop of the world," must have a philosophy to fit its am 
 bition ; and needs to have its system accepted by its tributaries. It 
 needs a foreign system of cheap labor to sustain its own of higher 
 rewards ; and it needs to have a supporting and conforming policy 
 to keep up the required drainage of the pauperism which results 
 from its struggle to underwork its customer nations. To these ends 
 its civil government has, for two centuries, bent all its energies; and 
 now, for about a hundred years, it has been indoctrinating the out 
 side world of barbarians with a philosophy exactly corresponding to 
 its own governing policy. Favorably situated for merchandising, it 
 pushes trade one while by force of arms, at another by colonization, 
 and always, by the rivalries of production, pressed to their utmost 
 possibilities, regardless of consequences at home and abroad; and 
 
180 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 along with these forms of force, carries on an effective system of 
 proselytism which intends submission of opinion to their policy of 
 industrial domination an instance of political economy being in 
 fact national, in purpose and service, and not a whit the less so for 
 its disguise of universality. But how does this British system suit 
 its industrial tributaries ? How has it suited, in time past, its col 
 onies in America how has it suited Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, 
 and the East Indies? 
 
 We cannot and need not enter into this history. Let us see how 
 it stands in relation to the United States in existing circumstances. 
 We take the fiscal year 1860 (ending June 30th), as in our previous 
 data, for the reasons, that it was the year of our greatest foreign 
 trade up to that date exceeding the average of the previous five 
 years by twenty per cent ; the prices were fair ; the valuations were 
 at the standard of gold; and, for the additional reason that, it was 
 the year to which the census returns closely apply, embracing, as 
 they did, the latter half of 18G9 and the first half of 1860. 
 
 In that year our domestic exports, exclusive of the precious met 
 als, amounted to three hundred and sixteen millions of dollars, at 
 custom house valuation. 
 
 These exports consisted of agricultural products, animal and veg 
 etable, no further altered from their primitive forms than is neces 
 sary for their preservation and transportation beyond seas, to the 
 amount of fifty millions; (of these $45,250,000 in breadstuffs and 
 provisions); the products of the sea and the forests in like condi 
 tion, to the value of eighteen millions; of raw cotton, one hundred 
 and ninety-two millions ; raw tobacco, sixteen millions an aggre 
 gate of two hundred and seventy-six millions ; and of manufactures 
 of all kinds, a fraction less than forty millions ; which figures give 
 us twelve and one-half per cent, or one-eighth, of the value of our 
 total domestic exports in manufactures, and seven-eighths in such 
 goods as were parted with, as nearly as possible, in their primitive 
 forms. Of these manufactures, it is to be noted, moreover, that 
 there were less than six millions in all forms of iron and steel; just 
 two millions of copper, brass and lead ; and of cotton fabrics, less 
 than eleven millions; of leather, and of hemp manufactures, less 
 than two millions; of tallow caudles, soap, and spirits from grain, 
 and of lard and linseed oil, a million and a half; of woolens nothing 
 worth a place among the enumerated articles, and of bread and bis- 
 
THE FARMERS QUESTION. 181 
 
 cuit, half a million ; and, nothing else that concerns the farming 
 interests of the country except three and a third millions worth of 
 segars and snuff eighteen millions, all told, of manufactures from 
 materials furnished by our farmers and planters ; or, the foreign 
 trade in these articles made an additional market at home for one- 
 half this value in raw materials. 
 
 Our planters and farmers found markets abroad that year for raw 
 cotton, rice, and raw tobacco, and for breadstuff s and provisions to 
 the value of two hundred and fifty-eight millions. 
 
 The products of farming and planting that year amounted in 
 value to full twenty-five hundred millions. They had a foreign mar 
 ket for ten and five-eighths per cent of their products in money 
 value. 
 
 But there are distinct interests involved in the form of the state 
 ment : the agriculturists, other than those who cultivated cotton, as 
 miners dig for gold, for the products which exhaust the sources of 
 supply, and who had no policy beyond the current profit of their 
 pursuit, must be distinguished from those whose business links them 
 into the closest connection with the industries around them who 
 must secure a steady and sufficient market against competition every 
 where confronting them, and must, at the same time, husband and 
 improve the source of their supplies as gold-diggers cannot do, and 
 cotton-planters will not. Our farmers proper had a product worth 
 twenty-three hundred millions of dollars, of which the foreign mar 
 ket took from them but fifty-nine millions worth, or two and one-half 
 per cent, or one in forty dollars worth. 
 
 The cotton growers crop amounted to 5,198,077 bales, of which 
 foreign nations purchased 3,812,345, or nearly seventy-five per 
 cent. They found a home market for $61,000,000, and a foreign 
 market for $192,000,000 worth. Here we have a vast difference 
 in the respective interests of the planter and farmer in our foreign 
 trade showing, again, the necessity of attending to the specialties 
 of the many and dissimilar subjects of commercial exchanges. 
 These differences are so great and so important that we can but 
 suggest and submit them for reflection. Cotton, for instance, held 
 foreign relations threefold stronger than its interests at home. Its 
 rule favored neither the laborers employed by it, nor the prosperity 
 of any other national industry. It produced upon the planter none 
 of the distinguishing influences which arc expressed in the good 
 
182 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 old name of husbandman, as applied to the tiller of the soil who 
 depends upon it for exhaustless support. Ifc made the cultivator 
 nomadic by its exhaustiveuess. It compelled him to be an annexa- 
 tionist of new territory. Cotton had no patriotism. It was cosmo 
 politan in all its instincts and interests, for it was a monopolist. It 
 looked to its markets, and knew nothing but money values. It had 
 no impulses that could make its system one that can be governed 
 by the leading idea of productive power. It was exhaustive of its 
 soil, of its labor, and, eventually, of itself. It had, as a special and 
 exclusive industry, all the qualities and characters that made it 
 look to foreign trade for its sales, and for all its purchasers. It was 
 the very ideal of a system of exports and imports, and, therefore, 
 so far was it from embracing the harmonies of all industrial inter 
 ests that it warred upon them all. It was, from the day it achieved 
 its supremacy in commerce and crowned itself king, in a constant 
 commercial rebellion against the republicanism of diversified labor. 
 Such, indeed, is the character of every isolated pursuit; such is 
 the history of all mining countries that ever obtained the mastery 
 of the world s trade. They would not consider the interests of any 
 industry unless it could be made a tributary. Men are nothing to 
 them but instruments of production, and, the Providence, which 
 we call the world s policy of business, naturally destroys them. 
 
 It is not so with husbandry. In its simplest forms it cannot 
 even maintain its own rights and liberties ; and it never can grow 
 into strength and maturity but in harmony and interdependence 
 with all the other forms of diversified production. It prospers in 
 a fair copartnership of interests, and has no tendencies against 
 fairly distributed and mutually beneficial industries. 
 
 But, let us return to the value of foreign trade as affording a 
 market to the people of the United States. The foreign consump 
 tion of our agricultural products, as we have seen, at the highest 
 figure which they ever reached before the time of our civil war, 
 amounted to about two per cent of the annual product. They 
 were taken by the foreign consumers to the value of barely such 
 an amount as would have been consumed by an additional number 
 of people at home equal to one forty-eighth of our population, or 
 about 640,000 people. The exports so taken were necessarily of 
 the cheapest, coarsest, and least profitable of the products of our 
 soil. They were such as grow upon land worth from five to thirty 
 
FARMERS QUESTION. 183 
 
 dollars per acre, arid which cannot be produced in surplus abund 
 ance on land worth more. They are bulky, and are of kinds that, 
 after bearing all the cost of transportation, are sure to meet the 
 rival products of every semi-barbarous country in the great 
 markets of the world which they seek. The other products of 
 land which will not bear distant carriage, in a home market bring 
 prices which makes all the difference in the value of lands near a 
 great city as contrasted with that of the prairies of the remote 
 West. 
 
 One more carpenter, blacksmith, shoemaker, or other artisan, in 
 every township in the United States, would give a larger, surer, 
 better market to its farmers than all the foreign world ever did, or 
 ever can afford them. Distance at home of two or three hundred 
 miles, eats up half the value of their produce though they have the 
 entire market of the country to themselves. It costs the price of 
 one bushel of wheat, when it is at seventy-five cents per bushel, to 
 send another from central Illinois to Liverpool; and sometimes, corn 
 in the ear is used in the more distant localities for fuel, because it 
 will pay nothing, beyond the cost of carriage, in the eastern cities 
 of the Union. Shall a foreign market be sought for, in the face of 
 all its uncertainties and expensiveness, to the neglect of a system 
 which will provide a home consumption steady, and certainly remu 
 nerative ? 
 
 The effort to promote immigration from Europe, now stirring the 
 people of every region at the shortest distances from our sea-board 
 cities, is testimony to the truth and force of the views here pre 
 sented. The cry is for labor, indeed, but the no less important want 
 is, for home consumers. A working man is all the more welcome if 
 he brings with him a family of four or five persons to feed and 
 clothe. 
 
 In the President s message of December 6, 1869, we find, involved 
 in a few sentences of the plainest practical recommendation to 
 Congress upon the subject of the nation s industrial interests, a 
 complete exposition of, and directory for, the conduct of our foreign 
 trade. lie says " the extension of railroads*in Europe and the East 
 is bringing into competition with our agricultural products like pro 
 ducts of other countries." 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the character and value of the 
 European market for our breadstuffs in a past period, long enough 
 
184 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 to take in its usual fluctuations. Inasmuch as we have no sale for our 
 breadstuffs in Europe except in the British Islands all the other 
 European countries needing foreign supplies, receiving them from 
 near neighbors, Russia, Prussia, France, and the Turkish dominions 
 we have the data for our purpose unusually compact and accurate 
 in matters of this kind : we have the British official reports, and 
 from them we give the facts. We quote the British " Statistical 
 Abstract" of the year 18GG, page forty-two, which gives the total 
 imports into the United Kingdom for fifteen years from 1851 to 
 1865, inclusive; a period that covers the ordinary range of good and 
 bad British harvests, commercial troubles, and includes, besides, the 
 two years Crimean War (March 1854 to April 1856). The quan 
 tities are given in hundred weights, gross ; the flour being reduced 
 to its equivalent in wheat, and thus included in the aggregates. 
 We shall use the more familiar measure expressed in bushels, in 
 rendering the statement. 
 
 In the first place, we see the unsteadiness of demand in the wide 
 range of the total imports from all countries ; twenty-six millions of 
 bushels being the amount in the lowest year and ninety-three mil 
 lions in the highest. In only four of these fifteen years did the 
 import rise above fifty-six millions; the average of the other eleven 
 years, selected for their nearer agreement, being forty-one millions ; 
 and even these fluctuated from twenty-six to forty-five and one-half 
 millions. 
 
 Not only the great range of fluctuation in the demand, which in 
 one of these years was three and a half times greater than in the lowest 
 of seven years before, but the suddenness of the changes are specially 
 noteworthy: in a single year varying from twenty-three millions to 
 forty-two millions ; in another year, from ninety-three to fifty-seven 
 and, to add, if anything can add, to the uncertainties of such a 
 market, by fa*r the lowest average imports of any two consecutive 
 years in this period, were those of the Crimean War. These points 
 exhibit the fearful unreliableness of a market for a product that 
 must be sown and prepared for it, a year before it must meet its fate. 
 
 But our share of the risk runs even tenfold wilder than that of 
 the general demand. In 1855 the United Kingdom took from us 
 800,000, in 1860, 17,221,546, and in 1865, 2,629,347 bushels of 
 wheat and its equivalent in flour; and in respect to our distributive 
 share of the supply; in 1851 we furnished seventeen per cent of the 
 
THE FARMERS QUESTION. 185 
 
 total import; in 1860, twenty-nine per cent, and in 1865, five and 
 three-quarters per cent. While, as if to expose still more surprisingly 
 the capriciousness of this trade, in 1864, the worst year of our 
 Rebellion, for such a calculation, we sent them thirty-five per cent 
 of their total foreign receipts. 
 
 The only other grain to be considered is our maize or Indian corn. 
 The British import account stands thus: in 1865, total imports, 
 seven millions cwts. of this, from the Turkish .dominions, over 
 three millions ; from the United States, one and three-quarter mil 
 lions. In 1864, from Turkish dominions, three and two-third mil 
 lions ; from the United States, 294,263. In 1859, 14,417 cwts. 
 from United States, and from European countries, 5,618,727. In 
 1861 we sent them 7,385,718 cwts., or 512 times more than in 
 1859, and in 1864 they took from us twenty-five times less than in 
 1861, and twenty times more than in 1859 ! 
 
 Now look at the variance of prices for our breadstuffs in London : 
 our wheat brought 83s. 9d. per quarter of eight imperial (equal to 
 something over eight and one-quarter of our bushels) in 1855; 
 in 1864, 40.9. 5d. per quarter, and in the intermediate years various 
 rates between these prices ; at the former price taking 3,609,583 
 bushels, at the latter 18.811,204, being about $2.44 per American 
 bushel at the highest, and $1.18 at the lower rate, put down in 
 Liverpool or London; cost of freight, commissions, insurance and 
 profits of all intermediate dealers included. The average of this 
 wide range of prices for our wheat was $1.45 per American bushel 
 in the English markets. The average quantity per annum, eighteen 
 and one-eighth millions of bushels, and the variance of quantity 
 was, in the lowest year, 803,607 bushels, and in the highest, 
 9,100,707 the former in 1859, the latter in 1862, which latter 
 extraordinary quantity brought but $1.47 per bushel, as against the 
 average of British wheat in the same year, $1.63. 
 
 Our own population consumes five bushels of wheat per head 
 per annum, 31,000,000 of persons, our number in 1860, giving a 
 market for 155,000,000 bushels. 
 
 The British official reports of imports from the United States for 
 the four years 1865-8 show the effects of the railroad system in 
 Europe in lessening our market there for wheat and flour in most 
 remarkable figures. In the four years 1861-4 they imported from 
 us 59,322,160 cwt. forty-four and one-third per cent of their total 
 13 
 
186 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 import; from all other countries, 74,555,294. But in the four 
 years 1865-8 they took from us but 16,522,509 cwt. only twelve 
 and three-quarters per cent, and from other countries 113,297,- 
 549 cwt., which was eighty-seven and one-quarter per cent of the 
 total. Here, then, we have our average cut down from 18.500.000 
 bushels per annum in the eight years preceding 1865. to 7.727,837 
 in the four years since; or, the population of the British islands 
 are now consuming one peck of our wheat per head per annum. 
 
 The home consumption of five bushels per head, with a protec 
 tion of twenty cents per bushel against the wheat of Canada, and 
 an immigration now able to consume our whole surplus, is surely 
 a market better worth striving for, and securing by a policy of 
 domestic industry, which is now increasing this home market at an 
 unprecedented rate. 
 
 We have made our arithmetical demonstration of the insecurity 
 and insignificance of our only European market for breadstuffs on 
 wheat and flour alone. In respect to provisions of all other kinds, 
 which are among the transportable products of agriculture, the 
 same story may be told. 
 
 To illustrate and prove this we need only refer to our own report 
 of Commerce and Navigation for the fiscal year 1859-60 the 
 greatly largest year of our foreign trade previous to the commence 
 ment of our civil war. In that year we exported to British Europe, 
 of farm products proper, to the value of only $18,100.762, and 
 imported from them articles identical with, or corresponding to 
 these exports of the value of 83,902,535, leaving, when deducted, 
 a market for no more than 814,198,227. The commodities here 
 embraced were breadstuffs and provisions of all kinds, hides, tallow, 
 leather, oils, lard, wool, ashes, oil-cake, wax, seeds, hops, oats, 
 spirits, and other raw materials. If we add lumber in all forms 
 ($709,312) we have in round numbers agricultural exports for the 
 year amounting to 815,000,000. 
 
 France, which is herself a large exporter of agricultural pro 
 ducts, of course did still less. The aggregate value of all similar 
 articles which she took from us that year amounted to barely 
 $1,568,295, and to all Europe beside less than another million and 
 a half all told, about $18,000,000 worth of farm products proper. 
 
 Cotton and tobacco are not included in these amounts, and if 
 the latter claims a place on account of the growing culture by our 
 
THE FARMERS QUESTION. 187 
 
 farmers, as part of their varied crops, then $16,000,000 covers the 
 total export in leaf, and $3,375,000, manufactured. 
 
 To get another view of our foreign markets, and of their value to 
 our own agriculture, it is worth while to note that in the fiscal year 
 1859-60, our total exports of breadstuffs and provisions were $38,- 
 858,086, and of these there went to all manufacturing countries in 
 Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and 
 the Free cities) just $13,952,988, or thirty-six per cent of the total; 
 the balance being taken by non-manufacturing countries in the East 
 ern hemisphere, and in America. Seventy-seven per cent of our leaf 
 tobacco also went to agricultural countries, making together $31,750,- 
 000 to those with whom we have no rival industries, while $31,500,000 
 went to the peoples whom we designate as manufacturing, because 
 our imports from them are such as displace our own products of the 
 like kinds. 
 
 Is it not well, as a farmer s question, to analyze our foreign trade 
 in exports, that we may the better understand how far and where 
 our interests lie in the direction of raising raw materials for foreign 
 trade ? Leaving out tobacco and cotton we had in our best year of 
 foreign trade a market for agricultural raw materials of all kinds of 
 less than twenty millions, among all the nations to which the trade 
 theorists resign us for our supply of the things which employ skilled 
 labor; and if we add tobacco, the sum is but $31,500,000. The 
 non-manufacturing countries took from us thirty-two millions worth 
 of our manufactures, while the rest of the world took a little less 
 than eight millions worth. Leaving cotton out of the account, the 
 non-manufacturing nations took from us $63,750,000 of our total 
 exports of commodities, other than gold and silver, and the manu 
 facturing peoples took $53,750,000. Which way lies our trade as 
 indicated by our exchanges of farming products with the rest of 
 the world ? 
 
 Again : our imports for that year from non-manufacturing coun 
 tries amounted to forty-two and four-tenths per cent, or seven-six 
 teenths of the whole. Legitimate trade thus far asserted itself in 
 spite of the unfavorable policy which invited our industrial rivals to 
 disturb it. 
 
 The farming interest, so persistently appealed to for the support 
 of a system that assigns to us the function of supplying food and 
 raw material for the higher styles of production in other countries, 
 
188 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 we need only point to the fact that the policy never gave them cus 
 tomers abroad for more than twenty millions worth of their special 
 products never gave them a promise reliable for even that much, 
 or half that much, in time to provide for it and always, the quan 
 tity so far influenced the price, that the actual profit is exceedingly 
 questionable. The trade in this respect has this complexion : in the 
 four years, 1854-7, when our wheat averaged two dollars per bushel, 
 in London they took 38,764,581 bushels, but when they took in the 
 four years, 18614, 110,734,715 bushels, the price averaged one 
 dollar and forty cents. See the difference : at the higher price, 
 9,500,000, and at the lower, 27,500,000 bushels, per annum. 
 
 We cannot settle the profits of this trade, as they fall into the 
 hands of the merchant exporters, factors and other middlemen; but 
 we are clear that wherever the farmer gets the foreign market for 
 the larger quantity, it is at the cost of the lower price ; and, when 
 ever the higher prices rule in England, he is reduced in his sales to 
 about one-third of the quantity, as in the instances last cited. 
 
 But some one will say it is the surplus of production only that 
 is so transported, and at any price, it is so much gain or escape of 
 loss. Not so. If 81.40 in London means seventy cents to the 
 farmer in the West, the reaction of the London price cuts down that 
 of all that is retained or sold in the home market, and the foreign 
 sales take off never so much as thirty millions from the annual crop 
 which ordinarily rises to at least one hundred and seventy-five mil 
 lions . So, if they get at this rate for the whole crop $122,500,000, and 
 the reflected effect of the foreign sales cuts down the price of all but 
 fifteen cents per bushel, the total exportation is a dead loss; it might 
 as well be cast into the sea, or far better, fed to horses and hogs at 
 home; for one hundred and seventy-five million bushels at seventy 
 cents, is worth no more than one hundred and forty-five millions 
 at eighty-five cents. 
 
 From all which it appears now, as it did in 1824 when General 
 Jackson wrote his Coleman letter, where *he asks: "What is the 
 real situation of the American agriculturist? Where has the 
 American farmer a market for his surplus products ? Except for 
 cotton he has neither a home nor a foreign market. Take, [he con 
 tinues,] from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand 
 men, women and children, and you will at once give a home market 
 for more breadstuff s than all Europe now furnishes us." 
 
THE FARMERS QUESTION. 189 
 
 The condition of the country is so far changed now, that General 
 Grant points to the home market as the only reliable one, and indi 
 cates the causes at work which will speedily destroy even the 
 insignificant outlet which has heretofore been found in the only 
 country in Europe where we ever sold any breadstuff s and provisions 
 at all. Jackson wrote his letter in 1824. Forty-five years have, in a 
 good measure, taken away one limb of Jackson s complaint, by 
 setting in operation, to a great extent, the remedy he prescribed. 
 The home market is tolerably well built up ; and it remained only 
 for President Grant to warn us that the foreign reliance is rapidly 
 getting worse, and to urge the maintenance and extension of the 
 system of domestic manufactures which will enable us to dispense 
 with it, without any detriment by deprivation. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 
 
 Political Economy not a science; opinions of Daniel Webster and Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. J. B. Say s work prohibited by Napoleon. The labor interests of 
 the continent of Europe defended against Great Britain. " Industry & property." 
 Lord Brougham and Joseph Hume would strangle foreign manufactures in their 
 cradle. British capital the instrument, of warfare against foreign competition. 
 HISTORY of protection and free trade in the experience of the United States. 
 Variety and extent of our territory, composition of our population. British 
 restrictions of colonial industry. Manufactures freed and fostered by the war 
 of the Revolution ; their great progress ; Hamilton s Report in 1791 ; they perish 
 for want of protection between 1783 and 1789. Testimony of Dr. Williamson, 
 John Marshall, Ramsey, Belknap and Madison. Protection avowed in the first 
 tariff act of the first Federal Congress. Washington on the results of protection. 
 The continental wars, from 1793 to 1815, with our embargo, non-importation 
 act, and our own war of 1812 effectually defended our manufactures. Con 
 gressional report of 1815 proves their prosperity. Slight advance in the ensuing 
 thirty years. The free trade period, 1816 to 1824, ending in universal dis 
 tress. The evils all remedied by protection from 1824 to 1832. Character of 
 these tariff acts. Tariff for protection proved to be most productive of rev 
 enue. Faults, and resulting mischief of the protection theory at this period. 
 Act of 1832 gave us the first well-principled free list; discharge of the national 
 debt; surplus in the treasury; reduction of income attended by reduction of 
 customs rates the free trade theory of that day. The directly contrary 
 doctrine of the free traders in 1846 and 1856. The same party now again 
 returns to the doctrine of 1832, which is once more refuted by the high 
 rates of 1861-71 as it was in 1824-32; the nullification era, and the sur 
 render of protection. Capital and labor driven from the Eastern to the 
 Western States. Enormous increase of the sales of the public lands. Great 
 reduction of the customs, bankruptcy of the people and of the Treasury. In 
 crease of imports and inflation of bauk eredir% and currency. Inflation of the 
 currency due to excess of imports; never did or could happen under adequate 
 protection. " Periodic " financial and business revulsions due to free trade. 
 Consequences of the Compromise Act bring about another change of commer 
 cial policy, and give us the protective tariff of 1842. Change from specific to 
 ad valorem duties in 1846. Consequent unsteadiness of its protective provisions. 
 Temporary reliefs from the European famine of 1848 ; the Crimean War of 1854 ; 
 discoveries of gold in 1850 and the excessive production and export of Southern 
 staples. A sufficient success of the protective rates, thus corroborated, once 
 more invites the overthrow of the protective policy. The reduced rates of the aet 
 190 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 191 
 
 of 1857 precipitate the issue, and the revulsion and specie suspension of 1857 fol 
 low. A greater and a worse revulsion prevented by the great Rebellion of 
 1S61 grounds of this opinion. The Morrill tariff and amendments. The 
 national industry defended and sustained; the expenditures of the war pro 
 vided; the public debt greatly reduced; the threatened collapse of the country 
 postponed six years; the Treasury overflowing, and, another pretext provided 
 for the ruinous policy of free trade. 
 
 THE reader of these papers will have noticed, perhaps, with some 
 surprise, and it may be with even some less favorable feeling, my 
 reiterated denials of the pretensions of "Political Economy" to 
 the name and rank of a science. It is just here, in the foreground 
 of the great debate, that I join issue with the free trade theorists. 
 Let me shelter my audacity under the authority of two statesmen, 
 one of whom had large opportunity, and as large capacity, for 
 testing its theoretical pretensions, and the other the most pressing 
 necessity for judging its doctrines in their practical application. 
 The first whom I cite is Daniel Webster. In a letter to Mr. 
 Dutton, dated May 9th, 1830, he says: "Though I like the 
 investigation of particular questions, I give up what is called the 
 Science of Political Economy. There is no such science. There 
 are no rules on these subjects so fixed and invariable as that their 
 aggregate constitutes a science. I believe that I have recently 
 run over twenty volumes, from Adam Smith to Professor Dew, of 
 Virginia, and from the whole, if I were to pick out with one hand 
 all the mere truisms, and, with the other, all the doubtful proposi 
 tions, little would be left."* 
 
 My other protector is Napoleon Bonaparte. Adam Smith s 
 "Wealth of Nations" was fairly afloat in 1784. In 1803 J. B. 
 Say published his "Treatise on the Production, Distribution, and 
 Consumption of Wealth," in which he methodized the irregular 
 mass of curious and original speculations of Smith, and gave to the 
 new-born science the form and order which has ever since governed 
 the method of cultivating its themes. When Napoleon subjected it 
 to his practical style of criticism, he said, " If an empire were made 
 
 * In this sweeping sentence it is to be observed that Adam Smith is expressly 
 named, and among the twenty volumes must have been included Malthus, 
 Rieardo, J. B. Say, and J. R. McCulloch, for all these were in the libraries then, 
 and these authors are still regarded by their followers as the founders and the 
 authorities of their school. Our American authors, Carey, List, and Colwell, 
 could not have been included in the verdict of the great " expounder," for 
 neither of these published his works until after the year 1S36. 
 
192 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 of adamant, political economy would grind it to powder." He pro 
 hibited its further publication in France for a dozen years. He 
 saw that the logic of the work was specious, and he knew that it 
 was pernicious; and, being too busy with the government of a 
 nation to enter the lists as a disputant, he interdicted the book. 
 
 Under the circumstances he did exactly right. The short answer 
 of a blockade all around the coasts of continental Europe, declared 
 by the Berlin and Milan decrees, was the practical solution of the 
 questions involved. Then, again, the sword cut the gordian knot, 
 and France and Germany were thereby released from industrial 
 dependence upon Great Britain forever. A professor of political 
 economy could not have done as much with any quantity of 
 foolscap. 
 
 Napoleon had another idea worthy of him. "Formerly," he 
 said, u there was only one kind of property, land; another has 
 since arisen, industry ; " and he held it as wise and as necessary to 
 defend the one as the other from foreign invasion. He knew that 
 a nation s welfare is not measured by its foreign trade, but by its 
 productive power that the policy of a huckster is not a directory 
 for the conduct of national affairs ; and he freely sacrificed prices, 
 while he fostered the power that produces values. He would not 
 stand haggling over the market cost of commodities, but addressed 
 his policy to the real issue : how shall a nation increase its power 
 to command and consume them? Such minds as his are prophetic. 
 He needed not to wait till 1815, when Lord Brougham, in Parlia 
 ment, said, "England can afford to incur some loss on the export of 
 English goods, for the purpose of destroying manufactures in their 
 cradle ;" or for the avowal made by the renowned Joseph Hurne^ 
 in 1828, that he desired " to see the manufactures of the Conti 
 nent strangled in the cradle ;" nor needed he to wait for the Parlia 
 ment report of its commissioner appointed in 1854 to inquire into 
 the state of the population in the mining districts, in which the fol 
 lowing argument is addressed to the strikers for higher wages : 
 "Authentic instances are well known of [English] employers 
 having in such times [times of depressed prices] carried OD their 
 works at a loss amounting to three or four hundred thousand 
 pounds in the course of three or four years. If the efforts of those 
 who encourage the combination to restrict the amount of labor, and 
 to produce strikes, were to be successful for any length of time, 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 193 
 
 the great accumulations could be no longer made which enable a 
 few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign com 
 petition in times of great depression. The large capitals of this 
 country are the great instruments of warfare (if the expression 
 may be allowed) against the competing capitals of foreign coun 
 tries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining, by 
 which our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained." Napoleon 
 foresaw all these threats of free foreign trade reduced to practice, 
 and fortified the industry of France against them as vigorously as 
 he defended the soil itself against the invasion and domination of 
 foreign foes, and for the same and even better reasons. 
 
 These preliminaries are intended to apprise the students of our 
 subject that we take ground, first, against the logic and the method 
 of the theory of commerce relied upon by the free traders, as 
 wholly fallacious and inapplicable; and, secondly, against its practi 
 cal consequences, as directly and totally opposed to the requirements 
 of our national welfare. 
 
 The caption of this chapter intimates our intention to discuss pro 
 tection and free trade as they interlock and antagonize each other in 
 our national policy. A more abstract and more formal treatment 
 would not so well comport with our design and our limits. With 
 this view we submit a very brief history of the experience of the 
 country in its varied experiments of the respective systems. 
 
 Almost within the memory of living men, the United States have 
 risen from the complete subjection of colonial dependence, and from 
 the condition of separate provinces, united by no political bond, to 
 that of a compact, rich, and independent nation; outranking the 
 empires of the old world in territorial extent, and varied capabili 
 ties of production; equaling the strongest of them in population; 
 composed of representatives of all the progressive races of mankind ; 
 embracing the soils and climates of the whole habitable globe; 
 shaped into a continent convenient for internal commerce, with a 
 sea-coast so deeply indented, and a lake and river system dissecting 
 the mass so thoroughly, that a domain only one-sixth less than the 
 area of the fifty-nine or sixty empires, states and republics, of Europe, 
 and of equal extent with the Roman Empire at its largest, is cut, 
 for the purposes of internal and external commerce, into twenty 
 islands of the size of Great Britain. Here are all the conditions, 
 in ample proportion and suitable combination for the rehearsal of the 
 
194 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 world s history, and nothing lacking to work out a world s destiny; 
 and here we have precipitated upon us every social, political and 
 economic problem of the past and future of human history, with 
 the people of every kindred and clime for the subjects and agents. 
 
 The history of such a country s commerce and industry, so far 
 advanced as ours already is, cannot fail to be more instructive than 
 that of any other. The development has been so rapid; the suc 
 cessive periods of protection and free-trade have been so frequent 
 and sudden; and the results so plainly marked, that the varied ex 
 periences must be conclusively demonstrative of the doctrines and 
 policies so well and so thoroughly tried. 
 
 The colonies were held under restraint so absolute that, beyond 
 the common domestic industries, and the most ordinary mechanical 
 employments, no kind of manufactures were permitted. In 1750, 
 a hatter shop in Massachusetts, was declared a nuisance by the 
 British Parliament. In the same year an act was passed permitting 
 the importation of pig iron from the colonies, because charcoal, then 
 exclusively employed in smelting the ore, was well-nigh exhausted 
 in England; but forbidding the erection of tilt-hammers, slitting or 
 rolling mills, or any establishment for the manufacture of steel. In 
 the same year the great Earl of Chatham, alarmed at our enterprise, 
 declared that the colonies ought not to be allowed to manufacture so 
 much as a hob-nail. This was protection, after the manner of that 
 day, for England, and open ports and free-trade in all its bearings, 
 for the colonies. 
 
 The British navigation laws were enacted in the same spirit and 
 to the same intent to hold the colonies in commercial and indus 
 trial vassalage to the mother country. Then, we were restrained by 
 force of law from diversifying our industry freely ; now we are per 
 suaded to accept the like dependency upon superior ability to monopo 
 lize our market, by leaving the choice of our industries undefended 
 against an equally aggressive and an equally potent supremacy. 
 
 A protective period followed. The interruption of commerce 
 with Great Britain during the war of the Revolution awakened, per 
 force, the manufactures of the States that had the materials and the 
 labor power, so that at its close they found themselves considerably 
 advanced in those skilled industries which make a nation self-sup 
 plying. From the success attained, Alexander Hamilton, in his 
 celebrated Report upon Manufactures, in 1791, argues the practica- 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 195 
 
 bility and the^duty of encouraging our manufactures. He enumer 
 ates, in detail, seventeen grand departments which were then well 
 established. They prevailed as well in the Southern as in the Mid 
 dle and Northern States; and he is particular to embrace "avast 
 scene of household manufacturing," which not being yet displaced 
 by steam and machinery, as it has been since, he says, supplied, in 
 different districts, two-thirds, three-fourths, and even four-fifths of 
 all the clothing of the inhabitants. Of textile fabrics he reports, 
 that in several kinds, the domestic fabrication was not only sufficient 
 for the families themselves, but for sale, and to such extent in some 
 cases that they were exported to foreign countries. 
 
 These household industries were, soon after the peace of Paris, 
 (1783). effectually suppressed, so far as they had before been pro 
 ductive in excess of the home supply, by an inundation of foreign 
 goods; for after the date of the treaty of peace, and previous to the 
 organization of the Federal Government a period of seven years 
 there was no protective power in the old confederation, and no con 
 currence of policy among the several States. In the first Federal 
 Congress, a member speaking of this period of free trade, said, " We 
 bought according to the doctrine of modern theorists, where we 
 could purchase cheapest, and were soon inundated with foreign 
 commodities: English goods were sold at lower rates in our maritime 
 cities than at Liverpool or London. Our manufactures were ruined; 
 our merchants, even those who had hoped to enrich themselves by 
 importation, became bankrupt, and all these causes united had such 
 an influence upon agriculture that a general depreciation of real 
 estate followed, and failure became general among the proprietors." 
 
 Dr. Hugh Williamson, describing the distresses and disorders of 
 the year 1786, says, " The scarcity of money is so great, and the 
 difficulty of paying debts has been so common, that riots and com 
 binations have been formed in many places, and the operations of 
 civil government have been suspended." 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," speaking 
 of this crisis generally, and particularly of the causes which led to 
 Shay s Rebellion, says, "On opening their ports, an immense 
 quantity of foreign merchandise was introduced into the country, 
 and they were tempted by the sudden cheapness of imported goods, 
 and by their own wants, to purchase beyond their capacity for pay 
 ment." The consequences, as soon as they had time to work them- 
 
196 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 selves out, he thus describes : " The bonds of men, whose competency 
 to pay their debts was unquestionable, could not be negotiated but 
 at a discount of thirty, forty, and fifty per centum ; real property was 
 scarcely vendible; and sales of any article for ready money could be 
 made only at a ruinous loss." Ramsey s History of South Carolina, 
 and Belknap s History of New Hampshire, show that the distress 
 was as general as intense, and that it displayed itself in " a disposi 
 tion everywhere to resist the laws." 
 
 This state of things, more than any other, impelled the States to 
 draw closer the bonds of political union, and to grant the needful 
 powers to Congress to establish an effective system of commercial 
 regulations for the nation. Mr. Madison, in a letter to Joseph C. 
 Cabell, dated September 18th, 1828, fully and conclusively demon 
 strates this point. No one can read this letter without being con- 
 Vinced that, above all other causes, the sufferings of the country 
 from the evils of its unprotected industries literally drove the loosely 
 confederated states into a "more perfect union" empowered to pro 
 vide more effectually for the "general welfare." Protection of the 
 home industries against foreign rivalry was not only the sentiment, 
 but, under pressure of a terrible experience of absolute free trade, had 
 become the sensation of the day. In the heartiest sympathy with 
 this general feeling, Washington wore a coat of domestic cloth on 
 the day of his inauguration, "giving," as a New York journal of 
 the day said, " to his successors, and to legislatures of after time, an 
 indelible lesson as to the means of promoting national prosperity." 
 The preamble to the first tariff act of the first Federal Congress, 
 passed on the 4th of July, 1789. echoes the urgency of the public 
 feeling, in answer to petitions poured in from every State, not except 
 ing commercial New York, or planting South Carolina. It reads 
 thus: "Whereas it is necessary for the support of the Government, 
 for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encour 
 agement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on 
 goods, wares, and merchandise imported," etc. This first protective 
 act was followed by another of the 10th of August, 1790, largely 
 increasing the duties already imposed. 
 
 The happy results of this policy became immediately apparent 
 instantly, indeed as soon as the languishing industries felt the 
 reviving touch of the nation s fostering hand, because the confi 
 dence of security has the power of credit to anticipate time. As 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 197 
 
 early as October, 1791, Washington, writing to La Luzerne, holds 
 this language : "In my tour I confirmed by observation the 
 accounts which we had all along received of the happy effects of the 
 General Government upon our agriculture, commerce, and industry. 
 The same effects pervade the Middle and Eastern States, with the 
 addition of vast progress in the most useful manufactures." 
 
 The protective rates of the several tariffs passed before the year 
 1804 were quite too low to answer the intention by their unaided 
 force, but in 1793 the opening war of the continent of Europe, 
 which was to last, with slight remissions, until 1815, operated upon 
 both our productive and commercial interests in the happiest way. 
 The destructive war of England and her allies with the French 
 Republic and Empire, the consequent disturbance of all trans 
 atlantic labor, and the suspension of specie payments by the Bank 
 of England, which lasted from 1797 for full twenty years, raised 
 prices abroad, and thus afforded an ample defence of our domestic 
 markets. These again were helped by our embargo of 1807, the 
 non-intercourse act of 1809, and finally by our war of 1 812 ; all these 
 causes together afforded such a shelter, and gave such an impulse to 
 our infant manufactures, that we not only met the home demand, 
 but were able to furnish a surplus for exportation. A Congressional 
 report of 1815 puts our cotton and woolen manufactures at more 
 than sixty millions per annum, with above one hundred thousand 
 workmen employed. Thirty years afterwards Secretary Walker 
 estimated the products of these two branches of manufacture in the 
 United States at no more than eighty-nine millions, or less than 
 fifty per cent increase. 
 
 England in that thirty years increased the exports of her pro 
 ducts from forty-two millions of pounds sterling to one hundred 
 and thirty-five millions, official valuation, or two hundred and 
 twenty per cent. 
 
 As in the case of the war of Independence, that of 1812 had 
 the effect to extend our manufacturing industry by excluding 
 foreign competition, and to increase rapidly and greatly all values, as 
 well of raw materials as of manufactured goods, labor, and real 
 estate; thus giving a well-distributed prosperity to workmen, to 
 land-holders, and to international commerce. 
 
 But after the battle of Waterloo, and the general pacification of 
 Europe, England, France, and Germany went to work; the duties 
 
198 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 of the tariff of 1816, unsupported by the previous diversion of 
 the European embroilment, were wholly inadequate. Our pros 
 perity went down under a flood of foreign importations, and from 
 1819 to 1824 the country presented a picture of general distress, 
 with shadings nearly as deep and dark as the corresponding crisis, 
 which followed the war of the Revolution. Seven years of peace 
 at both periods, with the country s labor undefended, inflicted a 
 hundredfold more injury upon the people than any such periods of 
 war for the defence of national rights ever did or could do. The 
 intolerable mischiefs of the free trade policy in the last, as in the 
 former instance, brought reflection to the nation. A Democratic 
 Congress ordered the republication of Hamilton s Report of 1791 on 
 Manufactures, which was now felt to be far better entitled to be 
 called "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of 
 Nations" than Adam Smith s treatise bearing that title; the agri 
 cultural Middle, Northern, and Western States joined with those 
 more occupied with manufactures, as in a common interest, to 
 impose higher duties upon imports, and the tariff of 1824 was 
 passed. There was, however, something too much of the spirit of 
 countervailing duties in this act, and something too little of the 
 sound expediency which should have ruled its provisions. These 
 faults were, in a good degree, avoided by the tariff of 1828. Its 
 average rates upon the dutiable, and upon the total imports, ran 
 something higher, as in the circumstances they should do, than 
 those of any tariff enacted since. The success of all its aims was 
 absolutely perfect. One of the results which most surprised the 
 Opposition party at home and abroad wa$ the fact that it proved 
 just as favorable to the national finances as if that had been the 
 exclusive object of the policy. It accomplished all the aims of the 
 men who devised it; but the impulse which prompted its enact 
 ment transcended the principle which should have ruled its special 
 provisions. Its supporters did not venture upon a free list so large 
 and so necessary as the policy of protection demands. Protection 
 is simply defense; nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. 
 Every deviation from this ruling object is, sooner or later, mis 
 chievous. The frainers, perhaps, feared a failure of revenue. The 
 statesmen of the time had not had a sufficiently large experience of 
 a true protective policy to comprehend fully its working forces in 
 every direction. They had a lurking fear that adequate protec- 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 199 
 
 live duties must necessarily diminish the revenue from customs. 
 They did not, and they could not, understand the matter as a still 
 more varied and complete experience has instructed us, after forty 
 years of additional observation and trial. 
 
 In 1832 the duties of 1828 were modified; tea, coffee, and a large 
 amount, in variety and value, of foreign imports, which in no way 
 interfered with domestic production, but rather ministered to it, 
 were exempted from taxation. But, the whole national debt had 
 been too quickly reduced, the mass of individual and general pros 
 perity had been realized too suddenly, and the most fortunate people 
 under the sun were seized with the belief that the accumulations in 
 the national treasury would soon become unmanageable, unless they 
 took early measures to provide against its overflow. The economic 
 sciolists were as sure as they could be of anything, that a reduction 
 of the rates of duty to a given percentage would reduce the revenue 
 exactly as much. The same party embracing the theorists who 
 learn all they know by thinking, and those who theorize withou,t 
 the help of thought afterwards made up their minds that the 
 lower duties yield the larger revenue. Secretary Walker, in 1846, 
 built this doctrine into a free trade axiom. Secretary Guthrie in 
 1856 acted upon it as an unquestionable truth, and now their 
 lineally descended disciples are quite as sure that the higher the 
 rate the larger the revenue! We have had enough of this. 
 
 In 1832, six or seven years of adequate protection had passed, and 
 the time had come for a change. The terrible experiences of the 
 periods of free trade which followed our first and second war with 
 Great Britain were forgotten. Stat^gmen had arisen who knew not 
 George the Third. The country had waxed fat as Jeshurun, and 
 it was time to kick the policy that had " covered it with fatness." 
 South Carolina went iuto nullification, Virginia sanctioned the 
 doctrine; Alabama and Georgia took the same ground; Calhoun 
 resigned the Vice Presidency; Ha yne and Webster made immortal 
 speeches; the foreground candidates for the next presidency foresaw 
 their danger ; and " the Father of the American system/ the " great 
 compromiser, and pacificator" postponed the Rebellion, by giving 
 it all that it asked then, with a fairly implied promise of all that it 
 might ask thereafter, and so, we took another turn of the free trade 
 screw, in the shape of the compromise act of 1833. 
 
 Under this act, which abandoned the protection of domestic 
 
200 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 labor, the imports, in the first three years of its operation, averaged 
 one hundred and twenty-two millions, against an average of seventy 
 millions for the last five years of the act of 1828. At the end of 
 1836 there was a surplus in the treasury of forty -six and a half 
 millions. Was not this ample proof that lower duties yield the 
 larger revenue ? Not a word of it. Forty-four and a half millions 
 of this amount came from the sales of the public lands. They 
 never before yielded more than three millions in any one year. In 
 1834, the first year of the compromise, they yielded five millions, in 
 1835 nearly fifteen, and in 1836 nearly twenty-five millions. The 
 revenue from customs was less in every one of these three years 
 than it had been since 1826. 
 
 A movement, collateral and concurrent, ran along with these 
 changes in the industrial policy of the first three years of reduced 
 duties upon imports. At the beginning of the year 1834 there were 
 in circulation in the United States ninety-five millions of bank 
 notes ; the loans and discounts of the banks amounted to three hun 
 dred and twenty-four millions; at the close of 1836 the bank circu 
 lation had swollen to one hundred and forty-nine millions ; and the 
 loans and discounts to above five hundred millions; an increase, in 
 each of these particulars, of above fifty per cent in three years ! In 
 May, 1837, the banks suspended specie payments all over the 
 country. 
 
 This is the order of the facts : a sudden increase of imports, 
 amounting to seventy-five per cent; a sudden increase in the bank 
 circulation and discounts, amounting to above fifty per cent; a sud 
 den increase of the sale of public lands, equal to four hundred per 
 cent, or, as forty-five millions to nine. 
 
 These facts mean this, and nothing else : an increase of the im 
 ports called for the increase of bank issues and credits, and the labor 
 and capital previously employed in manufactures in the Eastern 
 and Middle States, crowded out by the influx of foreign goods, were 
 driven to the West to seek investment and support. The whole 
 history of the United States, without an exceptional instance, shows 
 that whenever the treasury was gorged by receipts from customs 
 and the proceeds of the public lands, a money crisis was in full press 
 ure, and, that a general bankruptcy of Government, banks, and 
 people inevitably followed. No excessive bank issues and credits 
 ever once occurred, or could occur, (previous to the date of the 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 201 
 
 great Rebellion), under a protective tariff. And we add that, no 
 overdealing in anything except foreign commodities can greatly or 
 even considerably, shake the finances of the Nation and of the 
 people, simply because no other sort of speculation or overtrading, 
 be they ever so wild, throws out of employment the industry of the 
 country and the capital associated with it in production. 
 
 This proposition is commended, by the facts involved, to the con 
 sideration of those who are accustomed to blame our periodic 
 revulsions upon an extravagant credit inflation, or upon a depreci 
 ated currency. Such revulsions are neither inevitable nor inexpli 
 cable. Our history exposes the causes plainly, and suggests the 
 remedy; and what is better, the means of prevention. Just give 
 our labor and capital their well secured opportunity for maintaining 
 the industrial independence of the country, and we will have no 
 more of them under a protective tariff the people can sustain 
 another war of four years with any foe, domestic or foreign, and 
 another five thousand millions of expenditure, as they have sus 
 tained the last, without one of these "inevitable and inexplicable 
 revulsions." 
 
 Well, the seven years of unprotected American industry, stretch 
 ing from 1833 to 1840, drove the people once more to reflection, 
 and a general revolt of the country once more branded the alien 
 policy, turned its advocates out of power, and replaced free trade by 
 the protective tariff of 1842; which was by far the best one we have 
 had to this day. In four years it had fully demonstrated its wisdom 
 by extricating the country from all its difficulties, except the 
 theories of the Revenue Reformers of that day, and the resistance 
 of that portion of the Nation whose system of production never 
 intended the labor of the country for the benefit of its laborers, or 
 looked to the prosperity of the Union for the sake of the Union. 
 Among them, they modified the tariff of 1842 in 1846, chiefly by 
 substituting ad valorem for specific duties, for, this mode of assess 
 ing imposts opens the door for all sorts of frauds, especially those of 
 undervaluation in the invoices, and the equally dangerous device of 
 temporary underselling, even at a loss, for the sake of crushing out 
 the competing home industry which the imports must meet in the 
 invaded market. Still, the tariff of 1846 was discriminative in its 
 schedules, and protective in its rates, in spite of the vices incident to 
 its administration; and the Nation s boundless energy and resources 
 14 
 
202 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 fought the good fight under it with an average of advantages. A 
 succession of lucky chances fell in to corroborate it the general 
 scarcity in Western Europe, followed by the famine of 1848; the 
 discovery of gold in California, in 1848-9 ; the Crimean war in 
 1854-56 ; a tripled export of domestic productions, occasioned, in 
 part, by an accidental foreign demand, but mainly by an exhaustive 
 enterprise in the product of cotton and tobacco for exportation, 
 which in ten years advanced from fifty to one hundred and forty 
 millions per annum; and above all, the indomitable enterprise of 
 the people all these together brought about such a measure of 
 general prosperity, that the old enemy found its opportunity in a 
 full treasury for another assault, and a successful one, upon the 
 policy which always exposes itself by its very successes to the 
 charge of having accomplished its object and fulfilled its mission. 
 Accordingly, a twenty-five per cent reduction of the duties was 
 effected in 1857, and was followed, necessarily, by another sudden 
 increase of imports, with another suspension of specie payments at 
 its heels. The imports for consumption now went up to $11.82 per 
 head of the population from $5.42, or to more than double the 
 average at which they stood in 1846; and the bank circulation and 
 loans, following, naturally, were also something more than doubled 
 the loans rising from three hundred and twelve to six hundred 
 and thirty-four millions, and the circulation from one hundred and 
 five to two hundred and fourteen millions, which was not only a 
 doubling of aggregate amounts but left a margin that nearly doubled 
 the per capita average of the increased numbers of the population 
 another instance for the deception of the bullionists, but another 
 proof that credit and currency inflation always follows excessive 
 importations. The public debt in the mean time had gone up from 
 sixteen and three-quarters to twenty-nine millions, and rose, still 
 further, to sixty- four millions in 1860 under the tariff of 1857. 
 
 Judging by all the experience of the past, the short suspension 
 of September 1857, would have been followed in 1861 by a 
 general explosion, if that other grand result of free trade, the great 
 civil war, had not come down upon us and broken up the rule 
 of all financial precedents. The imports per capita in 1836, the 
 year preceding the great revulsion of 1837, were $10.93; in the 
 year preceding that of 1857 they were $10.88; and now, in 1860, 
 they had risen to $10.80, an amount which, under non-protective 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 203 
 
 tariffs, always insured the return of the " inevitable and inex 
 plicable " plague within a twelvemonth. 
 
 In 1S61, and as yet, for the last time, another turn of the tide 
 concurred with the outbreak of the Rebellion, as the like return of 
 the redeeming and corrective policy of protection always came, to 
 meet and repair the ravages of the free trade system. It gave us the 
 Morrill tariff, and that, with its amendments, raising the rates upon 
 duty-paying imports to nearly the average of the tariff of 1828, 
 put us through the civil war, and for six years of peace has 
 averted a collapse of our credit, and sustained our labor enterprise, 
 to the extent and with the fullness of effect, that has in all past 
 times aroused the resistance which never misses its opportunity. 
 With a debt of twenty-three hundred millions upon us, the Treasury 
 is overflowing. From customs more than equal in amount to all other 
 sources of public revenue during the last two years, the Treasury 
 has paid of the principal of the public debt above two hundred 
 millions, besides bearing all other charges, and, accordingly, free 
 trade is again rampant and resolute and armed, as of yore, with all 
 its favorite arguments for such a reduction of duties on imports as 
 they think the Treasury can spare. Again, the goose that lays the 
 golden eggs has grown so fat that she is just ready for the spit ! 
 
 Under the conviction that history rightly rendered is philosophy 
 teaching by experience, this brief sketch of the effective and 
 instructive points in our frequent and violent contrasts of policy is 
 submitted as a study for candjd inquirers. Its details would 
 greatly strengthen our argument, but we have been compelled to 
 confine the narrative to the facts and figures which are the sum 
 maries and the interpreters of the particulars. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 DOCTRINE AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 
 
 What Protection Js and what it intends. In its exactest sense it is Defense. 
 Domesttcmdustries encouraged by other means than protection strictly implies 
 and employs.T-vBo^iuses, market monopolies, and countervailing duties not of 
 its essence, nor embraced in its policy. Bonuses employed by Colbert their 
 difficulties and dangers. Government, subsidies not of its system nor em 
 braced in the principle. The protective^ principle vitiated by the spirit of 
 countervailing duties, and practically weakened or destroyed. The British 
 system, repudiating protective, adopts countervailing, duties a change of terms 
 to cover an unchanged policy. Henry Clay and his compeers led astray by 
 accepting and substituting them for the substantive, self-supporting, and 
 unconditional doctrine of protection proper. Principles_^nji _aims _of protec 
 tion defined, and its subjects and operations ascertarne4- and limited. It is 
 not taxation. It recognizes no distinction between luxuries and common 
 necessaries of life. Its spirit refuses invidious classifications of society. 
 Duties that are not defensive are taxes under another name they are foreign 
 to protection. The rule of taxation is by ad valorem assessments. Protection 
 has no regard to values, and refuses the ad valorem rule. Ad valqreim, in 
 customs duties, infamous for their frauds, perjuries, inequality of operation, 
 and treachery to the interests of home labor everywhere avoided, except 
 when employed to defeat protection. The Prussian Zollverein in striking 
 illustration. Protection is not adverse to foreign trade in principle or opera 
 tion it allows and favors supplementary commerce, and restricts only injuri- 
 ou-ly competitive trade. It does not look to revenue, but it does, incidentally, 
 secure it. The system in our history entitles it to be described, a tariff for pro 
 tection with incidental, but always abundant, revenue. The finance tables of 
 the Treasury Department show that " revenue tariffs" always, before the Rebel 
 lion, failed to supply revenue, and that protective tariffs always met the 
 expenditures of the Government. Our highest rates of duty have given us 
 the largest foreign trade in I860, under an average of nineteen per cent upon 
 the dutiable imports, only two hundred and eighty millions worth imported; 
 under a forty-six per cent duty, in 1870, the imports rose to four hundred and 
 fifteen millions. English superiority, excludes manufactured goods, yet her 
 imports have swollen from seven hundred and forty to thirteen hundred and 
 thirty-three million of dollars in ten years. The tariff rates of France almost 
 prohibited foreign manufactures, yet commerce rose two and a half times in 
 twenty years. The adage, " if you don t buy you cannot sell," a plausible 
 sophistry as applied to American trade. Protection intends the utmost possi- 
 204 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 205 
 
 ble diversification of the Nation s industries. Argument of the free trade 
 authorities for confining the United States to the production of provisions and 
 raw materials. Different educational and pecuniary value of different kinds of 
 labor. Changed condition of laborers in modern production. The necessity of 
 preserving the whole range of choice among the varied industries, in order to 
 give employment to every variety of powers and faculties. Special interest of 
 women in the reserve of labor suitable to the sex. Extent to which they were 
 found capable of the manufacturing arts in 1860. The concessions of social 
 and political power in expectation, demand a special care in securing for them 
 the largest range of industrial employments. They must be either in the self- 
 supporting, the dependent, or the dangerous class of the community. The freed- 
 men of the South must have opportunity to enter the occupations of skilled 
 labor, or go back to the drudgeries to which slavery formerly confined them. 
 Already their labor has gorged the cotton market, its price has nearly 
 touched the In west which it ever reached, and wages must go down with it. 
 A diversified, which must be a protected, range of industries equally necessary 
 to our women and negroes. 
 
 IT is in place now to state what Protection is, and what it intends. 
 The treatment of this topic, however brief, will necessarily embrace 
 a notice of the policy, as it has been tried in other countries, under 
 modification of their varied conditions. 
 
 The force and value of Protection in its essential, its operative 
 sense, is fully covered by the word defense. This is more and better 
 than a mere synonym it measures the meaning of the word, and it 
 restricts the principle exactly to the province of its rightful rule. 
 Protection does encourage and foster the industries to which it is 
 applied, but, encouragement sometimes embraces bonuses, extended 
 by the government, or exclusive privileges of the market secured to 
 industrial enterprise, or other exceptional forms of favor, which are 
 not simply defensive against foreign competition. Sometimes pro 
 tection takes the shape of countervailing duties, imposed to retaliate 
 foreign legislation adverse to the domestic exports of the country 
 adopting them. The first of these forms of encouragement is liable 
 to serious objections, in most of the instances in which it is employed, 
 and, at best, requires extraordinary skill and discrimination in its use. 
 Colbert, the great finance minister of Louis XIV., gave, from the 
 national treasury, two thousand livres to each loom put to work, for 
 the purpose of establishing the system of textile manufactures, which 
 took its origin, and owed its great and enduring success, to that and 
 other effective forms of support. The like policy has been, in a multi 
 tude of instances, followed by the governments of Europe; and, liable 
 as the measure was in its nature to abuse, and abused as it generally 
 
206 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 was, it has since fallen into general reprobation. It often was " class 
 legislation" in an offensive form, and is only allowed now under 
 cover of some other pretext which gives it protection: such as 
 subsidies, under the guise of contracts for carrying the mails at sea; 
 or gifts of public lands and the loan of the national credit, to rail 
 road corporations for the construction of highways for the carriage 
 of the mails, and military transportation in the deserts, and over the 
 Rocky Mountains of the United States. Of this system of govern 
 ment aids to private enterprises, we have nothing now to say. except 
 that it is not that protection of the common interests of the com 
 munity which is strictly defensive in its essence; and, while we take 
 no present exceptions to it, we also abstain from making any defense 
 for it; it is not Protection, in our sense of the term, or our meaning 
 of the thing. It is broadly distinguished by the circumstance that 
 it means money paid out of the treasury to the benefit of specific 
 enterprises, and is not general, uniform, and equitable, in its opera 
 tion, unless made so indirectly by the wisdom, impartiality, and 
 diffusive beneficence of the grant; of which, by the way, it is very 
 hard to be sufficiently assured. 
 
 The principle of countervailing duties is indeed defensive and 
 protective, but in a narrowly limited range. While England legis 
 lated in an unfriendly spirit upon the interests of our domestic 
 exports and maritime trade, the spirit of resistance to aggression 
 swallowed up the true principle of protection. The popular argu 
 ment, then most effective, turned upon this retaliatory aspect of the 
 policy; and, when the evil was tolerably well abated, protection, 
 proper, had lost its support by the loss of its accidental and non-essen 
 tial provocation. England, about forty years ago, finding her policy of 
 foreign trade endangered by the existence of the protection system 
 of other countries, whom she needed as customers, and requiring no 
 further protection of her own home markets against foreign compe 
 tition in them, gave up the name and opposed the policy, but retained 
 so much of it, nevertheless, as her interests demanded, under the 
 name of countervailing duties. Thus she now protects her manu 
 factures of tobacco, spirits, and sugar, by a system of duties upon 
 their import, equivalent to a barrier of fifty millions of dollars a 
 year, against their introduction from abroad. These duties are not 
 adopted to counteract or punish any foreign nation s tariffs upon any 
 of her exports, but to equalize the excise duties which the govern- 
 
THEORY AND POLICY/OF PROTECTION. 207 
 
 ment lays upon the domestic production of the kinds of articles so 
 charged. 
 
 If British free-traders will not allow us to call a fifty-million 
 charge, upon these manufactures, over and above the imposts laid 
 upon the raw materials, protective, because they are only intended 
 to countervail her own internal taxes upon the like articles, we may 
 be allowed to exclude the term from our definition of protective 
 duties, proper. Our principal and sufficient reason, however, is that 
 protection, passing under this name, confuses our reasonings, and, 
 besides, falls mischievously short of the true principle and purpose 
 of defensive duties upon imported goods. We might, indeed, 
 effectually retort the English dodge by employing the phrase to 
 cover the difference between us, in the cost of labor, the interest of 
 capital, and the heavy burden of our domestic taxes upon produc 
 tion, and call the import duties, riot. protective, but countervailing 
 to the great advantages our rivals ht)ld over us in our home markets 
 under an untaxed trade in their competing commodities; but we 
 prefer the downright and direct avowal of the principle, and the 
 frank maintenance of the policy essentially belonging to it. More 
 over, we remember how unwisely the very ablest advocates of "The 
 American System," in the earlier days of Clay and Webster, and 
 before England had adopted free trade, threw their force upon the 
 merely counteractive feature of the policy, and we are sure that, 
 turning the argument for protection upon the pivot of countervailing 
 duties, damaged the principle greatly when their particular provo 
 cation was removed. Countervailing legislation could find its reasons 
 only in the practice of foreign countries, and however well justified, 
 still made the true principle depend upon an accident, or a caprice, 
 or a mistake of governments over which we had no control. It was 
 a resting of our separate and independent rights upon the aggressive 
 wrongs of our enemies, while they kept that injurious attitude 
 towards us; but did nothing for the maintenance of those rights, 
 when the injury took a different form. They need defense, by their 
 intrinsic necessities, let foreigners infringe them in whatever manner 
 they may choose. 
 
 By protection we mean needed defense of industrial enterprises 
 whose success is the common interest of the community. We do 
 not mean " class legislation," or the establishment of monopolies in 
 production or trade, but the development of the productive power of 
 
208 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the Nation, with a due distribution of its benefits to every industrial 
 interest of the whole people. Protection means, first, freedom of 
 industry and trade at home, and eventually, free foreign trade. It 
 must have nothing in it of the spirit of war, either between classes 
 of interest at home, or with the nations abroad. It is a law of 
 national welfare, and as a law it intends liberty, and cannot employ 
 any form of compulsion, except for its defense and maintenance. 
 The spirit of justice and peace which pervades and rules it, requires 
 that in the selection of enterprises to be fostered, the legislature 
 shall be guided by the same prudence that governs a man in giving 
 credit, or other aid, to his neighbor entering upon a new business, 
 or embarrassed in an old one the fair probability that he will in 
 due time be able to make himself independent of such assistance, 
 and fully repay to the helper all his advances that is, the enter 
 prise must be practicable, promising, timely, and generally beneficial;^ 
 else it is not a case to be so assisted, and is not entitled to the favor. 
 
 As no favoritism to classes must be indulged, so, no hostility to 
 any class can be allowed. For this reason, the notion that luxuries 
 should bear higher duties than articles of common necessity, has 
 nothing of the proper policy of protection to industry in it. nor, 
 indeed, has it anything else to recommend it to the acceptance of 
 the masses, but the contrary. 
 
 Protection is totally misunderstood, and fatally abused, when it 
 is reasoned upon, or employed, as identical with taxation. It 
 means and intends the protection of domestic labor, skill and 
 enterprise, and of the capital which they employ. These are 
 not benefited by a tax, under the name of an import duty, 
 upon such luxuries of manufacture or of agriculture as the country 
 cannot produce for its consumption. Invidious distinctions in 
 a tariff of customs between the consumption of the rich and 
 of the poor, have no help in them for the labor of the poor. 
 Moreover, those things are usually classed as luxuries which the 
 poor cannot well afford to purchase. To burden them distinctively 
 is simply to put them still further out of the reach of the poor; and 
 like all other prejudices of classes, it only operates to the injury 
 of the weaker party, and under the guise of a preference for the 
 common people, really keeps up the worst of aristocratic distinctions 
 those which touch the most general interests of social life. Tea 
 and coffee were treated by our revenue laws as luxuries until the- 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 209 
 
 protective principle set them free of duty in 1832. So soon as they 
 went into the free list, they became the common fare of every cot 
 tage in the country. Coffee for the twenty previous } T ears was taxed 
 five cents per pound ; and teas, from fourteen to sixty-eight cents, 
 according to quality. These duties were taxes, pure and simple, for 
 they did not protect any American industry. Since then we have 
 imported for consumption as much as seven pounds of coffee per 
 head of the total population, or nearly twice as much for the actual 
 consumers. What would the laboring people have gained by paying 
 about three-fourths of the annual ten millions of duties, under the 
 old rule, upon the article, in order to tax it as a luxury ? Or what 
 would they have gained by confining themselves to inferior teas, at 
 fourteen cents a pound duty, in order to make wealthy people pay 
 sixty-eight cents on theirs ? If we apply this doctrine of luxury to 
 silks or furs or any other article of dress which we do not produce, 
 its effect would be that the wife and daughters of the man of mod 
 erate means, when they go into the street or to church, must betray 
 the economy which his circumstances compel. Protection, ruled by 
 equity and tending to equality, is guilty of no such misdemeanors 
 as this. When taxing is the object for the uses of revenue, lay it 
 on wherever it should be borne, and in reference to the ability to 
 bear it, but never allow the idea to enter a tariff for protection ; and 
 this for other reasons which will hereafter appear. 
 
 While upon this point, the essential distinction between taxes and 
 protective duties, we must be indulged with a word upon the man 
 ner and rule of assessing protective duties. 
 
 In levying internal taxes, or taxes upon imports for the support 
 of Government, the ad valorem rule of assessment distributes the 
 burden equitably upon all the various species of taxable property. 
 A fixed percentage, according to valuation, covers fairly and uni 
 formly all its subjects, the intention being, that every property 
 holder shall contribute to the support of the Government in propor 
 tion to his means, and every consumer in proportion to his con 
 sumption, when unhappily the public exigencies require such an 
 extension of its demand. The ad valorem rule with its universality 
 of range, has no place in the policy of protection. To admit it in 
 the assessment of duties is to sweep away the whole doctrine of pro 
 tection. Free traders are its consistent advocates. To give it any 
 influence whatever in our reasonings upon protection is to confound 
 
210 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 and vitiate the whole process. The enemy has sown these tares in 
 our field while we slept, and must not be allowed to reproach us 
 with the faults of the harvest. Previous to 1846, ad valorems were 
 not tolerated in our tariffs, wherever they could be avoided; and 
 when protection true and earnest was restored, in 1861, specific 
 duties were restored, not extensively enough, indeed, but with a 
 resolute purpose to avoid the departures from principle in fixing the 
 rates, and the never-absent frauds, of the ad valorem system 
 frauds by which the industry of the country is cheated of its 
 defenses, and the treasury of its revenues, and all honest importers 
 are discounted disastrously by their unscrupulous rivals in trade. 
 They offer a premium to dishonesty; they falsify invoices ; they pay 
 for perjury m the custom house; they make semi-smugglery a 
 policy of trade, and demoralize the whole merchant class by dis 
 couraging and fining truth and integrity heavily. They are every 
 way fitted, in purpose and practice, for defeating protection, and are, 
 accordingly, a prime principle of free trade. England, having respect 
 only to her revenue, and fair play among her own importers, scouts 
 ad valorems from her lists of impost duties. When she was 
 deriving twenty millions of pounds from customs, she took but one 
 quarter of a million in ad valorems, and such were their inherent 
 and inseparable frauds, that parliament appointed a committee to rid 
 the customs schedules of every possible vestige of them. This 
 committee indicated its object and intention, by charging artificial 
 flowers by the cubic feet in the box containing them ; overlooking 
 all differences of value, to escape the frauds of undervaluation. Not 
 a government on earth that knows what it is about, gives them any 
 toleration ; and especially those which intend protection repudiate 
 them just as they do free trade in any other disguise. 
 
 One of these disguises, and the most insidious of them, takes the 
 shape of what is called among us, "a tariff for revenue with inci 
 dental protection," assessed upon imports by the ad valorem rule. 
 In this form, even when stripped of their other inherent frauds, 
 their malignant hostility to the protection which is intended or 
 pretended, is conspicuously manifest. Their workings are after this 
 fashion : when the prices of foreign goods are so high that little or 
 no protection against them is required, the duty per cent upon such 
 value carries up the prices to an absurd extent, and protectnm is 
 mocked with the aid it does not need, and charged with an exorbi- 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 211 
 
 tance which it did not intend; and, when prices go down the duties 
 go down with them, and protection altogether fails just where it is 
 needed. Another feature of their mischievous principle is, that 
 they make the government a party and an accomplice when by un 
 derselling, the foreigner aims at crushing out a domestic industry. 
 Then the price is put ruinously low and the ad valorem duty goes 
 down in the like proportion, thus making the tariff itself a full 
 partner in the trick. The steel rail manufacture newly introduced 
 in the United States, affords a clear example of the vice of which 
 the foreign enemy so easily avails himself. 
 
 Protection aims at and addresses all its measures and methods to 
 the defense of the industry employed in the production of a com 
 modity, and has nothing to do with its market value. It confronts 
 the importer with the purpose to secure the right of domestic labor 
 in the production of the article against all its disadvantages, and lays 
 on any amount of duty that will do that. 
 
 The Prussian Zollverein is, and ever has been, purely protective. 
 In the earlier years of its operation it charged cotton goods, without 
 any respect to quality or value, thirty-two dollars and twenty-five 
 cents upon every hundred pounds weight imported. The effect of 
 this specific duty was that coarse shirting paid the equivalent of 
 ninety per cent upon its invoice value ; superior shirting paid only 
 thirty-two and a half per cent, and fine printed cottons were admitted 
 at eight and three-fourths per cent. The Zollverein intended pro 
 tection and not revenue. It took care of its infant manufactures 
 effectually, by the heaviest duties, and properly abstained from 
 taxing those goods which its laborers were not yet able to produce. 
 It did not exclude those finer goods from its markets, nor its com 
 mon people from their use. On the same principle, and with the 
 same purpose, it charged all kinds of cutlery at a uniform rate, by 
 the pound, letting in razors, penknives, and the like fine wares at a 
 merely nominal rate, and laying the protective stress upon hatchets, 
 axes, and a great variety of hardware, which * the Germans were able, 
 under sufficient defense against Great Britain, to manufacture for 
 themselves. This was protection pure and simple, and the result 
 was, as the Germans advanced in skill from one stage to another 
 they found the specific rats of each successive stage sufficiently pro 
 tective, though constantly declining in ad valorem rates, until in 
 the end, which was steadily and persistently guarded, German 
 
212 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 cutlery attained superiority in quality and greater cheapness in price 
 than the foreign articles, which if admitted under inadequate pro 
 tective duties, or, under a revenue tariff system, would have crushed 
 the enterprise of the people in the bud. Germany, to day, shows 
 what her fifty years of fostered and defended industry could do for 
 a people so low in the scale of European powers, that her fortresses 
 were garrisoned with French troops and her territory under French 
 dominion, till England, that had been subsidizing her through the 
 Continental wars, finally overthrew Napoleon the First at Waterloo, 
 as Germany has just now overthrown his nephew at Sedan. But 
 we are running again into history, in the develop7iient of a theoretic 
 principle, because truths that have working force in them always 
 tend to the facts which vindicate them. 
 
 The system of protection employs, exclusively, duties upon im 
 ports to effect its objects; and, intending only to defend domestic 
 industry, it properly selects for its operation only those foreign pro 
 ducts which compete with the freedom and extension of such 
 domestic industries as the country is prepared" to undertake with 
 the view of self supply. It is not arrayed against foreign trade and 
 exchanges in anything else than those commodities whose admission 
 injures the labor and prevents the enjoyment of the home market. 
 Wisely devised and worked, it never does in any respect, nor to any 
 degree, repress or diminish any healthful foreign commerce. Its 
 legitimate object is to preserve for the people an unlimited choice of 
 occupations fitted to their economic conditions. It will not forbid or 
 burden the importation of wheat into territories incapable of pro 
 ducing such grain, nor will it tax any amount of importation of 
 such grain or any of its substitutes, which supply its own defici 
 encies, unless where such an import represses its own production. 
 The rule of the principle is to freely allow and favor all really sup 
 plementary trade, and to oppose none but such as is injuriously 
 competitive. Looking steadily to the fullest employment of its own 
 labor, and the greatest practicable development of its native 
 resources, including raw materials, available capital, skill and 
 enterprise, and their most judicious enhancement, it turns away 
 from all other aims and avoids all their embarrassments; and it has 
 nothing to do with market prices except as these affect productive 
 power and act upon consumption. 
 
 If, owing to the circumstances of the country, a tariff of pro- 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 213 
 
 tective duties can also be made to secure an adequate, or any con 
 siderable, amount of revenue to the government, the principle and 
 policy of the system freely allows such an excellent accompani 
 ment as a consequence of its own necessary operation ; and it is a 
 striking characteristic of the system that it always does do so. As 
 long as the circumstances of any nation require the imposition of 
 duties upon foreign merchandise for the defense of its own imma 
 ture or otherwise embarrassed productive forces, and just so long, it 
 also pays its proceeds into the national exchequer. Only when, as 
 in England, protection is no longer necessary, and its levies, there 
 fore, fail, does protection fail to replenish the public treasury. In 
 proof, so far as our own experience is concerned, it is a striking 
 fact that, every period of sound protection which we have enjoyed, 
 has amply provided for the national expenditure, and only the 
 tariffs constructed with the sole or principal view to securing 
 revenue have utterly failed to accomplish that intention. Any 
 expert in statistics acquainted with the concurrent events, need but 
 to glance over the column headed " Customs" in the general table 
 of treasury receipts from the year 1791 to I860, to see the clearest 
 proof of this fact. He will invariably find that the first and second 
 years of every free trade tariff are marked by a sudden increase of the 
 amount of these duties, with a rapid decline thereafter, till the end 
 of the period, at which the deficit of receipts marks the utter 
 failure of all such tariffs to provide a sufficient revenue for the 
 ordinary expenses of the government; and he will see, also, a regu 
 lar rise and steady sufficiency of customs for the uses of the gov 
 ernment from the second year and through each succeeding year of 
 the protective tariffs, until such amplitude of exchequer supplies is 
 again destroyed by its wretchedly delusive successor, designed to 
 provide revenue only, or, in some cases, " revenue with incidental 
 protection." 
 
 I ask no man to accept my statement of this instructive history 
 gratuitously j let him study the subject for himself; and, it is not 
 too much to ask him to do so, before he ever again talks of a 
 " revenue tariff" as something different in rates and subjects from 
 a truly and permanently protective one, as concerns the finances of 
 our own country in its past history or its present condition.* 
 
 * Under the unprotective tariff of 1816 the customs went down from thirty- 
 six millions in that year to thirteen millions in 1821; under the protective tariff 
 
214 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Some of the propositions here so briefly presented for the pur 
 pose of describing the principles and aims of the system, demand 
 something further in their exposition. 
 
 We have said that protection is not restrictive of foreign trade 
 and we mean to say this both with respect to the money and the 
 economic value of such international commerce as a true policy 
 provides fur. 
 
 On this point it is in itself conclusive of all debate to refer to 
 the fact that in 1860 the highest value of foreign imports was 
 reached. The dutiable goods imported in that year amounted to 
 two hundred and eighty millions, under an average rate of nineteen 
 per cent. This was commerce under free trade. In the year 1870 
 the dutiable imports had risen to four hundred and fifteen and 
 three-quarters millions, at an average rate of forty-six and three- 
 eighths per cent. Here we have a system of duties two and a half 
 times higher, allowing or inducing an importation within a fraction 
 of one and a half times greater than under the lower rates ! 
 
 This is a sufficient refutation of the charge that protective duties 
 are restrictive of foreign trade, so far as the United States in their 
 economic conditions are concerned. But the same thing is just as 
 true of all nations, in all possible differences of conditions. We 
 will take an extreme case : The English authorities; led by J. R. 
 
 of 1824 and 1828 they rose to twenty-nine millions in 1833, rising steadily and 
 gradually with the growth of the general prosperity. Under the compromise act 
 of 1833 they declined to eleven millions in 1837, and under the protective tariff 
 of 1842 they rose again to twenty-six millions in 1846. tinder the act of that 
 year they fluctuated, going down eleven millions in a year, at two periods, 
 and up again eleven millions in a single year, and stood at sixty-three 
 millions in 1857, showing through the whole course of the act of 1846 the 
 unsteadiness of its protective provisions and the mischiefs of its ad valorem 
 rates it was then, at one of those inflation stages which belong to the character 
 of revenue tariffs, and which invariably indicate their explosion. The act of 
 1857 came just in time to precipitate the result, and accordingly the receipts from 
 customs fell in one year twenty-two millions, which was a million less -than they 
 had been seven yezfrs before. Next comes the crowning demonstration under the 
 several protective tariffs or amendments of that of 1861. The revenue from 
 customs has risen in nine years from forty-nine to one hundred and ninety-four mil 
 lions. Which of these were the true revenue tariffs ? Not one of them except 
 the strictly protective tariffs, and they exactly in the degree that they were pro 
 tective. Every so-called revenue tariff was a failure of its avowed purpose, and 
 a catastrophe to the Treasury and the business of the country besides. I appeal 
 to the record there the facts stand in overwhelming force. 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 215 
 
 McCulloch, aud followed in England and America by all the lazy 
 thinkers of his school, put their point thus : " Thope who will not 
 buy need not expect to sell; and conversely; it is impossible to 
 export without making a corresponding importation." Now how 
 does this plausible platitude sustain itself in its application to our 
 system of protection of manufactures the very thing against 
 which it is leveled ? 
 
 England does not buy foreign manufactures, yet she expects to 
 sell and does sell her commodities. Her superiority in production 
 amounts to an almost total exclusion of manufactures from her 
 ports ; they amount to only a fraction less than six per cent of the 
 total value of her imports, yet those totals amounted in 1854 to 
 seven hundred and forty millions of dollars, and in 1864 to thir 
 teen hundred and thirty-three millions. 
 
 Again, take France, with her protective rates and restrictions 
 almost prohibitive of competition in her own markets. During the 
 ten years, 1827 to 1836, her aggregate imports and exports amounted 
 to thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty-one millions of francs. 
 After an interval of twenty years, in the ten years from 1847 to 
 1856, with her prohibitive system in full operation all the while, 
 they had risen to the value of thirty-one thousand three hundred 
 and sixty-one millions. 
 
 These immensely varied results utterly demolish the wretchedly 
 unmeaning aphorism that is employed to array the protective 
 system against the interests of foreign trade, even when measured 
 by its money value. It would be too stupid to propose it against 
 the economic value of the trade which it guards, selects, and 
 secures ; and we may dismiss it without further remark on this 
 head, having already in our chapters on " Commerce " amply 
 exposed its mischief to the labor and enterprise which it touches 
 only to destroy. 
 
 If there is any one of the intentions of the protective system 
 worthier than another of the heartiest approbation, it is its design 
 and its power to diversify the industries of the people who adopt it. 
 As the elucidation of this topic involves some of the vicious gen 
 eralizations of the let-alone-theory of foreign trade, they may be 
 appropriately noticed here. 
 
 The jumble of truisms and generalities of this school of econo 
 mists owe their origin to a curious class of college professors, 
 
216 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 professional litterateurs, metaphysicians, and professional world- 
 menders. Such is their description in England, Germany, and 
 France, and among them may be found, here and there, a few 
 theologians who have taken leading positions among the authorities, 
 covering with their " pale cast of thought the native hue of prac 
 tical affairs, and turning awry their currents till they lose the 
 name of action;" while here and everywhere their antagonists 
 are, in the main, men of practical acquaintance with, and interest 
 in ; the affairs of individual and national concern. 
 
 Taking for example the case of a country like our own; 
 comparatively young, exceedingly fertile, capable of every variety 
 of agricultural production from the cereals that affect the cooler 
 climates of the North, to the sugar and cotton that demand 
 a semi-tropical temperature with its improved lands very cheap, 
 and millions of unappropriated acres that may be had for little 
 more than the cost of preparing them for the plough, and in all 
 respects eminently fitted for furnishing provisions and raw mate 
 rials. The inference drawn by these theorists is that, nature, by 
 these circumstances, makes farming, planting, and lumbering our 
 distinctive occupations, and invites our energies into these special 
 fields of industry. Now, there is nothing in a statement so general 
 as this that anybody need dispute. But there are some other 
 things just as true, which must be considered before we draw from 
 it a practical policy of national conduct. 
 
 In the first place : if labor is really the source of wealth, and the 
 various forms or kinds of labor are not equally remunerative to the 
 individual, or beneficial to the community, it behooves us, as soon 
 as we are in a condition to choose among them, to ascertain whether 
 exclusive agricultural labor is the most advantageous that we can 
 adopt. AYe know, very certainly, that the wages of labor are not in 
 all things equal ; that its products are of unequal value in the 
 market; and, that all varieties of work are not equally educating, 
 because they do not all alike employ and develop the same moral, 
 intellectual, and physical faculties ; and we know that wages and 
 profits of employment grow with the education and training re 
 quired for the men thus variously engaged. The difference between 
 skilled and unskilled labor is apparent enough, and the difference 
 between their respective products and other results ought not to be 
 forgotten when a people are in condition to make an election among 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 217 
 
 them. Nature has no more determined that any particular country, 
 capable of anything else, shall confine itself to agriculture, than 
 that Washington should spend his life as a land surveyor, because 
 there was a wilderness full of that work for him in Virginia, and he 
 was an expert in the business. The matter for that young man to 
 decide, in choosing his occupation, was how he could best promote 
 his own growth in worth and power, and best serve the general 
 welfare ; and this is the very question for a community to solve in 
 deciding upon its industrial policy. Nature has nothing to do with 
 it, except in providing the means. Man is her master, on con 
 dition that he will be his own. Industry is no longer drudgery, 
 mere muscle-work ; it is the art of making nature work in man s 
 service obediently. It is not a matter of indifference to an individual 
 or a community what sort of labor he or they shall adopt, when a 
 choice presents itself. Unmixed agriculture cannot develop the 
 skill and enterprise of a people, for the reason that it cannot 
 accomplish that division of labor which brings into use every 
 variety of ability, and associates a community by distributing its 
 functions helpfully in accumulating wealth. The perfection of any 
 organism, its rank and its worth, and the possibilities of its progress 
 and growth, depend upon the number of its elementary differences, 
 and, on their duly balanced activities. It is in the multitude of his 
 parts and powers, and in the due exercise of all of them, that man 
 takes rank of fish ; and a community, which is, in respect to 
 interests and development, an aggregate man, a larger humanity, is 
 put under the same law as to the component individualities, and 
 depends upon the same conditions, for its worth and welfare. 
 
 Without a very large diversification of productive businesses, 
 one-half of its population its women must be put into the sup 
 ported class or driven to unsuited drudgery. The modern system 
 of manufacture has taken from the household the spinning-wheel 
 and the hand-loom. Four-fifths of the productive force employed 
 upon textile fabrics is now the province of capital, in machinery, 
 factories, and raw material. The domestic industry which a century 
 ago was in the hands of women, is now taken from them ; and if 
 they are not admitted to a participation in the employment and 
 profit of such products, they are turned idle, or remitted to useless 
 work that pays nothing to them. In the degree that they are, or 
 may hereafter be, admitted into the government of the social and 
 15 
 
218 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 civil state, they will go into the dangerous class, for the very reason 
 that they will be pecuniarily dependent upon the community. 
 
 In 1850 women were twenty-three and a half in the hundred 
 hands employed in the mining, mechanic, and manufacturing arts 
 in the United States. Under the less favoring tariff of 1860 they 
 had declined to twenty and a half per cent of the total employees; 
 but still their contributions to, and interest in, the manufactures of 
 the country at that time, show the importance to the sex of reserv 
 ing to the home industry of the people the supply of such com 
 modities as are fitted to their capabilities, which is, in some degree, 
 indicated by the fact that in 1860 the women employed in such 
 works were in number fully fifty-four per cent of all the hands 
 engaged in them. Eighty- five millions of dollars were the wages 
 paid to the aggregate of the employees, and the product was 
 valued at four hundred and six millions. The whole number of 
 women so employed were 212,383 ; together their wages in the year 
 amounted to 833,500,000. 
 
 Are not women greatly concerned, and is not the whole people as 
 much interested in saving for the sex such a mass and such a value 
 of suitable labor ? Nay, would not a complete system of protec 
 tion throw out many thousand mules who now preoccupy the places 
 fitted for women, and give them that much more of independence 
 and of the advantages of every kind attendant upon self-support 
 ing employments ? 
 
 The signs of the times fairly promise the concession of all that is 
 substantial, and all that is due to women, from the sex now governing 
 them and controlling their welfare. This growing enfranchisement 
 and responsibility of the subjects imperatively demand that all the 
 necessary accompaniments should be provided. 
 
 Men have worked themselves into civilization and the sovereignty 
 of the elements, so far as they have gone, by skilled labor in 
 diversified branches of industry. The same thing, and all ap 
 proaches to it, however attained, can be maintained only by the 
 same means and processes. Women, no more than men, can get 
 possession and enjoyment of their abstract rights but by conforming 
 to the law of progress, and the mere investiture of any kind, or 
 any number of franchises, cannot secure their benefits to any class, 
 sex, or race of mankind, but by compliance with the conditions on 
 which such rights and liberties depend. 
 
THEORY AND POLICY OF PROTECTION. 219 
 
 Before leaving the special dependence of our women upon the 
 policy which alone can secure them the independence and the de 
 velopment which self-supporting industry affords, it is proper to 
 turn their attention to the kinds of remunerative labor for which 
 they have proved their fitness. The aggregate of wages and the 
 numbers of the sex engaged, above stated, were employed in the 
 manufacture of the following among the occupations reported by 
 the census of 1860 : Paper boxes were made by 1,090 ; carpets, 
 2,771; clothing, 77,871; cotton goods employed, 76,110 ; hats and 
 caps, 4,243; hosiery, 6 ; 323 ; millinery and dress making, 5, .537 ; 
 paper, 4,392 ; straw goods, 6,803 ; umbrellas and parasols, 1,410; 
 woolen goods, 17,796; boots and shoes, 28,574; cigars, snuff, and 
 tobacco, 3,721. Now these goods, and an endless variety, and a 
 very great value, of other articles not enumerated, are the very 
 commodities for the production of which foreign manufactures 
 are in active competition with us. Let down the bars, and our 
 women will be driven out of this immense field of employment, 
 and excluded besides from at least an equally extensive additional 
 territory of production for which they are well prepared, and ought 
 to enjoy. Those among them who are agitating for the right of 
 suffrage ought to be careful at the same time to qualify their con 
 stituents for a wise administration of the political power which 
 they expect to wield. The ballot and idleness go badly together; 
 they demoralize each other badly. Better for the disfranchised 
 and for the public weal, if both sexes of idlers were debarred from 
 the exercise of the law-making power, than confer it upon either, 
 if the franchise only tends to throw the holders into the dema 
 gogue market. The masculine voter can make nothing out of his 
 ballot but the corruption of office seeking and the opportunity of 
 selling his soul at the polls, unless he be really independent of 
 politics as a trade. 
 
 The freedmen are in a somewhat different predicament. The ballot 
 is to them protection from the persecution of the ruffianism of the 
 country, and the means of security from the general prejudice of 
 color. In this respect it is to them the greatest of social benefits. 
 "Women do not need it for these purposes ; they are not exposed to 
 the evils of an inferior caste in society. But the lately enfranchised 
 negro, is in exactly the same position as our women in respect to 
 the labor question. If the opportunity for entering the field of the 
 
220 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 skilled industries is destroyed through the preoccupation of our 
 markets for their products, by the cheap labor of foreigners, they 
 will be driven back to the very kinds of labor which occupied them 
 in slavery, and they must accept the low wages which the world 
 allows to such drudgeries. 
 
 Without property, without education in the arts, they are as yet 
 confined to the old-time kind of plantation work. Their labor has 
 already restored the cotton product to the stage it had attained 
 before the Ptebellion, and the price of the staple in its gorged 
 markets is already nearly down to the figure it reached when it 
 was at the lowest. American cotton sold at seven and three-quar 
 ters pence at Liverpool in 1860. It is now quoted at seven and a 
 half pence there, and is steadily declining toward the price it held 
 in its worst days, when no wages were paid to the cultivators, and 
 the masters made no profit in its cultivation. How long will this 
 system continue before the former slaves will be upon as short an 
 allowance as ever they were. A diversified industry is the only 
 thing that can save them from that bondage of poverty which differs 
 only in name from chattel slavery. Our white women and our 
 slave men, until lately, were always classified together, in respect 
 to their political status. They are how, and must for long, be in 
 the same economical category. The law of the industrial life of the 
 one, is the law\)f the other ; and nothing is more astonishing to one 
 who sees their equal position in relation to real personal liberty and 
 independence, than to find philanthropists arguing and voting for a 
 system of international trade that must hold them both alike in 
 dependence, and whatever of disability and degradation, they are 
 respectively exposed to. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE MOST PROMINENT AND PLAUSIBLE OBJECTIONS TO 
 PROTECTION. 
 
 Protection of national labor .unfairly classed among the obsolete restrictions of 
 industry and trade. Protection, the reciprocal of allegiance, embraces the 
 interests of labor, and commands its defense. Countervailing legislation in 
 defense of foreign trade unquestionably right, but still more imperatively 
 demanded against injuries of domestic commerce. The natural differences of 
 national conditions, enough for all beneficial foreign commerce ; the accidental 
 differences are not to be perpetuated. Production precedes exchange, and 
 productive power takes precedence of trade in national policy. Protection, so 
 far from interfering with the individual s choice of occupation or market, aims 
 solely at securing their liberty by providing their opportunity. Liberty without 
 its defenses is a mockery. Free trade, a modified form of rebellion the spirit 
 of insurrection against the law of order. Not that government which governs 
 least, but that which best promotes the public welfare, is best. Who pays the 
 duty? "When non-protective duties* are imposed the consumer must pay them. 
 Domestic competition in the home market throws a part or the whole of the 
 duty upon the foreign producer. How prices are affected by domestic compe 
 tition. If a protective duty, in any case, raises the prices above a given rate, 
 it also holds it from ever rising higher it permanently defends consumers 
 against monopoly prices. If it affords profits unduly large, domestic com 
 petition immediately reduces them to the ordinary standard, and secures a con 
 stant reduction of prices in keeping with all improvements in production. No 
 rise of prices can go above the point which equalizes the protected industry with 
 all others in the community. To forbid this, is simply to forbid native enter 
 prise to enter upon any industry which foreigners have preoccupied, until 
 wages are reduced to the lowest known in the world ; till capital is as cheap, 
 because as abundant, and skill, with its education denied, is as great conclu 
 sions alike preposterous and atrocious. Nine-tenths of the consumers are also 
 producers, and have the largest interests in all the results of protection. The 
 benefits of the policy distributed among all classes, and all are immediately re 
 paid and refunded any temporary increase of prices. Fallacy of the assumed 
 fixity of price upon which the increased cost of a protective duty is calculated. 
 Cost of iron as affected by various rates of duty of lead of steel rails. 
 Prices of foreign commodities always fall under protective duties. The testi 
 mony of consumers of an important foreign product. Effect of duties upon 
 foreign imports reflected upon competing domestic products : statement of the 
 free trade argument by their accepted exponent of the doctrine. His cypher- 
 ings and their impossible results. The equally monstrous consequences of the 
 
 221 
 
222 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 "Revenue" duties which the party proposes and advocates. Their revenue 
 duties shown to cost consumers, on their own principles, an average of ten times 
 the amount of revenue which they yield. The " Revenue Reformers" inextri 
 cably entangled by the reductio ad ubaurdum of their system. Following their 
 doctrine, the customs from which they are required to raise one hundred and 
 fifty, cannot be made to yield more than twenty-five, millions. The conse 
 quences to the tax payers. Absurd workings of the assumed principle the 
 larger the domestic production the greater the burden of the revenue duty, and 
 the only escape is the abandonment of any industry that any other people 
 adopt. Our taxes now fifteen per cent of our annual products. Must we bear 
 this ourselves and give an untaxed market to our foreign rivals ? Effects of 
 protective duties summarized. 
 
 THE discussion of the subject now in hand is embarrassed by the 
 thousand and one special relations which protection holds to the 
 social and industrial interests of the people, and resultingly to the 
 financial health of the Government. I have endeavored to pre 
 sent the principle in its nature, its adaptations, and intentions, as it 
 interlocks and conflicts with the antagonist theory of trade, for I 
 could not advantageously, within the limits of this treatise, give it a 
 more formal and systematic array. Following the same plan of treat 
 ment I propose to consider in this chapter the most prominent and 
 plausible objections urged by free traders ; aud ; in their appropriate 
 places, to discuss the doctrines of free trade, or the foundation upon 
 which it is made to rest. 
 
 The free trade logicians overload their argument with an insuf 
 ferable tediousness of instances in which the governments of times 
 past interfered with the business affairs of their people. They 
 enjoy -themselves beyond limits on " the limitation of the powers of 
 government." They put themselves among the foreground advo 
 cates of civil and political progress, in clamoring for the greatest 
 possible extension of the let-alone principle of governmental policy; 
 all for the purpose of carrying over to the doctrine of protection 
 the odium of the old-time usury laws ; the arbitrary regulation of 
 wages and prices ; the grants of monopolies ; the laws in restraint 
 of working-men s combinations j the restraints despotically imposed 
 upon the freedom of opinion and publication, with all the other 
 abuses of authority which can be pressed into service. These 
 oppressive and repressive exercises of the civil power are justly 
 under condemnation now, and it is much to the purpose of the 
 party of professed progressives to put protection of home industry 
 into the class of obsolete usages, which are discredited by the 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 223 
 
 spirit of modern progress. It can then be overwhelmed with an 
 epithet, and all argument of its special merits is escaped. 
 
 That protection, however, which is the reciprocal of allegiance in 
 the philosophy of law, must, nevertheless, be allowed as a duty of 
 government, however much the power may have been abused. The 
 range of the duty and the mode of exercising the just power conferred, 
 must be coextensive with the nation s necessities, especially when 
 it is limited, as in the case of regulating international trade, to 
 such measures of defense as are required against foreign inter 
 ference, whatever form it may take, with the freedom of the people 
 in their choice of the ways and means of self-support, and of em 
 ploying their own labor in the pursuit of wealth. Government is 
 bound to adopt countervailing and defensive measures against the 
 mischiefs and injuries threatened or inflicted by foreign govern 
 ments or people, by their commercial or maritime action upon 
 domestic rights and interests ; and, it may do this by whatever 
 means the case requires and warrants. This will not be disputed, 
 or at least, needs no further vindication than its mere statement. 
 
 Laissez-faire can scarcely require the sovereign power to let 
 its own people alone, and permit all other people to do what 
 they please against the national interests. Should a foreign 
 government exclude our ships, or our products from its ports, or 
 injuriously burden our commerce, is our own legislature to be 
 refused the power, or denied the capacity, to protect the national 
 interests so oppressed ? Yet such measures would only affect that 
 exceedingly small portion of our productive industry which is 
 involved in our foreign trade; and surely it cannot be admitted that 
 there is no corresponding protective and defensive power which 
 may be rightfully addressed to the support and safety of that ten 
 fold larger commerce which we have at home, and the thousandfold 
 larger interest which belongs to the freedom of domestic labor. 
 
 A foreign people, with larger and cheaper capital; longer ex 
 perience and its greater skill ; cheaper and more abundant labor, 
 and many another decided advantage in a competitive struggle, 
 find their interest in making us their customers for their own 
 benefit at the expense of our own labor system ; and yet we are 
 forbidden by the spirit of progress to employ the self-preservation 
 power of nationality in abatement or avoidance of the mischief! 
 Free trade in its basis principle allows the individuality of the 
 
224 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 nations, and all their economic differences of conditions, but this 
 only as a ground for their cosmopolitanism of trade. The more 
 unlike the communities of men are, the better they are fitted for 
 trade exchanges, and the more permanent these differences can be 
 made, and the more the resulting dependency of each upon the 
 others can be increased, the better for trade ! Our answer to this is, 
 that the natural differences are enough for the commercial relations 
 of the various societies of men; but the accidental abnormal, and 
 injurious conditions by which they are differenced are not to be 
 accepted, but to be amended, for the sake of due progress of all 
 the parties. In natural sequence production precedes exchange, 
 and the answering principle in logic requires that productive power 
 should have precedence of trade interests in the direction of national 
 policy. 
 
 From such freedom of international exchange as utterly ignores 
 all national distinctions, necessities, and means of economic pro 
 gress, these people carry over a cluster of abstractions to their 
 theory of individual freedom. They insist upon the riglit of the 
 laborer to choose his own occupation;" that "every man has the 
 right to dispose of his own labor, wherever and whenever he thinks 
 it most advantageous to himself," and that " ever} 7 one is better 
 able to choose his own industrial pursuit than the government can 
 be." Such mere truisms as these no protectionist disputes, nor is 
 he otherwise bound to notice, than to expose their impertinence in 
 the argument. All such platitudes are answered in a word : 
 Protection does not interfere in the choice of men s occupations ; 
 with their choice of markets; nor, with any other thing, right, or 
 business engagement that anybody ever claimed. So far from this, 
 its whole end and aim, and its only possible operation, are to secure 
 the opportunity for such freedom of choice for such freedom in 
 industrial production, and such freedom of exchange, as the people 
 who adopt it require for the defense and advancement of their 
 individual and national prosperity. 
 
 Abstract freedom conceded, with its necessary defenses withheld, 
 is a mockery. Letting everybody loose to prey upon everybody 
 else, if they can or will, is not liberty, but lawlessness. To expose the 
 weak to the strong ; to make the markets of the country a melee of 
 the nations; is just such a privilege as the rough-shod donkey 
 offered to the chickens in the barn-yard when he proposed a free 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 225 
 
 dance, with its unrestricted liberties to the partners, upon the 
 Laissez-faire principle of sauve qui pent. 
 
 Free traders make an utterly unfair use of the maxim, " that 
 government is best which governs least." They push it to the 
 length of saying that, in trade, no government is best of all. They 
 avail themselves of the indignation which the obsolete restrictions 
 upon industrial and commercial liberty of the by-gone despotisms 
 provoked. They are full of that revolutionary spirit which, to 
 resist abuses, runs into the diametrically opposite error, as the most 
 effective rallying cry of resistance. Wise moderation has not that 
 full commitment, that squareness of issue joined, that plump oppo- 
 siteness, which most strongly enlists and incites parties in warfare. 
 This is the spirit of insurrection with its battle-cry of " Liberty 
 against the Government." But people must govern themselves 
 even in freedom, and they must defend themselves until millennium 
 comes, and there is some point at which lawlessness must be checked 
 and authority be introduced; and it is best to get rid of the over 
 strained maxims of rebellion when authorized and organized gov 
 ernment is required. Disorderly principles serve very well for 
 pulling down Babylon; but when Jerusalem is to be built and 
 established, order, degree, and direction are demanded, and it is 
 then time to adopt and respect the doctrine that the principles and 
 policy of that government are best which best promote the welfare 
 of the people which best execute themselves by their reasonable 
 ness, practicability, and utility, and are least liable to abuse; or, 
 the most expedient is best. 
 
 The great point which free traders make and most persistently 
 press against protective duties is, that, as they are imposed for the 
 purpose of equalizing the prices of domestic with foreign products 
 in the home market, they must necessarily increase the cost of such 
 commodities to the consumer. This is not clear, nor is it in general 
 true of the foreign article so charged ; for a part, or the whole, of the 
 duty may be thrown upon the foreigner, either in abatement of his 
 profits, or in reduction of the wages and price of the raw material, 
 or, of all together. This depends entirely upon the competition 
 offered in the domestic market. If the foreigner has a monopoly of 
 the product, he can charge the whole of the duty upon it to the 
 consumer. There is nothing to hinder him. This is obviously true 
 in the matter of tropical commodities sold in the United States. 
 
226 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Five cents import duty upon coffee, and twenty-five cents upon tea, 
 are nothing else than a domestic tax collected at the custom house. 
 Such tax protects nothing native, and nothing native checks its 
 charge upon the consumer ; he must pay the whole duty, and the 
 importer has possession of our market as free as if no duty at all 
 were imposed. The same thing is true of all commodities imported 
 which meet no competition, or no effective rivalry in the market 
 other than that offered by other foreign traders. 
 
 Suppose the price at which the foreign article can be profitably 
 offered, to be fixed, which it is not and cannot be, but, for the pur 
 pose of trying the case, let this point be assumed. Domestic labor 
 and capital cannot yield it at that price, but would be enabled to do 
 so by charging it, if worth one dollar, with a twenty-five per cent 
 duty, and such a charge is accordingly levied. At the beginning of 
 the contest, it might seem that, both the domestic and foreign 
 article would be raised to that price. But, we now have a condition 
 of things in which the foreigner, to hold the market, must reduce 
 his profits, or lose the trade, or much of it, and the home-made can 
 well be supplied at one-dollar and twenty-five cents. The results are 
 of two kinds, the foreign article cannot go above a dollar and a 
 quarter, because it will be driven out by the native. This is a 
 great point attained. It is now no longer at the option of the for 
 eigner to raise the price as occasions would otherwise tempt him. 
 And if the protective duty has increased the cost to the consumer, 
 it holds it down to that point thereafter. 
 
 Protective duties are imposed to encourage home industry. The 
 cost of production, during the process of improvement in the business, 
 will decline regularly, and may do so very largely sufficiently to 
 afford the article at one dollar, or the supposed remunerative price 
 of the foreign commodity at the commencement of the contest for 
 the home market. This is not assuming a shade of probability too 
 much. And then who pays the duty, if the importer still contends 
 for the market? Plainly he must pay, or lose, the whole of it; he 
 must suffer it in abatement of profit, or in reduction of wages, and 
 as long as he does so, the consumer has the product at the former 
 price, and the duty goes into the national treasury, as so much tax 
 paid by the foreigner for the privilege of our market. These two 
 things are then secured : first, the market price is held down to the 
 figure at which native production can afford it; and second, it is 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 227 
 
 reduced progressively to the extent which native skill and experi 
 ence acquired can effect. The maximum cost is fixed for the 
 benefit of the consumer, and an assured decline of that maximum is 
 certainly provided for. If the dollar and a quarter yields a large 
 profit, home competition will immediately pull it down, arid never 
 cease reducing it until the profit falls to the average of all other 
 investments and enterprises. 
 
 But, at first, the duty does raise the price, or means to raise it, 
 above the point at which the foreign article is then sold ; but not 
 above that at which it may be held in the absence of all competition. 
 Granting this, let us see how high such price may go under pro 
 tection. Manifestly no higher than will raise the wages of labor and 
 the profits of capital in that to the level of other businesses : which 
 means this, and nothing else or more, that wages and profits in such- 
 a business were previously below the general level. This is the 
 limit of the rise, absolutely and permanently fixed. Now, what is 
 the objection of the consumer to such equalization ? Will he answer 
 that this particular industry, so to be fostered, requires protection 
 because it is not so favorably conditioned as others which ask no 
 assistance, and ought, therefore, to be abandoned ? Abandoned, till 
 when ? Will he answer ? What other reply can he give than " to 
 the time when wages shall be as low as in the country of the rival, 
 which monopolizes the trade by underpaying its laborers ! or till 
 capital shall be as cheap and skill and experience as great !" And 
 will he tell us when these things shall be, and how they shall be 
 brought about ? Shall wages be driven down with us, by the 
 hungry strife for work that has lowered them to the starving point 
 abroad ? Can skill be acquired while its education is denied ? And 
 will capital be accumulated by the process of limiting its employ 
 ment to the least remunerative investments ? 
 
 A general answer to this general objection is sufficient. Educa 
 tion must be paid for, and it always repays its cost if it be sound, 
 practical and serviceable. 
 
 Who are the consumers that free trade pleads for so impor 
 tunately ? Are not quite nine-tenths of them in the United States 
 also producers ? Opening up new avenues of occupation for them 
 and enlarging old ones, has the effect first of diminishing competi 
 tion for the sale of labor. It also withdraws from some industries 
 a portion of producers and makes them consumers for the re- 
 
228 QUESTIONS or THE DAY. 
 
 mainder. It gives and secures for all a home market that can be 
 defended against all injurious invasions from abroad. It enlarges 
 the diversification of labor, and adapts it to the capabilities of 
 thousands and even millions of such persons as would otherwise be 
 unproductive, and fall into the supported or dangerous class of the 
 community ; and thus, by distributing the benefits of the policy 
 upon all classes and conditions of society, it immediately repays all 
 the earlier enhancement of prices, and forthwith commences to 
 lower them permanently and securely. 
 
 But we have gone too far, in allowing prices to be fixed or re 
 strained by anything else than the force of home competition. It 
 is a curious assumption of the free traders that always makes any 
 given price of a foreign product the standard or basis from which 
 they count the increased cost to the consumer of the duty imposed 
 upon it. 
 
 It does seem like a waste of words to expose this fallacy, but an 
 instance or two out of hundreds will at least give the facts to be ex 
 plained for the help of those who do not or will not see the princi 
 ple that rules the subject : 
 
 In the year 1844 the duty on English common bar iron was 8-5 
 per ton. The price in the New York market (average of the year) 
 was $61.83. The cost less the duty, it is assumed, would have 
 been $36.83, and the ad valorem duty was, therefore, sixty-eight 
 per cent. The price, with the duty off, we will call the prime 
 cost for the purpose of our demonstration. The rate of duty was 
 twice lowered between 1844 and 1860 : in 1846 it was reduced to 
 thirty per cent, and again, in 1857, to twenty-four per cent upon 
 the prime cost. 
 
 Now look at the effect of these varied rates upon the price : 
 
 1844, duty $25 00 per ton Prime cost $36 S3 per ton. 
 
 1854 16 42 " " 54 70 " 
 
 1858 " 10 04 " 41 85 " 
 
 1860 " 8 22 " 34 23 " 
 
 Here we see that in the first stage of diminished rates, when the 
 duty fell $8.57, the cost rose $17.87. At the second stage, when 
 the duty had fallen $14.96, the price was still $5.02 higher than in 
 1844, and when the duty had been reduced $16.78, the cost had 
 fallen but $2.60. 
 
 Take another instance : in 1845 ; under the protective tariff of 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 229 
 
 1842, the duty upon pig lead was S3 per hundred pounds; the 
 price in the New York market (average for the year) was $3.37. 
 The duty being eight hundred per cent upon the prime cost, or as 
 the free traders argue, the lead might have been had for thirty- 
 seven and a half cents, duty off. From 1847 to 1857, under an 
 ad valorem duty of twenty per cent, the price rose at a pretty even 
 pace, beginning in 1847 at $4.31, and ending in 1857, at $7.03 
 the duty reduced to one-fortieth and the price considerably more 
 than doubled ! Who paid the duty in 1844, when the domestic 
 production was protected ; and who paid the twenty per cent duty 
 in 1857, when the domestic rivalry was driven out of the market? 
 
 One more instance, because a much more recent one, must be 
 added : 
 
 In 1864 the importation of steel rails began in the United 
 States. They were sold that year to our railroad companies at $162 
 to $135 per ton, in gold. In 1867 American manufacturers began 
 to supply the market, the foreign rails went down to $115 to $110 
 per ton. In April 1870 they were lowered to $72, in New York 
 and Philadelphia ; now in 1864 the duty being levied in ad valor- 
 ems, was equivalent to $46.60, in gold, and was paid by the Ameri 
 can consumer, which would leave to the rail makers one hundred 
 and one dollars and ninety cents as the prime cost of the rails; in 
 April 1870, the duty, being an ad valorem, fell to $18, and left the 
 producers in England but $54 per ton, gold. 
 
 Here American competition reduced the price in our Atlantic 
 cities to $4.80 less than one-half it had been at, six years before. 
 Such, in these instances, has been the effects of protective duties 
 upon prices of foreign products in the domestic market. The rail 
 road companies in great numbers, including the most important of 
 them, petitioned Congress in 1870 to raise the duty upon these rails, 
 and, to make them certainly protective, asked that they be changed 
 to specifics, and fixed at $44.80 per gross ton, for which they gave 
 the reason that they " as users of steel rails and transporters of the 
 food and material for American manufacturers and their numerous 
 employees and skilled laborers, do not desire to be dependent ex 
 clusively upon the foreign supply/ They would rather have the 
 rails they require at eighty or even a hundred dollars per ton, than 
 pay, as they did in 1864, an average of one hundred and "forty- 
 eight for them. They wish to have the rates held down to such a 
 
230 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 figure as Americans can make them for, and therefore, would have 
 the domestic make sustained by a sufficiently protective duty. Do 
 they undertsand their business ? And are not all consumers thus 
 protected by the policy that home production secures to them from 
 the unlimited demands of the foreign monopolists? 
 
 There is nothing which the free traders make so much of, or 
 press so urgently upon the inexpert and uninformed of their audi 
 ences, as the reflected effect of protective duties upon the prices of 
 the domestic products. Their whole doctrine turns upon prices, and 
 they are bound to make the most of them. This party in the 
 United States accepts the late special Commissioner of the Revenue 
 as the expositor of this point in their appeal to the populace, and 
 rely upon his statistical arguments as the most effective of their 
 weapons. I quote . him only to authenticate my statement of the 
 propositions on which they throw their force. In his official report 
 to the Secretary of the Treasury dated December, 1869, will be 
 found in detail the data and the inferences which I must condense 
 in a brief but sufficiently forcible array. He says, in so many words, 
 that a reduction in the duty upon foreign salt would be followed by 
 a corresponding reduction in the price of the domestic article. In 
 a dozen other instances, in other words, he says the same thing. 
 He makes a law of prices out of this position, and bases all his 
 calculations of the amount of relief the people must obtain in the 
 cost of home-made commodities, by any given percentage of reduc 
 tion in the duties imposed upon the competing commodities of 
 foreign origin brought to our markets. 
 
 On this ground and for this purpose he proposes the remission of 
 $750,000 in the duties collected from foreign pig-iron in the fiscal 
 year 1867-8, and says that such a reduction would relieve the 
 consumers of domestic pig iron of no less than 810,800,000, thus 
 reducing the cost of the total foreign and domestic consumption by 
 fifteen and four-tenths times the amount of the duty if retained. A 
 reduction of $600,000 upon the duties charged upon foreign salt, 
 he says, " would relieve the community of a tax, in the first instance, 
 of $3,900,000 per annum;" a reduction of $3,500,000 upon the 
 duties charged on hides, leather, all the manufactures of leather, 
 tanning barks, Listings and serge, would have the effect of " re 
 lieving the people from a burden of taxation, as already demon 
 strated, approximating the sum of $1S ; 000 ; 000;" and $1,202,020 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 231 
 
 of duties upon imported timber and lumber, in all forms, wholly 
 remitted, would, by the same principles of calculation, reduce the 
 cost of all such articles produced at home for consumption no less 
 than 816,000,000. In the aggregate of these four classes of goods 
 alone, the import duties upon similar products are made, by the 
 commissioner s logic and computation, to enhance the cost of the 
 domestic product $48,700,000, while their foreign correspondents 
 yield only 86,112,000 of revenue. 
 
 This doctrine applies to all other duty-paying imports, and to 
 the reflected effect upon the prices of the domestic commodities 
 which divide the home market with them. Let us try it through* 
 the entire range of its supposed operation : 
 
 The official value of all such foreign goods, so charged with im 
 port duties, which met the competition of American goods in the 
 year 1867-8, was $178,000,000 ; the aggregate duties amounted to 
 $85,400,000 an average of a small fraction less than forty-eight 
 per cent. We have no authoritative estimate of the value of such 
 goods manufactured in the United States in that year, but we can 
 guess. The increase of the year 1860 upon 1850 was eighty-five 
 per cent; the product of 1860 was $1,885,000,000; eighty-five per 
 cent will be little enough under all the circumstances to add to the 
 value of 1860 for that of 1868. This gives us 3,487 millions as 
 the value of the products of the year. On which sum, according to 
 this theory, a forty-eight per cent increase of cost to the consumers 
 must have fallen, and therefore the duties charged upon the foreign 
 import surcharged the prices of their domestic rivals the total 
 sum of $1, 673.760, 000, or nine and a half times the amount of the 
 duties secured to the treasury by the system of raising revenue at 
 the custom houses ! 
 
 This is frightful, atrocious, horrible, and ridiculous. But it is 
 agony and oratory for the stump, and a " big thing" in statistics 
 for the tongues and pens of the Innocents whose philosophy is 
 bounded by the multiplication table. 
 
 But do the experts among the propagandists of free trade them 
 selves believe it ? 
 
 This same Commissioner, in full possession of his economic logic 
 and unmeasurable arithmetic, in this same report, proposes to put 
 an aggregate duty of $38,000,000 upon imported sugar, molasses, 
 and melado. This is just fifty-two and one half per cent upon their 
 
232 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 invoice value in the year 1867-8, which being reflected upon 
 $23.750,000 worth usually produced at home, must enhance their 
 market price a fraction over 812,000,000. Add to this the duty 
 itself and we have a round $50,000,000 put upon the cost of these 
 sweets to the consumers. This is enormous taxation indeed ; for by 
 the rule of the Commissioner, if the duties were wholly remitted 
 we might have had the entirety of our supply, foreign and domestic, 
 for 883,600,000, but under its malign operation, they must neces 
 sarily cost us just 850,000,000 more, that is thirty-eight millions in 
 .duties upon the foreign, and twelve in enhanced price upon the 
 domestic. 
 
 He treats woolens and worsteds and cotton goods in the same 
 way. Taking his own data for the calculation he proposes to raise 
 830,000.000 upon cottons, woolens, iron, steel and lead, at an ex 
 pense of 894,500,000 of increased cost to the consumers of these 
 foreign and domestic goods. But his schedules provide for a revenue 
 of 8150,000,000 a year from imports. Without an unnecessarily 
 tedious calculation, I cannot give the precise figures for the total 
 tax that his proposal would inflict upon the consumers, but a safe 
 average would put it at ten times as much. We confront the 
 Revenue Reformers with this result of their financial system. Some 
 of them having felt the force of this reductio ad absurdwn, bluntly 
 propose to set every foreign article free of import duty which meets 
 in our markets any quantity of the like kind of domestic production. 
 The doctrine which they all profess, and the arguments they all use, 
 drive them, whether or no, into this trap. They are compelled to 
 be absolute free traders in respect to all goods, wares and merchan 
 dise which compete with our own products, but merciless in the 
 burdens that they must throw upon all commodities which our own 
 soil and labor cannot produce. To see how this principle would 
 work upon the federal revenue, we need but look at the several 
 classes of our usual imports, their respective values, and yield of 
 duties. Taking Mr. Wells schedules, which will be found on the 
 one-hundred and twenty-eighth page of his report, I see not how 
 more than twenty-five millions of the hundred and fifty of revenue 
 which he expects, can possibly be derived from imports which do 
 not compete with our domestic supplies. And it follows, if this 
 doctrine of reflected prices is true, or if its advocates believe it to 
 be true, that they are bound to release our total importation from all 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROTECTION. 283 
 
 but about twenty-five millions of taxes, and throw something like 
 two-hundred and twenty-millions of the necessary revenue of the 
 government upon domestic property and industry. They must do 
 this, and they must abandon their duties for revenue, or, they are 
 bound in reason and conscience, to withdraw their assaults upon 
 protective duties as a cause of a tenfold cost forced upon home-made 
 goods. 
 
 One curious effect of the doctrine which we have been pressing 
 to its consequences is, that the more productive our industries may 
 be, the worse is the effect of any duty laid upon the rival products 
 of foreign origin. For instance, if we import ten millions worth of 
 a class of goods under a twenty-five per cent duty, and manufacture 
 a hundred millions worth of the same kind, the consumers must 
 bear twenty-five millions of increased price upon the domestic 
 goods ; but if we import a hundred millions and manufacture only 
 ten, the consumers of the domestic article suffer only to the extent 
 of two and a half millions ; which is followed by this unavoidable 
 consequence it is ruinously oppressive to the consumers, to tax 
 any article of foreign make which we can make at home ; which 
 must have the further consequence of a surrender of our markets to 
 anything and everything that anybody abroad may choose to send 
 us, unless we can undersell them, with the whole burden of our 
 national debt, and federal, state, and municipal taxes for a make 
 weight in their favor. Our taxes are now not" less than fifteen per 
 cent of our annual products; must we bear these ourselves, abandon 
 the industries which foreigners may choose to monopolize, and give 
 a free market to everybody except ourselves ? The doctrine of duties 
 reflected upon home prices requires this. What is the answer of 
 common sense ? 
 
 When considering the effect of home competition upon the prices 
 of foreign imports, the facts presented seemed entirely sufficient to 
 explode the notion we have now been confronting with its pre 
 posterous, absurd, and every way monstrous results. 
 
 It would be as tedious as unnecessary to give the instances, either 
 in particulars or summaries, which prove that protective duties, 
 levied in the strictness of the principle, always secure the con 
 sumers from arbitrary prices ; always in good time reduce prices to 
 the level of general rewards of labor and capital ; always throw their 
 burden upon the foreign producer ; when judiciously adjusted to the 
 16 
 
234 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 conditions and capabilities of the people; often, indeed, even going 
 further and trenching upon the usual profits of the producer, and 
 always repaying an hundredfold, any nominal increase of prices, by 
 putting every variety of capability to profitable employment; and 
 increasing the wages and profits as much to the consumers, who 
 are all immediately or indirectly interested in the general benefits 
 secured. 
 
 A very brief notice of the experience of other nations, which we 
 promised at the outset of our treatment of the complex questions 
 involved, will sustain all that is here claimed for the policy of 
 protective duties directed to the support and development of that 
 labor on which all wealth depends. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PROTECTION IN THE HISTORIC NATIONS. 
 
 Protection in England her struggle for supremacy in industry and trade ; her 
 rise from the lowest to the highest rank in Europe. Measures taken to make 
 her " the workshop of the world. How she built up her woolen manufactures 
 by five centuries of protective duties prohibitions, bonuses, and penalties and 
 her iron industry by similar means during a period of over one hundred and 
 twenty years. In wool, iron, and coal she possessed natural advantages, and 
 free traders credit her success in these industries to this cause ; but by pro 
 tection she naturalized her cotton manufactures, and enlarged them till their 
 products outmeasure the value of all her other exports. Beginning the business 
 in 1740 by prohibiting the oriental fabrics which sold at three times less price 
 than the domestic product, and maintaining the defense of the home industry 
 until all successful competition was impossible. In 1846 free trade was pro 
 claimed by statute, but England never remitted or abated a protective duty till 
 her own supremacy defied all rivalry in her home markets. By countervailing 
 duties she still defends her burdened industries, and her present policy is just as 
 protective as her interests require. The new Empire of GERMANY owes its ex 
 istence and its eminence to the protection measures of the Zollverein. History 
 of protection in BELGIUM. The natural resources of the Kingdom, the policy of 
 trade employed, and the provision made for the prosperity of her manufactures, 
 agriculture, and commerce. Her population the densest in the world, and its 
 growth double that of Great Britain, and her emigrants nineteen times less. 
 Protection in FRANCE maintained the most wasteful of governments, educated 
 the artisans which initiated tho skilled industries of all Europe, and has sus 
 tained her finances through the revolutions of a century. The protective and 
 prohibitive policy of RUSSIA has raised the kingdom from barbarism to the 
 rank of a first-rate power in Europe, and emancipated twenty millions of serfs. 
 The opponents challenged to find in all history a nation that has risen to the 
 front rank, or any one that has maintained a high position, except such as 
 have steadily maintained a protective policy adapted to their national conditions 
 and international relations. Free trade in the history of nations TURKEY. 
 Free trade proclaimed by the Sultan three centuries ago. Then Turkish supe 
 riority defied competition in production. Modern agencies have so cheapened 
 products, that Turkey, unable to command them, has lost not only her foreign 
 markets but is compelled to surrender her home commerce to foreigners. The 
 "sick man s" complaint explained. His dissolution waiting only for agreement 
 among the dissectors. Helpless herself, and no help from her free trade pro 
 tector. How her trade has declined. How she supplies her exchequer, and 
 
 235 
 
236 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 debases her current coin. Ireland, effects of the Act of Union ; driven by its 
 free trade provisions from the workshop to the potato field ; famine, pestilence 
 and emigration the consequences, and England hopeful of the extinction of the 
 nation. LVDIA another victim of English free trade; half a million starved in 
 a few months in the granary of the world multitudes, who formerly produced 
 the finest cotton tissues, driven from skilled industries to the lowest drudgery of 
 agriculture, and famines increased in frequency and extent for more than half 
 a century under British rule. PORTUGAL under a free trade treaty with England 
 precipitated from her pride of place among the nations to the condition of a 
 burden upon the hands that ruined her. Differences of race, religion, and 
 geographic position will not explain the fortunes and misfortunes of the nations 
 here reviewed. Only by one rule can they be classified the one class having 
 all protected their domestic industries ; the other, surrendered them to the 
 domination of foreigners. 
 
 WE open this section of our argument upon the vantage ground 
 of the wide world s experience. The testimony of all history 
 proves this broad proposition : not a single nation on the earth has 
 attained a leading position ; not a nation in the past or present has 
 maintained the rank that entitles it to be called a " power," except 
 those who have firmly maintained an adapted policy of protection 
 in the direction of their international relations. England, being 
 one of the very best of the examples in proof, is entitled to our 
 first consideration. 
 
 Every one who knows anything of her history, knows that through 
 a long struggle she raised her commerce and manufactures from the 
 lowest to the very highest rank among the nations, not of Europe 
 only, but of the world. Her chances for attaining and maintaining 
 supremacy in production and trade in an even-handed struggle, 
 under a let-alone policy, were simply hopeless. Great Britain oc 
 cupies a territory not more than one-fourteenth of the extent, and 
 has, even now, a population equal to only one-eighth of the natural 
 labor force of her European rivals Russia, in f]urope, being excluded 
 from the computation. The one-half of these peoples were far in 
 advance of her at the beginning of the strife. Such were the odds 
 against her, and such the proved capabilities of her opponents. 
 How did she address herself to the great work of self-development, 
 and achieve her grand success? By following the policy which 
 she now urges upon the nations still in the conditions from which 
 she herself has risen, and in her progress passing through such a 
 series of stages as represent all the varied conditions of her con 
 temporaries in the present ? Did she entertain such hallucinations 
 
PROTECTION IN NATIONAL HISTORY. 237 
 
 as we get now from free trade theorists, poets, transcendentalists, 
 factors, brokers, and smugglers ? Did she aim at universal mastery 
 through cosmopolitanism in trade ? On the contrary, she went 
 resolutely to work under such a system of protective measures as 
 challenges comparison, and by them achieved her grand successes. 
 These measures may be arrayed under the following heads : pro 
 hibition of competing imports; prohibition of the export of raw 
 materials; bounties upon production and exportation; restraints 
 upon colonial manufactures; differential duties in favor of her own 
 commerce ; sumptuary laws encouraging such kinds of production 
 as seemed to need help in that form ; active and substantial aid to 
 the immigration of artisans from the continent; prohibition of the 
 immigration of her own skilled workmen, and of the export of 
 machinery; wars undertaken with the sole object of opening up 
 and monopolizing foreign markets, and, every other species of regu 
 lations and interferences which promised in any way to make her 
 "the workshop of the world." All this is known in a general way. 
 The particulars would astonish any one to whom they are unfa 
 miliar. From the year 1331 down to 1834 the woolen manufac 
 tures were steadily protected ; beginning with fines, maimings, im 
 prisonment, and death as the penalties for exporting native wool or 
 importing foreign cloth, and maintaining such penalties in force for 
 quite four centuries. In 1746 these were softened down to trans 
 portation for seven years. [See Blackstone s Commentaries, title, 
 Owling.] The latest of these penalties was not repealed till 1825. 
 Here we have an " infant manufacture," nursed through a period of 
 five hundred years, coming to a confident maturity which now 
 mocks at a rival in its cradle which has never yet had ten .consecu 
 tive years of fostering care ! 
 
 Iron imported in foreign vessels was charged, as early as the year 
 1710, with a duty of 2, 10s. per ton, which was raised at suc 
 cessive periods, till in 1819 it stood at 6, 10s. in English, and 7, 
 18s. 6(/. in foreign vessels. This was adequate as well as earnest 
 protection of the domestic manufacture, for as early as seven years 
 after the last-mentioned date England was actually producing her 
 own iron at 3, 13s. cheaper than the cheapest of her competitors 
 in all Europe. Being thus secure against all rivalry in the home 
 market the duty was reduced in 1834 to 1 per ton. 
 
 England s command of the finest wool at an early day, and her 
 
238 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 possession of iron ore and mineral coal, have been offered as the 
 sufficient cause of her great proficiency in their manufacture. 
 These were her natural advantages, and the justification of her 
 great endeavor to improve them. We have shown the means em 
 ployed to secure success. That the mere possession of the raw 
 material is not the whole explanation is shown by a still greater 
 triumph in another department of her established supremacy : 
 England grows not a pound of cotton, yet in I860 the real value 
 of her exports of cotton goods amounted to fifty-two millions of 
 pounds sterling, while those of iron, steel, wool, machinery, and 
 silk amounted to no more in the aggregate than forty-one millions. 
 
 Here then, we have a case in which nature did nothing for 
 England, but in which she managed to naturalize an utterly foreign 
 manufacture, so as to make its products exceed the half of her 
 total manufactures and products exported to foreign countries. Her 
 earliest supply of the material was from Cyprus and Smyrna, after 
 wards from India and China. Until 1790 America had sent her 
 none. When she commenced the manufacture of cottons, say 
 about the year 1740, the East India article could be afforded at less 
 than one-third of the price of the domestic, and, had its importation 
 been permitted, the British manufacture could not have fought its 
 way into the home market. But notwithstanding the inequality of 
 the contending parties, in the natural order of things, the exotic 
 character of the raw material, the freight upon the import, which 
 was then enormously high, and the unparalleled perfection of the for 
 eign art, the people found a way of meeting the exigency. It was 
 done by an act of Parliament, which reads thus : u Calicoes, painted, 
 stained, or dyed in Persia, China, or the East Indies, shall not be 
 worn or used in this kingdom;" and further, u all such goods, 
 whether mixed, sewed, or made up together for sale with any 
 other goods, shall be forfeited; and the person in whose custody, 
 knowing thereof, the same shall be found, or that shall dispose 
 thereof, shall forfeit 200." The British tariff act, passed in 1819, 
 still prohibited the manufactures of all countries east of the Cape 
 of Good Hope, and charged those of Europe fifty to sixty-seven per 
 cent. 
 
 About the year 1818, the application of steam power, and the 
 employment of the machinery which has so immensely increased and 
 cheapened production, was fairly established in England. For full 
 
PROTECTION IN NATIONAL HISTORY. 239 
 
 twenty years afterwards she maintained her protective system, and 
 then, when it was rendered unnecessary by the superiority which it 
 had produced, it was abandoned, and the English authorities began 
 to propagate those doctrines of free trade which her matured indus 
 tries could well bear. In 1846, the new policy suited to the new 
 aspect of the nation s business was installed in the statutes of the 
 British Parliament; that is, all that is intended and actual in the 
 policy became the public law of the land ; but the operative pro 
 visions amount to nothing more than the opening of the British 
 ports and markets freely to all commerce which her oicn supremacy 
 in production EXCLUDES ! As we have already shown, the existing 
 system of countervailing duties is still preserved to protect such of 
 her manufacturing interests as require them; and we are justified 
 by the facts in saying that, her whole system of commercial regula 
 tions have been for five centuries, and remain to this day, the most 
 complete, adequate, and successful instance of the employment of 
 the protective policy that can be found in history. With one other 
 word we conclude this brief review England never once, and 
 never in any instance, repealed, or remitted, or abated a protective 
 duty on any foreign goods until after, and generally long after, it 
 had accomplished all its objects, and left her safe from all compe 
 tition. 
 
 PROTECTION IN OTHER COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. 
 
 For the wonderful results that have crowned the policy in the 
 German States now included in the customs union of Prussia, com 
 monly called the Zollverein, we must content ourselves with what we 
 have said in our strictures upon the system of <.id valorem duties, in 
 a preceding chapter, and elsewhere when the history of the German 
 industrial system and its achievements were in point. 
 
 Our whole case might be safely rested upon the facts of the 
 industrial and commercial history of the little kingdom of Belgium 
 alone. In territory she is only a trifle larger than the State of 
 Maryland, and has not quite one-fourth of the area of New York or 
 Pennsylvania. In these limits she has a population of four millions 
 nine hundred thousand, which gives four hundred and thirty-three 
 to the square mile, which is full twenty-five per cent more dense 
 than that of England and \Yales, and nearly thrice the density of 
 Massachusetts. The productive industry required to support such 
 
240 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 a population is presumptively very great. She is well supplied 
 with raw material, and obviously is not stinted in labor power. 
 The success of the Belgians in the manufacture of silk, glass, 
 linen, and woolens, has given them a world wide reputation; and 
 her carpets and laces are known as the finest in foreign markets, 
 and are found there in amazing abundance. Small as the territory 
 is, it combines in a remarkable degree, and in remarkable balance, 
 capabilities for agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial in 
 dustry. Her customs system shows how wisely she has guarded all 
 these interests. She secures a home market for her raw materials 
 by defending her manufactures adequately. She finds a home 
 market for her breadstuffs and provisions by employing all her 
 hands busily in every form of converting industry; she fosters her 
 skilled industries by barring out all competition with their pro 
 ducts ; she favors a very large transit trade by offering every induce 
 ment to the bordering nations; and to foreigners trading with them, 
 making her roads a general thoroughfare ; her lands are cultivated 
 like garden grounds ; her factories are alive with industry, and are 
 carrying away the iron trade of northern and eastern Europe from 
 England; her foreign commerce grew, after it was liberated from 
 the dominion of Holland and Spain by the French in 1830, till it 
 stood, in 1860, at double the proportion of the United States; and 
 Belgium is now about ready for free trade : she has put herself, 
 through wise and persistent protection, into the list of the nations 
 that no longer need any defenses against her industrial and commer 
 cial rivals. \ 
 
 I must not detain the reader with a statement of the tariff rates 
 which have secured all these results. A specimen or two will give 
 the spirit of the whole. Raw tobacco is admitted at nine-tenths of 
 one cent per pound the manufactured is charged three cents ; raw 
 sugar at two cents per ton the manufactured or refined must 
 carry $185.68 per ton; raw wool, free woolen manufactures, 
 charged ten, twelve, twenty-one, twenty-six, and thirty-two cents 
 per pound. There is not an item in all the schedules of the 
 Belgian tariff that gives any more countenance to free trade or 
 any of its maxims than tho.se which are here* quoted. 
 
 The differential duties charged upon imports m foreign vessels, 
 in favor of her own, are, in the average, quite one hundred per cent, 
 which have had the effect of preserving for her own mercantile 
 
PROTECTION IN NATIONAL HISTORY. 241 
 
 navy her whole. 1 trade in domestic exports and foreign imports for 
 consumption. 
 
 It is worth noting here that Belgium increased her population 
 sixteen per cent between the years 1840 and 1850, while the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain grew but a scant eight per 
 cent iu the same time. Protection against free trade in the matter 
 of population, with all the odds of density against Belgium under 
 the trial. 
 
 Again: the immigrants to the United States during the period 
 of 1840-60 from Belgium were equal to only two-tenths of one 
 per cent of her population in 1860; while those from the United 
 Kingdom amounted to three and eight-tenths per cent of hers ; so, 
 the chance of living at home was just nineteen times better in pro 
 tective Belgium than in free trade England. 
 
 For the growth of wealth in France we beg leave to refer the 
 reader to our fifth chapter, where its rate and amount in the first 
 half of the present century are given in sufficient detail to exhibit 
 the effect of her system of international commerce, which J. B. Say 
 thus correctly describes, " for thirty years nearly every law passed 
 on custom house matters has been intended either to establish or to 
 consolidate the system of protection and prohibition." Writing 
 in 1826, this high authority among free traders, says, u France at 
 present contains the most beautiful manufactures of silk and wool in 
 the world, and is probably indebted for them to the wise encourage 
 ment of Colbert s administration. He advanced to the manufactures 
 two thousand francs for every loom at work, and, by the way, this 
 species of encouragement has a particular advantage the bounty 
 enters into reproduction." It will be recollected that Colbert was 
 Intendant of Finance and Minister of State under Louis XIV. His 
 policy supported the most expensive and wasteful of French 
 monarchs in the seventeenth century; and it did more, it educated 
 more than half a million of those artisans who in 1685, upon the 
 revocation <.f the Edict of Nantes, fled from France, and settling 
 in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and England, created there the 
 industries which enriched the countries of their adoption. 
 
 The prosperity of manufactures in France is too well known to 
 require any description here ; the results concerning the national 
 welfare are unhappily too much confused by the political despotisms 
 and popular revolutions which make up the history of the nation for 
 
242 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 now above three-quarters of a century, to allow of any very clear 
 examination within our limits. But this much must be admitted 
 under the most absolutely restrictive system, maintained from the 
 earliest days of the first Bonaparte to the fall of the third, France 
 has advanced greatly in natural and individual wealth, and has 
 grown through the whole career of her crazy political disturbances 
 to be the leading manufacturing nation of Europe. Her terrible 
 history would have been passed unnoticed but for the fact that her 
 industrial system has revived her fortunes after every revolution, 
 and kept her public credit quite as high as that of any other Euro 
 pean State except that of England. The French three per cents 
 were up to seventy on the hundred immediately before the outbreak 
 of the late War with Prussia, when our own sixes were not above 
 ninety, and our fives were but eighty-six. In nothing has she had 
 either wise or stable government except in the defense of her 
 industries, and this has kept her from utter destruction, and will 
 restore her again when the present riot is quelled. 
 
 The Russian policy, like that of France, has long been sternly and 
 guardedly defensive of the labor of the Empire against the invasion 
 of products from Western Europe. Under this system, it is enough 
 to say, she has emancipated twenty millions of her serfs, and has 
 risen, within the memory of living men, from barbarism and con 
 tempt to the rank of a "power" which has no equal in the Eastern 
 hemisphere except the new empire of Germany. 
 
 A volume would be required for a full array of the evidence 
 which could be adduced in proof of the proposition advanced at the 
 beginning of this section that, not a nation on the earth has 
 attained a leading position except those who have firmly maintained 
 a policy of protection adapted to their national conditions and inter 
 national relations. Will the disputants try to find one ? 
 
 FREE TRADE IN THE HISTORIC NATIONS. 
 
 Free trade has had a fair trial in the old world. Its history is 
 indelibly recorded in its results. We propose now to show from 
 free-trade authorities the effects of their favorite policy in those 
 countries of Europe and Asia in which it has had its most complete 
 demonstration. 
 
 Three centuries ago, the Sultan of Turkey proclaimed unlimited 
 
PROTECTION IN NATIONAL HISTORY. 243 
 
 freedom of foreign trade, retaining a bare five per cent duty or 
 port charge upon imports, which it seems has long since been 
 reduced to three per cent. Turkish superiority of skill and expe 
 rience was more than a match for the rude industries of western 
 Europe in the old-time manufacturing methods and agencies; but 
 upon the introduction of the modern improvements, which almost 
 miraculously multiply commodities by means of steam and ma 
 chinery, the oriental races were exposed to a destructive competi 
 tion in all their markets, foreign and domestic, and Turkey fell from 
 its preeminence, and became the " sick man" of the nations. The 
 countries which have availed themselves of the modern appliances 
 in production, and protected their labor interests from foreign 
 invasion, have nothing to do now but divide the apocalyptic dragon s 
 dominions among themselves when they can agree upon the distri 
 bution. Free-trade England will make no resistance; her occupa 
 tion of the protectorate, like Othello s, is gone, and she will get 
 none of the spoils, nor even save her plighted honor. 
 
 Even so lately as fifty years ago we were wearing Turkish goods 
 in the backwoods of America, but now the subjects of the Sultan 
 cannot hold their own markets against foreigners. J. R. McCulloch 
 says : " The Turkish manufacturers of muslins, ginghams, handker 
 chiefs, etc., have suffered severely from the extraordinary importa 
 tion of British goods, so much so, that of six hundred looms for 
 muslins in Scutari, in 1812, only forty remained in 1831 ; and of 
 two thousand weaving establishments in Tournovo, in 1812, there 
 were only two hundred in 1831." Again, he says: "Though our 
 [British] muslins and chintzes be inferior in fineness to those of the 
 East, and our red dye (a color in great esteem in Turkey, Persia, 
 etc.,) be inferior in brilliancy, these defects are more than balanced 
 by the greater cheapness of our goods; and from Smyrna to Canton, 
 from Madras to Samarcand, we are everywhere supplanting the 
 native fabrics." Of Turkey s foreign trade he says, "the exports 
 are very trifling ships carrying goods to Constantinople either 
 return in ballast or get return cargoes at Smyrna. Odessa, etc.;" and 
 of the interior traffic he says: "the trade is in the hands of Jew 
 brokers, some of whom are rich." Duties upon imports ; three per cent, 
 and twelve per cent upon domestic exports, explain the condition of 
 the revenue, and its pinching necessities; but the stronger proof is 
 in the desperate resort to a rapid debasement of the government 
 
244 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 / 
 
 coinage. For this again we have McCul loch s authority " The 
 Turkish coin has been much degraded. The piastre, which a few 
 years ago was worth two shillings sterling, is now (in 1838) worth 
 little more than four pence." The Turk s sickness is explained. 
 He has caught the Irish disease, imported in manufactured goods 
 from Liverpool. 
 
 Ireland was, not very long ago, as it had been for ages, the seat 
 of learning and of the useful arts, in an eminent degree. In the 
 last quarter of the last century, the books printed in Dublin, and 
 the woolens, linens, and cottons, of the Irish looms, were common 
 in all the markets of Christendom; but the union with Great 
 Britain was effected in 1801, and in 1821 the last traces of national 
 defense against the overpowering competition of the kingdom that 
 had swallowed her up were effaced. By the terms of the union her 
 almost prohibitory duties upon English calicoes and muslins were to- 
 expire in 1808, and those upon woolens in 1821. Look at the 
 results: in 1800 there were in Dublin five thousand hands employed 
 in woolen manufactures; in 1840, only six hundred and two. In 
 making carpets, seven hundred hands at work in 1800; in 1840^ 
 none. These are the average proportions of the respective dates for 
 the silk-weavers, calico-weavers, and cotton-spinners. England 
 wanted cheap labor and cheap food, and free trade with Ireland 
 answered the intention. But how did they answer Ireland ? Thrown 
 out of mechanical employment, the Irish laborer was driven to 
 spade-husbandry and potato-raising, until the potatoes sickened 
 under the forcing system which necessity compelled, and the soil 
 got sick of the spade-men; and famine, pestilence, arid emigration, 
 quartered the population between the years 1841 and 1851! The 
 London Times rather likes this situation of things; it says, "The 
 tribe of Celts will soon fulfill the great law of Providence, which 
 seems to enjoin and reward the union of races. It will mix with 
 the Anglo-Americans, and l>e knoicn no more as a Jealous and sepa 
 rate people. Its present place will be occupied by the more mixed, 
 more docile, and more serviceable race which has long borne the 
 yoke of sturdy industry in this island, which can submit to a master 
 and obey the law" The same paper at another time, said : " For a 
 whole generation man has been a drug in Ireland, and population a 
 nuisance. " Mark the date a whole generation, that is, since the 
 free trade provisions of the Act of Union came fully into play. And 
 
PROTECTION IN NATIONAL HISTORY. 245 
 
 mark the avowed intention : Irish extinction to be accomplished by 
 starvation and expatriation. 
 
 George Thompson, in a speech delivered in the House of Com 
 mons fifteen years ago, describing the results of British rule in 
 INDIA, said : "At the close of the last century, cotton abounded, 
 and to so great an extent was the labor of men, women, and chil 
 dren applied to its conversion into cloth, that even with their im 
 perfect machinery they not only supported the home demand for 
 the beautiful tissues of Dacca, and the coarser products of Western 
 India, but they exported to other parts of the world no less than 
 two hundred millions of pieces per annum." 
 
 In 1813 the trade of India was thrown open and the native 
 industries were exposed to unlimited competition. At the end of 
 twenty years after, the men, women, and children had been driven 
 from the workshops to the fields, and all demand for labor was at 
 an end except in raising rice, cotton, indigo, and opium. Mr. 
 Thompson s picture of India under free-trade rule has such free 
 dashes of the pencil as these : " Some of the finest tracts of land 
 have been forsaken and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. 
 The motives to industry have been destroyed. Go with me to the 
 northwest provinces of the Bengal Presidency and I will show you 
 the bleaching skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings 
 who perished from hunger in the space of a few short months ; 
 yes, and of hunger in what has been called the granary of the 
 world. Famines have continued to increase in frequency and ex 
 tent under our sway for more than half a century." 
 
 PORTUGAL is another witness to the character and influence of the 
 policy urged upon us by the people aspiring to the mastery of com 
 merce and the monopoly of all the skilled industries of the wide 
 world. In 1703, Portugal, so lately the leading commercial nation of 
 Europe, concluded a treaty with England, by which she bound her 
 self to admit English wares into her ports at a fifteen per cent duty, 
 for the favor of an English tax upon her wines one-third less than 
 that imposed upon the wines of France. Mr. McCulloch reports 
 the inevitable results thus: " Formerly Lisbon had about four hun 
 dred ships of from five to six hundred tons burthen employed in the 
 trade with South America, but at present there are riot above fifty 
 ships engaged in foreign trade, and of these the burthen does not 
 exceed 150 tons. The produce of Portugal sent to foreign coun- 
 
246 QUESTIONS or THE DAY. 
 
 tries is almost entirely conveyed in foreign ships." Mr. Cobden, 
 another free trade oracle, summed up the whole story, about fifteen 
 years ago, when he said that " Turkey and Portugal had become a 
 burden and a curse to England." She had made them her depend 
 encies, not by force of arms, but by force of trade, and now they 
 were upon her hands like the worn-out slaves of a Southern planta 
 tion under the old regime. 
 
 The ready answer to this indictment of the policy, and of the 
 nation which has employed it in the destruction of so many other 
 nations, is that the Turks are Mahometans, the Indians are Pagans, 
 the Irish are Celts, and the Portuguese are, if nothing else, Catho 
 lics; but the French are at once Celts, Catholics, and infidels ; the 
 Russians are not Catholics; the Belgians are almost exclusively 
 Catholic, and the Germans are both Catholics and Protestants. 
 Differences of faith and of race, differences of national conditions 
 and habits, will not serve for the causes of the different economic 
 fortunes of all these peoples. The fortunate among them are not 
 distinguished from the unfortunates by any likeness among them 
 selves of national character, or of geographic conditions. The 
 victims are, like those of the small pox, of every variety of consti 
 tution, undefended or unprotected by vaccination. 
 
 And how does it happen that peoples unchanged in faith, or 
 place, or character, who were once first in the ranks of industry 
 and commerce, are now last and lowest? and how does it happen, 
 also, that each and all of them are in the one category of peoples who 
 have lost the command of their home markets by surrendering 
 them to the control of cheaper producers ? 
 
 There is nothing clearer or truer in human reasoning than that 
 labor is the source of wealth, and that its freedom and diversifica 
 tion are the measure of its productiveness ; and an infraction of this 
 law of national life, must be followed by its natural and necessary 
 penalties. The suggestion of faith or race or any, other specialty in 
 explanation of results, is utterly unphilosophical, and foolishly im 
 pertinent. Universal history testifies that not a single nation on the 
 globe, in the whole range of history, has reached independence and 
 wealth ; not a nation even holds the rank attained, but such as have 
 firmly maintained a protective policy in the regulation of their inter 
 national trade. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 QUARANTYISM. 
 
 GuARANTYis.\r : Civilization, not differentially defined. The present age a tran 
 sition phase of society requiring a distinctive name. Precedent conditions of 
 civilization. Societary movements, their characteristics Patriarchisrn, Barbar 
 ism, Greek Democracies; growth in bondage; Feudalism, uprising of the masses 
 rights demanded, not duties conceded, in the revolt. Support of the poor and 
 education by the State, questioned. Natural rights grounded in selfhood. 
 Reign of individualism relaxing; at war with association. Rights and duties 
 reconciled in guarantyism, corresponding movements in religion, in civil gov 
 ernment, and the military system. Achievements in arts and sciences, not the 
 distinction of the last hundred years. Societary reformation, the glory of the 
 present age in politics in organized diffusion of Christian knowledge by 
 protestants temperance reform anti-slavery public schools statistics of 
 education public libraries, periodicals. Charities. Diminution of capital 
 crimes; corporal punishments; imprisonment for debts. Insurances; history 
 of; recent increase of. SAVINGS BANKS in England: happy influences; in the 
 United States; vast aggregate of deposits; statistics; indicate the associative 
 impulse. Corporations the type of cooperative unions ; material and spiritual 
 springs of cooperative association. Cooperation in bondage in freedom. 
 Labor s difficulties. Selfhood becomes social the gain leads to the good of the 
 principle. Beneficial Societies, vast accumulation of the fund in England. 
 No reports of beneficial societies in the United States. Provisions and manage 
 ment easy rates and liberal reliefs moral influence. They grow rich. 
 
 CIVILIZATION has no logical or distinctive definition. Writers, 
 concerned with it as their special subject, have not even attempted 
 to determine what it is, and what it is not. It is vaguely recognized as 
 a phase of human society, and it is ranked as the last and highest form 
 yet developed ; but it is not differenced by any of its exactest descrip 
 tions. There is moreover, a lack of philosophic accuracy in treating 
 it as a phase, or a different form, or appearance, of the same sub 
 stantial thing. It is not a thing denned, nor can it be held within 
 the fixed limits of either description or apprehension. It is a thing 
 of progress, of degrees, and, therefore, a complex of phenomena. 
 We all know what we mean by it in special applications, but these 
 are so numerous, and so various, that our conceptions or notions of it 
 
 247 
 
248 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 do not serve in scientific classification. Treated or taken as a particular 
 form of societary organization, the idea of some constancy and 
 fixity of character intrudes, which is an error of essence, for its 
 essence is changeful progressiveness ; and its changes are so great 
 in degree, that they take on real changes in kind. If the Jews, 
 Greeks, and Romans, were all civilized peoples at the commence 
 ment of the Christian era, what shall we say of the Chinese now; 
 and what of Western Europe any time in the last five centuries ; 
 and, especially, in the year 1870 ? If the Moors were barbaric 
 when they held the dominion of Southern Spain, how were the 
 Greeks civilized under Alexander the Great? One descriptive 
 name for all these is not more exact or discriminative than calling 
 the North American Indians and the Negroes of Central Africa, both 
 alike, savages. We have not, because we cannot have, logical 
 definitions of these phases of human society. The races and 
 nationalities are not in any of their conditions, differenced as insects, 
 fishes, birds, and beasts are in zoological characters. Yet there are 
 differences between their various states; and that which we call civili- 
 .za tion, is not only unlike the others, but it actually shows as great 
 and striking unlikeness to itself in its epochal transitions. 
 
 Apprehending that we are now, and have been, for about a 
 century, in a distinctly marked period of civilized progress, we want 
 a name, which, though it must necessarily be vague, may yet be 
 serviceable, because required to mark a change and a difference as 
 great as any that have put men upon the use of the generally 
 accepted terms for all the other marked unlikenesses in human 
 societies. It was for the purpose of emphasizing with its due force 
 this era in the progress of civilization that we postponed its further 
 description by its characteristics at the close of our third chapter, 
 until we should have first examined such of its features as seem 
 now to be leading the more advanced nations to an order of their 
 economic affairs that will some day be looked upon as another era 
 in the ever progressive development of the race. Certain of its 
 societies or families have now, as we think, fairly entered upon a - 
 new stage of progress, which demands, for distinctness of theoretic 
 treatment, a new descriptive name. For this purpose we borrow 
 and adopt the term Guarantyism, without intending to insist upon 
 it as definitely descriptive of a change realized and completed, but 
 as applicable to a border, or mixed, condition and drift, not well 
 
GUARANTYISM. 249 
 
 defined, yet apparent; marked, but not clearly distinguished; 
 recognizable, but not clearly separated from the stage in which it is 
 arising for a new departure ; as so many other changes have begun 
 in unnoticed movements, and afterwards revolutionized, by slowly 
 reforming, human institutions; as waves that are clearly distinct at 
 their crests, but less and less in their slope toward the trough where 
 they are inseparable and indistinguishable. 
 
 To get this apprehension clearly let us look at the aspects of 
 civilization before the changes began which characterize the evolu 
 tion that we are about to consider : 
 
 . In the patriarchal system the family rule was protracted beyond 
 the proper maturity of its subjects ; repressing their growth and 
 abridging the liberties necessary to such growth. Barbarism loosened 
 what was left of the ties proper to the family in the patriarchal 
 order, and allowed a little more of liberty and responsibility ; or, 
 in terms which we prefer for their directer allusion to the things 
 necessary to progress, a little more of individuality with its inci 
 dent capability of freer association. It, too, was slavery, but it was 
 political and personal slavery, in longer and weaker chains than 
 those of the despotic power of the head of the tribal family. It 
 began to recognize the individual s right to life and property, and 
 to some modicum of right to self-service and self-government. It 
 abdicated by degrees the absolutism of the priestly office, allowed 
 some system of municipal law, and administered distributive justice 
 by the rule of custom, privilege, and tradition the will of the 
 ruler was bounded by the law of the realm; and customs and institu 
 tions were at least fixed, and the community was organized and 
 established, with some degree of stability of rights and security of 
 interests. But individualism was still greatly repressed. In things 
 most material to growth and development, the masses were still 
 crushed into a crippled uniformity. Even the miscalled democracies 
 of Greece had this grievous and repressive character. Men were 
 banded and led, as the buffaloes of our prairies are, by the strongest 
 and boldest of the herd. The track of the leader limited the 
 adventures and the enterprise of the whole body. Great efficiency 
 was secured in the execution of every common purpose; but national 
 independence was mistaken for civil freedom, and, consent was not 
 choice. Individualism, in all that the commonwealth commanded, 
 17 
 
250 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 was suppressed; and only in those movements of mind and feeling 
 which were indifferent to the commonwealth was liberty allowed. 
 
 But men grew under the barbarism of Greece and Rome as they 
 did under that of Egypt and Asia; and as they grew-still faster 
 and greater under the feudal rule in Western Europe ; where first 
 and most was felt the revolt of individualism against depotisrn, ever 
 strengthened by its cumulative ameliorations rising from tribal 
 bondage, through monarchy more and more limited, until rebellion 
 and revolution became possible and irresistible. 
 
 This whole process in Europe, rightly understood, was simply a 
 revolt against the one-man power that overruled every other man s 
 distinctive rights. The consummation aimed at through all the 
 struggles of the last five centuries of modern progress, more or less 
 clearly intended, was the right of self-government, by the most 
 appropriate and best answering political machinery. Along with 
 this effort for securing civil liberty and for the redress of inju 
 ries suffered by its denial, grew the doctrine of reserved rights, 
 which no government not even governments by the people them 
 selves may now in anywise invade, either for good or bad ; such as 
 the rights of conscience in religious faith and worship the right 
 to regulate one s own family the right to do anything, and to 
 leave anything undone, which does not immediately and directly 
 infringe upon the like rights of others. 
 
 If we look closely into this sentiment as it grew from tacit 
 obedience up to full-fledged self-government, we will find that it 
 rather took care of rights than provided for duties. The farthest 
 that it at last conceded to the national authority was military 
 service and necessary revenue. All else of public or social duty 
 must be left to individual free will. Of the social charities none 
 must be exacted, except the scanty support of the poor, which a 
 common humanity consented to extort from the reluctant and 
 inhuman, and this, not so much as a corporate debt as from the 
 greater convenience of organized almsgiving. The common educa 
 tion of the people by the state was resisted on the ground that it is 
 an infringement of the voluntary principle nay more, we have in 
 vogue at this day a philosophical or logical system of political 
 economy, popular all over Europe and America, founded and built 
 upon the basis of natural rights, and grounded solely upon the self 
 hood of individual freedom. But individualism, severed from 
 
GUARANTYISM. 251 
 
 association, has run its race, as it has served its purpose. It has 
 dethroned the tyrannies of all preceding systems of opinion and 
 government, and now, at the end of its absolutism, is merging into 
 association in the form of Guaranty ism. 
 
 Thus, Civilization, in the proposed distinctive sense of the term, 
 is best understood as the assertion and vindication of the rights of 
 the individual, and the reformation of church and state politics, 
 with this intent and to this end. Guarantyism may be described 
 and distinguished as an effort for the promotion of association, 
 reconstructed and amended, upon the basis of that large develop 
 ment of individualism acquired by its struggles against the earlier 
 forms of unityism, which held the spirit of free association in 
 abeyance. 
 
 We have a parallel history in the long, and at last successful, 
 struggle of materalism in science against the earlier rule of its 
 antagonist, spiritualism ; and in the returning movement of the 
 rapidly growing sentiment of spiritualism, reformed, liberalized and 
 regulated, displacing the undue preponderance and consequent 
 abuses which it held during the dark ages and still maintained 
 in great force to the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 We have another correspondence, in another necessarily associ 
 ated movement, with a similar revolt and a similar returning 
 tendency toward a rectified system of association : political revolu 
 tion in the violence of its struggles went into Anarchy in its War 
 with Despotism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in 
 England and France ; until revolution had so far done its work that 
 Order became a necessity, and its establishment worked a reaction 
 which eliminated the abuses of authority and began the reestablish- 
 ment of political and civil authority, guarded and abated by so much 
 of the popular liberty won in the long contest, as the subjects were 
 capable of using beneficially. 
 
 These correspondences in religious opinion and political institu 
 tions are analogous to the renascence of the associative movement 
 of the present epoch, so long held in check by the revulsion of 
 individualism against the repressive unityism of the patriarchal, 
 barbaric, and earlier civilized forms of society. 
 
 In the military system, introduced by the monarchies of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we have another analogy: it 
 comported with the spirit of feudalism, but it was sternly resisted 
 
252 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 afterwards by the growing spirit of liberty among our English an 
 cestors; and the governing powers were forced to rely upon enlist 
 ments for the occasion, and volunteer recruitments for domestic de 
 fense Individualism asserting itself, and the associative impulse 
 emerging to supply, while it supplants, the former public policy. 
 
 Treating civilization as a growth, and regarding its successive 
 phases as an evolution of its own inherent forces, it might, perhaps, be 
 expected that we should give the chief prominence and value to its 
 achievements in the arts and sciences which have marked its pro 
 gress, and especially, those triumphs of mind over material forces 
 which illustrate the history of the last hundred years. These, 
 indeed, are signs, and they are wonders as well; but it may be ques 
 tioned whether in all the varied forms of enterprise, discovery and 
 achievement, the present century is a much further advance upon 
 the last, than the thirteenth was upon the twelfth, or either of the 
 intervening ones upon its immediate predecessor. The eighteenth 
 and nineteenth differ in glory from the sixteenth and seventeenth, 
 but these compare as grandly with the respective ages preceding 
 them, and they contributed, besides, as nobly to that which has 
 followed, and now overshadows them. 
 
 Material progress is necessarily an enhancement, at the rate of 
 compound interest, and the last accumulation of every successive 
 period owes its surpassing attainments to the enlarged capital 
 which it inherits. Neither in kind nor in degree, do the latest 
 achievements of science and art exceed in their rate of advancement, 
 those from which they sprang. 
 
 The magnetic telegraph, the relative circumstances considered, 
 has its rival in the discovery of the mariner s compass ; and the 
 printing press was as great a step in advance of the earlier mode of 
 multiplying copies, as steam power applied to service in production, 
 travel, and transportation, over the machinery which it excels and 
 supercedes. The magnitude of the results in the later period is 
 greatest; but so much as this can scarcely be said of the rate of 
 advancement. Distinguishing the efficiencies involved in societary 
 development into three classes those which are employed in the 
 mastery and amendment of material conditions ; those devoted to 
 mental endeavor distinctively ; and those which concern moral and 
 spiritual life it is- apparent that we, of this age, have scarcely 
 advanced intellectual vigor more rapidly than the generation of two 
 
GUARANTYISM. 253 
 
 hundred years ago; that our grandest conquests in the realm of 
 physics are but the normal outgrowth of the seed sown in good soil 
 by our fathers, to whom the enhanced fertility, as well as the 
 greater product, is justly due; and, that we must look to what the 
 present time has done, and is doing, in the work of social ameliora 
 tion, for its distinguishing glory. 
 
 Political regeneration in the service, and for the sake of all 
 classes and races, began its great career in 1776, and crowned itself 
 with its last promise fulfilled before the first centennial anniversary of 
 its birthday. The movement begun in the youngest of the nations, 
 with capacities ripened in the oldest, has kept the lead, indeed, but 
 it has been followed at greater or less distance, but still followed, 
 by the kindred peoples of the same common stock. Suffrage and 
 representation in government have grown, by sympathy, in all the 
 nations of which ours was born. All the offshoot peoples from the 
 European stock are responsive to the grand example of the greatest 
 republic of colonial origin. 
 
 The last hundred years has distinguished itself by the spread of 
 Christian knowledge in heathen lands, and by labor for the exten 
 sion of the religion and morality of the Scriptures, more than any 
 of its predecessors the British, American, French, and German 
 Bible, Tract, and Missionary Societies are of this period all of 
 them except the Moravian, which antedates the era of the Pro 
 testant enterprises of this kind by but a few years. 
 
 The first movement of organized effort in the temperance reform 
 was begun in the United States in 1825. Father Matthew began 
 his great work in Ireland in 1830, and numbered above two mil 
 lions of his countrymen among his converts before he finished his 
 labors. . 
 
 It is quite impossible to esitinate the benefits conferred upon the 
 world by these systematic benevolences, addressed to the moral and 
 social amelioration of society, by the associative agencies of the 
 era which are thus so decidedly characteristic of the present times. 
 
 In 1786 England had one hundred and thirty shi^s engaged in 
 the slave trade, and the traffic was not abolished by statute there 
 until 1807. In the United States its suppression had been pro 
 vided for by a clause in the Federal Constitution adopted in 1789, 
 and negro slavery itself had been abolished by several of the States 
 nine or ten years before. As early as 1754 the Quakers had for- 
 
254 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 bidden it among themselves ; but it was not more than forty years 
 ago that voluntary organizations were formed in the United States 
 and Great Britain for the suppression of the system of negro 
 slavery, which, beginning in the British colonies in 1833, was 
 finally consummated in the United States by authority of the Con 
 stitution in 1865, and the whole colored race was enfranchised by 
 another amendment proclaimed on the 30th March, 1869. 
 
 Charity schools date as early as 1687 in England, but common 
 schools opened for the children of the whole people, and maintained 
 at the public expense, and generally diffused throughout the princi 
 pal nations of Europe and the United States, had their earliest 
 date quite within the transition age which we now are concerned 
 with, and their great extension has happened within the last fifty 
 years. 
 
 As late as 1839 after a grant of 30,000 for national education, 
 proposed by Lord John Russell, had passed in the Commons by a 
 majority of two votes (on a vote of five hundred and forty-eight 
 members), the House of Lords went in a body two days after to 
 ask the Queen to rescind the grant. 
 
 The vast proportion to which the common school system, as a 
 state institution, has grown, scarcely admits of statistical statement. 
 In all the States of the United States, north of the boundaries of 
 the slave region, it has long been in successful operation. 
 
 It appears from the census of 1860 that five million persons were 
 then receiving instruction in the various educational institutions of 
 the country. This number is equal to sixty-six per cent of all the 
 white population between the ages of seven and eighteen, and to 
 seventy-five per cent between the ages of eight and sixteen. For 
 a better apprehension of these numbers, it may be noticed , that in 
 Prussia, where education is compulsory upon all children between 
 the ages of seven and fourteen, and where the result was found in 
 the fact that in 1845 there were only two young men between the 
 ages of twenty and twenty-two, in the hundred, who could not read, 
 write, and cipher, the number of scholars at schools were but one to 
 every six and two-tenths persons, while, at the same time, of the 
 total white population of the United States there were as many as 
 one to every four and nine-tenths persons; the State of Maine, 
 exceeding in her proportion of scholars at school all other States 
 in the Union, and the United States exceeding all other countries 
 
GUARANTYISM. 255 
 
 whatsoever, except Denmark, which had one to every four and six- 
 tenths persons. 
 
 In New England only one person over twenty years of age in 
 every four hundred of the native whites is incapable of reading and 
 writing, and in the non-slaveholdiug States, taken together, but one 
 in forty inhabitants, or two and five-tenths per cent ; and this rate 
 is very materially increased by the immigration of illiterate persons 
 from Europe, for it is in these States that they nearly all settle. 
 Besides, these embrace the new and sparse settlements of the west 
 and northwest, where the institution of schools, and attendance at 
 them, is greatly embarassed by the natural impediments of pioneer 
 life. This must account for the fact that, twenty years. ago, the 
 illiterate of Indiana were seven and one-quarter per cent of the 
 white inhabitants; while in New York and Pennsylvania they were 
 less than three per cent. Arkansas and Tennessee, both affected 
 alike by the system of slavery and sparseness of population, had 
 above ten per cent, and North Carolina, in the same conditions, 
 above thirteen in the hundred of her white population who could 
 not read and write at the age of twenty. 
 
 As an accompaniment, and in some, good degree, an index to the 
 work of popular education as administered by State authorities, 
 the libraries, other than private, in 1850, held four and one-half 
 millions of volumes, and the number of political and periodical 
 papers, literary, scientific, religious and secular, had an annual cir 
 culation then of four hundred and forty-six millions of copies. Ten 
 years afterwards, when the population had increased but thirty-five 
 per cent, the number rose to nine hundred and twenty-eight mil 
 lions an increase of one hundred and seventeen and one-half per 
 cent; or, in 1850, the annual circulation afforded an average of a 
 fraction less than twenty-two copies to each white person in the 
 Union, but in 1860 was equivalent to a supply of thirty-four and 
 one-third copies per person ; and, in keeping with these signs 
 of an extending and improving education of the people, it may be 
 noted that the value of the books published in the latter year 
 increased in the decade from three and four-tenths millions to 
 eleven and eight-tenths millions of dollars, or two hundred and 
 forty-seven per cent; and that of the job and newspaper printing 
 at the same rate. 
 
 In the social virtue of almsgiving the present age is not dis- 
 
256 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 tinguished from, at least not above, the preceding centuries of Chris 
 tianity, but we can . claim, for the time, the better and kindlier 
 administration, as a characteristic of the passing centenary a bet 
 ter provision for the wants of pauperism, and an extended sphere 
 of the beneficence which it expresses. All such improvement as 
 the spirit of the times has impressed upon the legal system of 
 relief, belongs to the period which has diminished the number of 
 capital offences from fifty or sixty, a hundred years ago, to three 
 or four in the present day in England,* and along with this, has 
 abolished the torture of corporal punishment inflicted in the days of 
 the early Georges. The abolition of imprisonment for debt, the 
 reformation of prison treatment, and the exemption of more or 
 less of insolvents property from attachment, belong in like man 
 ner to the nineteenth Christian century. 
 
 In the United States, in all these charities and benevolences, we 
 are grandly in advance of the mother countries of Europe. Scarcely 
 a State in the Union punishes any offence with death except murder 
 in the first or highest degree. Treason, Europe s highest crime of 
 old time, with us is reduced almost to the rank of a misdemeanor ; 
 not a single individual of all the millions engaged in the late 
 Rebellion was capitally, or otherwise punished as for crime against 
 the sovereignty of the Federal Union, whose criminal code, never 
 theless, still retains the punishment of death for the crime of slave- 
 trading on the high seas ; and, we may safely add that the tender 
 ness for life, growing out of the higher appreciation of liberty, and 
 along with it, which makes conviction for capital offences almost 
 impossible, and has abolished the penalty of death in one of our 
 States, bids fair, ere long, to substitute some form of correction 
 combined with restraint, for the ultimate and remediless infliction 
 of the death penalty. 
 
 Thus much in illustration of what we have assumed to be the 
 distinguishing characteristic of the last hundred years of the history 
 of civilization, as it is shown in amendment of the political and legal 
 institutions of the most advanced of the nations. 
 
 * Blackstone, Commentaries, Book iv., chap. 1, says: "It is a melancholy truth 
 that among the variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less 
 than a hundred and sixty have been declared by act of Parliament to be worthy 
 of instant death." This book was first published in 1770. His annotator, writing 
 in 1840, says : " many of these rigorous acts have lately been repealed, and milder 
 punishments have been substituted." 
 
GUARANTYISM. 257 
 
 Along with these social ameliorations, effected through the forms 
 and forces of municipal law, we may claim for the age a vast exten 
 sion of the various systems of insurance life, property, and maritime 
 with their indemnities against loss, and assurance under risk, which 
 associates the parties in mutual and participated protection against 
 the consequences of unavoidable injuries, to which the parties are 
 exposed. Maritime assurance had a very early origin; as early, it 
 is said, as the first century of the Christian era, and the policy was 
 recognized and enforced by law in Italy as early as the year 1194. 
 In the year 1667, the first after the great fire, insurance of houses 
 and goods began in London. 
 
 The superintendent of the insurance department of the State of 
 New York reports, on March 1, 1865, one hundred and sixty-two 
 joint stock and mutual fire insurance companies in the State, 
 fourteen marine, thirty-one life, and one casualty company, with 
 gross assets amounting to one hundred and fifty-one millions of 
 dollars, and adds that, " several of these companies now receive an 
 annual income exceeding the annual revenue of some of our State 
 governments and many European principalities and Kingdoms. 
 Some idea of the rate of increase in this business may be formed 
 from a comparison instituted between them in the years 1860-4. 
 The aggregate premiums of one hundred and fifty-seven companies 
 of fire, marine, and life insurance chartered by the State, rose 
 from twenty-four to thirty-nine millions; the assets from sixty-seven 
 to one hundred and four millions; the fire risks in force, from 
 nine hundred and sixteen, to sixteen hundred and fifteen, millions. 
 Here we have an increase in the values insured of seventy-six per 
 cent in a period of only four years, beginning the year before the 
 Rebellion and ending before its conclusion, notwithstanding the 
 large deduction of insurances of every kind, usually taken by the 
 Southern States, which must have happened. 
 
 Akin to insurance institutions is the savings bank system, of which 
 the earliest instances fall within the centenary now elapsing. These 
 banks may be said, indeed, to have taken their effective form, and 
 acquired all their importance within the present century. The 
 earliest traces of them are in Hamburg, in 1778, and in Berne 
 (Switzerland), in 1787. Their general adoption in France, Prussia, 
 
258 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 institution in England, was made by Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield, at 
 Tottenham, near London, in 1803 ; and the earliest on a large scale 
 at Edinburgh, in 1814. Soon after they were fairly started in 
 England (in 1816), they were brought under parliamentary regula 
 tion. Their progress was very rapid. From 1817 to 1828, inclusive, 
 the commissioners for the reduction of the public debt received 
 from the directors of savings banks the sum of 13,746.546, for 
 which government paid four per cent interest. In 1861, the aggre 
 gate capital of these banks, in the United Kingdom, was 41, 
 546,475. In England and Wales, 36,855,508, when the total 
 securities held by the Bank of England were, at the highest, a little 
 under 30,000,000. Quite the half of the depositors in England 
 usually have less than 20 apiece in these banks ; one-third of the 
 whole number, less than 50 ; and, only one-sixth of the whole 
 number held more than 50. These facts show them to be the 
 institutions of the provident poor people of the realm ; and it is 
 this feature, so conspicuously prominent, that entitles them to a 
 place among the associative movements of the present times. Mr. 
 McCulloch describes them as " banks established for the receipt of 
 small sums, deposited by the poorer class of persons, and for their 
 accumulation at compound interest. Under the Act of Parliament 
 of 1844, the interest payable to depositors is not to exceed three 
 per cent per annum. No depositor can contribute more than 30, 
 exclusive of compound interest, to a savings bank in any one year; 
 and the total deposits to be received from any individual are not to 
 exceed 150." He gives, for the year 1850, the number of deposi 
 tors in these banks, in the United Kingdom, at one million, ninety- 
 two thousand, five hundred and eighty-one; and the average amount 
 to each at 25; more than five-eighths of them, however, averaging 
 only 6; and one-fourth of them at 31 apiece, only. He says 
 well, that " the principle and object of the savings banks cannot be 
 too highly commended. Until they were established, the poorer 
 classes were everywhere without the means of securely and profitably 
 investing those small sums which they are not unfrequently in a 
 condition to save, and were consequently led, from the difficulty of dis 
 posing of them, to neglect opportunities of making savings, and nothing 
 could be more important, in view of diffusing habits of forethought 
 and economy amongst the laboring classes, than the establishment of 
 savings banks, where the smallest sums are placed in perfect safety, 
 
GUARANTYISM. 259 
 
 are accumulated at compound interest, and are paid, with their 
 accumulations, the moment they are demanded by the depositors." 
 
 The first savings bank in America was opened in Philadelphia, in 
 1S1G. The spread and growth of these institutions in the United 
 States, and their present condition, cannot be ascertained with such 
 completeness as would make it worth while to attempt a statistical 
 statement. But in general terms we are warranted, by the data at 
 hand, in putting their whole number at above five hundred, with an 
 aggregate of deposits exceeding two hundred and fifty millions of 
 dollars. Some notion of the relative magnitude of this grand sum, 
 thus accumulated and employed in the business of the country, 
 while it is at the same time paying good interest to the depositors, 
 may be had from the corresponding money movement in the national 
 banking system which embraces almost the entirety of the banks of 
 issue in the country. The controller of the national currency reports 
 their aggregate capital at four hundred and twenty millions, and the 
 aggregate individual deposits at five hundred and fifty millions. Put 
 these sums together and we find that the savings banks of the nation 
 are the depositories of an amount equal to one-fourth of all money 
 collected and distributed by all the other banks in operation, other 
 than those of private bankers. 
 
 In the year 18G2 there were two hundred and fifteen savings banks 
 in the six New England States; 452,637 depositors, averaging $204 
 each, and aggregating $94,325,066 ; in New York and Pennsylva 
 nia there were one hundred and twelve banks; 360,693 depositors; 
 averaging $206 each and aggregating $77.450,397. In 1864, the 
 New England States reported an increase of ten banks, 79,694 
 depositors, and an increase of $25,104,347 to the aggregate of their 
 deposits, averaging $224 to each depositor. The State of New 
 York had made a still greater increase in three years, rising from 
 310,693 depositors and $67.450,397 in amount, with an average 
 of $214 to the credit of each in 1862, to 456,721 depositors, 
 $111,793,425 in bank, and the average of $244 each, in 1865. 
 
 We have not quoted the activity and extension of insurance and 
 savings institutions as instances of the associative movement which 
 we regard as characterizing and distinguishing the hundred years 
 past, which we have called the age of guarantyism. They are not 
 of the essence, but they cannot be overlooked, among the evidences 
 of the times in which the stage of individualism is merging into 
 
260 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 association, and selfhood is growing into cooperation. They are 
 incidental and collateral, but they are symptomatic and inseparable. 
 They are the earliest strivings and the outward accompaniments of 
 an impulse that is translating the brotherhood of men into coopera 
 tion in industrial pursuits, and copartnership in risks and profits. 
 The principle of legal corporation is the very earliest form of the 
 perception of the benefit of mutuality the first indistinct realiza 
 tion of its serviceableness ; for it is true that, every societary move 
 ment in the progress of the race has a material, answering to its 
 spiritual, spring, and always its harbinger. Harmony of interests 
 in business affairs, naturally enough, precedes the harmony prompted 
 by social sentiments, among the masses of mankind. Material 
 interest is as the bud of brotherhood, its material profit is the 
 plainest and strongest persuasive, but the social germ grows with 
 its growth and ripens in its fruit. A legal corporation is the 
 simplest type, as well as the earliest form of cooperation. In it we 
 have the unity and identity of interests which convert numbers into 
 one artificial person, with perpetual succession and joint and 
 equitable participation of all its beneficial products, at the expense 
 of its joint maintenance and a fair division of its risks and losses. 
 
 Capital, as distinct from the labor of which it is the secured fruit, 
 very early in civilization went into association, and this tendency 
 measures the growth and grade of societary progress. All the great 
 works of modern times are the results, and the evidences of its force 
 in its free movement. The pyramids of Egypt, and the cities, roads, 
 and canals of the barbaric ages were produced by associated labor 
 in bondage. The greater works of the latest times have come from 
 capital associated in freedom. Labor in liberty is now learning the 
 force of union, and beginning to provide the conditions for securing 
 its advantages. Money is the dried and preserved fruit of work 
 it will keep and will bear the attrition of the necessary fellowship 
 which gives it multiplied efficiency. Labor is a live thing, with 
 susceptibilities, and incapacities, which make the conditions of per 
 fect association hard to secure, but which are indispensable to the 
 fusion of identity, and the required harmonies of cooperation. Men 
 must be better before they can grow nearer, and a very high grade 
 of excellency is necessary to general coalescence. They must coin 
 cide before they can thoroughly correspond. 
 
 In the infancy of civilization men begin to club their cash; a 
 
GUARANTYISM. 261 
 
 little later they unite to divide risks upon realized property most 
 exposed to loss; a little later still, they venture, in the first 
 strengthenings of faith, to joint management by its necessary 
 agents, in order to provide for profits they invent partnerships, 
 securing them as well as they can against the treacheries that are 
 incident to trust; and a little later still, the associative movement 
 recognizes the social charities which they can serve. Marine, fire, 
 life, health insurance, legal corporations, which exempt the corpo 
 rators from all loss beyond the definite value in the venture, are so 
 entirely material in their motives, that corporations have been long 
 described as things without souls. That they have powerful bodies 
 is the reason that they get leave to live and work for their owners. 
 Yet evil as their reputation is, they have some of the virtue of 
 principle, as well as that of efficiency, and they are found conveni 
 ent forms for exerting more and more of the social force, as they are 
 extended to other and finer uses. The office of almsgiving is by all 
 improving societies devolved upon the corporate authorities; and 
 benevolence, which is in its nature voluntary, takes upon itself the 
 compulsory character of a societary obligation. A donation comes 
 to be a tax, that the duty may be equitably apportioned and 
 thoroughly performed. Instead of the pyramids that barbarism 
 compelled, arise the poor-houses built by consent, with a grain of 
 the involuntary built into them out of the constrained contributions 
 of the reluctant. Here the material and the spiritual springs of 
 movement begin to work together, somewhat to the damage and 
 deterioration of each, yet to eventual advantage in the compromise; 
 and men learn the ways and means of " looking not alone upon their 
 own things, but also upon the things of others," and, whether they 
 expect " to receive a hundredfold for all they give here, in the world 
 to come," or not; or, whether they are induced to make so long a loan 
 of goods and chattels, or not, they discover that the charities, as 
 investments which make such large returns to the giver, can be 
 administered on business principles to the very highest rate of 
 profit. By this time they have gone through and graduated in the 
 social branches of insurance, dividends, and profits, which begin 
 and end in property interests, and are ready for other movements 
 that pay risks, dividends, and profits as they go, and do not end in im 
 mediate individual benefits; movements that secure self better than 
 .any that refuse association, and whose expenses and losses are the 
 
262 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 lightest of all that beleaguer them, and are at the same time not 
 dead losses even when they happen, because they are vital to the 
 highest ends, and in the effects intended. 
 
 Having banked profitably upon property and credit, and even 
 made capital of their mortality for the use of their survivors, they 
 proceed to extend the investment of their possible casualties of 
 health and fortune, and. thus convert them into a fund provided 
 for the redress of their evils and injuries. After saving funds 
 come beneficial societies, under a hundred forms of organization, in 
 which provision for relief in sickness and misfortune are the 
 special objects of associated contributions. 
 
 Beneficial societies having no need for a central government, and 
 not being required to report their statistics to the civil governments 
 in England or America, their numbers, growth and work cannot be 
 estimated. That they are very extensive in England and Ireland, 
 where they are known as " friendly societies," is indicated by the 
 amount of their aggregate deposits standing to their credit in the 
 year 1850, which was $5,000,000, averaging $688 to each contri 
 butor. This sum is nearly six times the average amount standing 
 to the credit of each depositor in the savings banks of England 
 at the same time; which is explained by the difference of the 
 management of their funds in the two institutions. In the savings 
 banks the deposit is liable to be withdrawn at will, but in the 
 friendly societies the capital and interest must be held in reserve 
 for the relief of the members as the casualties occur for which it 
 is provided. The total fund remaining at any time is just the 
 surplus of the provision for the purposes for which it was raised, 
 and so large a surplus as this shows the amplitude of the provision 
 raised from the very trivial contributions of the members. They 
 are described as "associations, chiefly among the most industrious 
 of the lower and middling classes of tradesmen and mechanics, for 
 the purpose of affording each other relief in sickness, and their 
 widows and children some assistance at their death." 
 
 Corresponding associations in the United States are called " bene 
 ficial societies," having the same objects and controlled in the same 
 way. Not specially recognized here, as in England, nor put under 
 direction by the law, nor having any responsibility, or needing any 
 protection, they make no public reports, and we have no official 
 statistics of their number, funds, or work. They are, however, 
 
GUARANTYISM. 263 
 
 very numerous, and proportionately useful. Each association deter 
 mines for itself the conditions of membership, the weekly or monthly 
 contributions, the weekly allowance to the sick, the amount of 
 funeral expenses allowed to members and their families, and the 
 cash and care promised to widows and orphans. The allowances in 
 sickness are usually quite equal to the ordinary earnings of the 
 beneficiary, if they are not even greater than those of the skilled 
 laborer ; and, generally, the tax upon the members is not larger per 
 year than the relief granted for a week s illness; besides, the 
 funeral donation is always sufficient to cover its expense. At such 
 easy rates is insurance provided for sickness and such casualties as 
 disqualify the member for self-support. 
 
 As a matter of policy, as well as principle, these societies 
 guard the general moral conduct of their members by expulsion 
 for crimes and misconduct discreditable to the association ; and they 
 refuse relief for sickness and accidents plainly traceable to intem 
 perance or to practices contrary to public morals. 
 
 It is true of them generally that the societies grow rich, even to 
 the extent of requiring, in some of the oldest and largest of them, 
 an occasional distribution of the manifest excess of their common 
 funds among the members, by whose contributions they have 
 accumulated beyond the charitable requirements for which they 
 were intended. 
 
 The like provision made by the rapidly-multiplying secret socie 
 ties of the time, checks the growth of the primitive associations, 
 and they are, accordingly, found to prevail chiefly among the 
 Roman Catholics, to whom membership in secret societies is for 
 bidden by their Church; and, among such Protestants as are 
 unwilling to encumber themselves with the additional require 
 ments and expenses of the secret orders. 
 
 -p,_ 
 
 Library. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 GTJARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 
 
 GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES : Free Masons. Growth of Secret Orders. 
 Odd Fellows origin, success Colored and British Odd Fellows Negroes and 
 women excluded Rebekah degree Statistics Ratio of reliefs to revenue- 
 Expenses of membership Suspensions and expulsions Geographic distribu 
 tion of the Order Law of climate Political possibilities. Knights of Pythiat 
 Rate of increase Statistics Abundant resources Geographic distribution 
 of the Order Revenue and reliefs Charities Expense of membership Penal 
 provisions German lodges Exclusion of women and negroes. Temperance 
 Societies History Propagandism. Temperance Orders. Sons of Temperance 
 Organization Numbers and revenue Benefits Death rate Expulsions 
 Beneficial provisions dropped Female members Causes of declension of the 
 Order. Beneficial Orders Multiplex membership Ample provision in sick 
 ness These Orders prevail just where they are most needed Growing liberality 
 to women Prejudice of color. Colored Orders. Order of United American 
 Mechanics Abundant resources Trivial expense of membership Junior Order 
 Order of foreigners. 
 
 WITH secret societies our inquiries are concerned only so far as 
 they are involved with, and indicate the associative movements of 
 the times, and, as they provide for the risks and casualties of life, 
 or, to the extent that these societies make their members partners 
 in common misfortunes, and mutual insurers of each other s temporal 
 welfare, with the incident help that there is in the moral discipline, 
 and careful surveillance of the membership exercised by the asso 
 ciation.* 
 
 Free Masonry, for several reasons, should be first noticed and 
 disposed of. It claims precedence by its rank and antiquity. It is, 
 however, exceptional in this inquiry, being much older than the age 
 of guarantyism proper, independent of the great popular movement 
 which specially characterizes the last hundred years of societary 
 history, and comparatively but little more adjusted to the new, than 
 to the olden time. Free Masonry is ; as it must be, affected by the 
 
 *The reader, perhaps, ought to be apprised that the author is not now, and 
 never has been, a member of any secret Order or Association. 
 264 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 265 
 
 changes that, in the progress of things, impress upon all institutions 
 of men ; but it has not arisen from the exigencies of the present 
 phase of civilized society, is not one of its fruits, nor a specially 
 good index of its character. Its civil, social, and charitable work 
 may be, and probably is, all that its advocates claim for it; and it 
 may be liable to all the objections made against it, or it mny be 
 wholly free from them. In either case, neither its members, its 
 funds, nor the amount of its reliefs, are necessarily involved in that 
 order of things which gives its special character to the new age, 
 however it may conform or contribute to its movements. 
 
 But, within the present century, there have arisen an immense 
 variety of secret orders and associations that are rolling on with 
 cumulative force, and bid fairly now to aggregate the entire mass of 
 the advancing communities of Christendom. Some of them are 
 purely benevolent in their avowed objects; their paraphernalia, 
 degrees of honor, and other attractions, being only designed to 
 increase their fascinations, and promote their progress ; others, and 
 indeed, in some degree, all, may minister to ends less worthy, and 
 less important; and they may be just subjects of exception, too, in 
 matters more or less important to their members and to the commu 
 nity; for all human institutions are liable to the imperfections and 
 abuses of human frailty. But we are not now concerned with any 
 thing in them, intended, incidental, or possible, except their 
 tendency to promote, and their service in displaying, the character 
 istic impulses of that advanced, and still advancing, phase of 
 civilization, in which we see repellant and discordant individualism 
 giving way to the emergent spirit of cooperation, and effecting the 
 organization of benevolence in all the forms of which the age has 
 become capable. 
 
 Among these societies, working for and towards reunion and 
 limited guaranty ism, ODD FELLOWSHIP, by its age and numbers, 
 its wealth and rate in growth, takes precedence. 
 
 The Order, in America, was founded in the year 1819, by five 
 members. Its sentiment " The Fatherhood of God over all, and 
 the universal brotherhood of man ;" its motto " Friendship, Love, 
 and Truth." The Order claims to have enrolled over half a million 
 of votaries within its first half century. Its lodges have spread into 
 every State in the Union, some of the islands of the Pacific, and 
 into the British American Provinces, and Australia, where it has 
 
 18 
 
266 QUESTIONS or THE DAY. 
 
 recently absorbed a somewhat older but much weaker order, origi 
 nally founded in Great Britain; with which the Colored Odd 
 Fellows of the United States, excluded from fellowship by their 
 white brethren, under the long prevailing prejudice of color, are in 
 full fellowship. In common with other associations of whites in the 
 United States, whose general profession of philanthropy, humanity, 
 and benevolence in the past, had a like limitation in principle and 
 practice, the Odd Fellows excluded negroes and women from its 
 membership; and the former from all forms and operations of its 
 charities. The prejudice of color is the reason, and the whole 
 reason, of the severance of the American from the English brother 
 hood; and this difference had to be overcome in Australia by its 
 surrender there, before a unity of jurisdiction could be effected. 
 
 Very recently, by the creation of what in the Order is called the 
 Relckah Degree, women are admitted into a collateral branch, 
 without acquiring all the privileges and immunities of full member 
 ship, but are made capable of its charitable offices, and, to some 
 extent, of its dignities and authorities within their own degree, in 
 which they participate with male members : the Rebekah Degree 
 being constituted of both sexes. This sentiment is progressive, 
 and evidently tends to the concession of larger and larger partici 
 pation to the long-excluded sex. It is not necessary here to trace 
 the influences that are gradually widening the huuianitary spirit of 
 the Order for the admission of a sisterhood into the brotherhood, 
 and it is, also, unnecessary to look for the probability of the new 
 order of things amongst us in its necessary tendency to break 
 through the prejudice that has hitherto barred out the colored race 
 from its universality of brotherhood and benevolence. But we may 
 expect that all changes in the general sentiment of society will 
 reflect their effects, sooner or later, upon those whose assumed posi 
 tion is in the advance, and who are specially pledged to advance the 
 " universal brotherhood of man." 
 
 The progress ,of this American Order is a sign of the limes, and 
 so significant as to give interest to some of its general details. 
 From the report of the Grand Lodge of the United States, held at 
 San Francisco, in September, 1869, we take the materials of the 
 following tabular statement, exhibiting the growth of the member 
 ship and revenue, and of the relief afforded during the three last 
 decades. 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 267 
 
 Proportion of reliefs 
 Decade. Revenue. Reliefs. Initiates. to revenue 
 
 1830-9 $ 327,935 no record. 18,060 
 
 1840-9 4,933,492 $1,864,115 179,754 37.78 per cent. 
 
 1850-9 12,951,453 6,064,397 234,252 46.82 " 
 
 1860-9..., .. 13,111,133 4,846,518 228,193 36.96 " 
 
 Totals .$31,324,013 $12,775,030 660,259 41.21 " 
 
 These totals need some explanation. The excess of eighteen 
 and a half millions of revenue over expenditures in relief of 
 brothers, their widows, and orphans, is due to cost of conducting 
 the lodges; such as regalia, rent, fuel, light, salaries, and other 
 expenses, with probably an aggregate fund of nine millions in the 
 treasuries of the lodges, available for all uses. The initiates sum 
 up 660,259 within forty years, but the reported membership in 
 June, 1869, was only 268,608. The difference of 400,000, nearly, 
 must be accounted for by deaths, suspensions, and expulsions. The 
 number of brothers relieved during the last year and the year 
 before does not amount to quite nine per cent of the total member 
 ship of either year, and the deaths of the year ending June, 1869, 
 were but eight-tenths of one per cent of the membership at the 
 beginning of the year. The average reliefs, in proportion to the 
 revenue of the forty years, was forty-one and twenty-one one-hun- 
 dredths per cent, but the proportion of the last two years was but 
 thirty-two per cent. The total revenue of the year 1867-8, 
 ending June 30, 1868, of the lodges and encampments, amounted 
 to 82,364,295, and of the year 1868-9 to $2,630,316. The tax 
 per head to the total membership would thus appear to be nine 
 dollars per annum; but the invested funds must have yielded 
 nearly half a million to the revenue, which, being deducted, would 
 reduce the average taxation per member to about eight dollars per 
 annum. This is, indeed, a cheap rate of assurance for the health, 
 and provision for the burial expenses of the members, with relief 
 of widows and orphans added. The increase of the membership 
 has been about ten per cent per annum during the last five years. 
 This is double the rate of increase in the membership of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania during the same time. 
 The death rate in the Odd Fellow societies is also apparently in 
 their favor, but, perhaps, not really so. The deaths in the Church 
 are as twelve to eight in the Order; but the Order selects its candi- 
 
268 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 dates, excluding the unhealthy among men, all women, and all of 
 both sexes under twenty-one years of age. 
 
 The suspensions of the last two years number 25,721, and were 
 equal to thirty-one per cent of the initiations; most of these, how 
 ever, were for non-payment of dues. In the Grand Sire s address, 
 delivered in 1808, he says that " in the last twenty years there 
 have been 214.990 members suspended from membership, and, 
 with few exceptions, for non-payment of dues." About one-third 
 of the members suspended are usually reinstated; so that about 
 twenty per cent of the initiations are lost to the Order from causes 
 which do not involve any other unfitness or unworthiness than 
 " suspension " implies. 
 
 The expulsions are annually something less than one per cent of 
 the total membership. Their names and offenses are published, 
 and besides those that are made " for conduct unbecoming an Odd 
 Fellow," nearly every crime against society, and every form of 
 moral depravity known among men, are in the list of offenses. 
 Among these, drunkenness, with its attendant crimes, figures first 
 in the number of its subjects. It is curious to see how far the 
 severest discipline of the lodges reaches in rebuke of private vices 
 a great many cases are given of expulsion for lying, slander, neglect 
 and abuse of family, gambling and keeping gambling houses, viola 
 tion of the laws of the State in restraint of liquor selling, selling 
 liquor to drunkards against the remonstrances of their wives, re 
 fusing aid to sick brothers, and, in .one case, diluting the liquor 
 administered to a sick brother. Rioting and assault and battery 
 frequently occur in the list, divulging secrets of the Order in a 
 few instances, and in one case "general meanness" is the charge. 
 It is safe to say that the offenses here named are probably rather 
 flagrant degrees, and publicly offensive ; for, it cannot be assumed 
 that the members in good standing are wholly free from any and all 
 of them. In the last report of the Grand Lodge the expulsions for 
 the State of Pennsylvania are given at 121 for conduct unbecom 
 ing Odd Fellows." Names and offenses not given ; but, for all the 
 other States, the offenders and their specific misdemeanors are pub 
 lished wilhout reserve. The aggregate for the year is summed up 
 at 1,081. 
 
 The geographic distribution of the Order in the United States is 
 something curious. The whole membership in June, 1869, was 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES 269 
 
 268,608 j of these Pennsylvania had 09,770, or twenty-five per cent, 
 while New York with a much larger population had but 17,950 
 members, or only six and two-thirds per cent of the total member 
 ship in North America. More curious still, climate or race seems 
 to have its influence here as in other societary facts and move 
 ments. Between latitude 39 and 42, north, seventy-one and eight- 
 tenths per cent of the total membership is found } that is, in the 
 District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New 
 Jersey, West-Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, 
 Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, and California fifteen States and Terri 
 tories, there are 192,954 of the Order. The six New England 
 States, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Ne 
 braska, Montana, and the British provinces all lying above lati 
 tude 42 north, had but 54.111 members, or twenty and one-tenth 
 per cent of the total ; and all south of 38 fourteen States and 
 Territories had 21.536, or a fraction over eight per cent. 
 
 The Rebellion, of course, had some effect upon the membership in 
 the southern belt of States, from which they have not yet recovered, 
 but the law of climate and its effects upon the inhabitants, rules 
 here, forcibly and conspicuously. Else, how shall we account for 
 the phenomena in the northern belt, in which a population of nine 
 millions of the inhabitants of the Union, in 1860, with three millions 
 and a half in the British provinces, to be added, should show but 
 twenty per cent of the total membership; while the middle belt with no 
 more than twelve millions of people (12,359,870 free people in 1860) 
 has seventy-two per cent. Or, if a comparison of communities in 
 the nearest equality of conditions, and located most nearly to each 
 other be chosen, we have this result : in 1868 the six New England 
 States and the State of New York cast 1,402.612 votes at the 
 Presidential election, and together, in 1869, had 37.137 Odd 
 Fellows, which are equal to two and two-thirds per cent of their 
 voters. Pennsylvania cast 655,662 votes at the same election, and 
 had, in 1869, 69.770 Odd Fellows, or eleven and one-half per cent 
 of her voters. The proportion of Odd Fellows to the Presidential 
 votes, in 1868, of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio was eight 
 per cent, or a little more than three to one against New England 
 and New York. 
 
 As we shall have other occasions for noticing sectionality or 
 locality in other instances of social cooperation, we will just now 
 
270 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 note the fact that the New England States, with a population of 
 3,135,283 in 1860, had together 19,187 Odd Fellows in 1869, and 
 Pennsylvania numbering 2,906,115 in 1860, had in 1869,69,770 
 Odd Fellows. 
 
 Here we have a society which has been growing in membership 
 for several years at the rate of ten per cent per annum, with its 
 revenues increasing at the rate of above eleven per cent, and a sur 
 plus, over and above its real estate, of about nine millions of dollars, 
 while increasing its charities at the rate of eight and one-half per 
 cent per annum. Power doubling about once in seven years, if it 
 shall have the gift and grace of continuance. It embraces indeed 
 less than four per cent of the total voting population of the Union, 
 but it measures from eight to eleven per cent of the voters of the 
 Middle States, and is therefore of great political importance; or, it 
 is at least capable of great political influence if it could be so em 
 ployed. But, I apprehend that its future will not answer to its 
 present attainment, and its progress in the immediate past. Other 
 associations, availing themselves of its special advantages and at 
 tractions, and relieving themselves of whatever is less favorably 
 addressed to the public demand, will more and more abate its rate 
 of progress; or so amend the institution itself, as to answer the 
 same purpose they will better, or they will supplant it. 
 
 We have another Order, generally like that of Odd Fellowship, 
 which is making very rapid progress ; it may be in virtue of a better 
 adjustment to a different class of the community. It is not yet 
 seven years old, and, lacking the complete sectional organization of 
 time and experience, its statistics are not attainable with satisfactory 
 precision. 
 
 The order of the KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS was founded on the 19th 
 of February, 1864. In April, 1870, it had about seventy-five thou 
 sand members in the United States. At the annual session of the 
 Supreme Lodge, held at Richmond, Virginia, in March, 1869, the 
 subordinate lodges were thirteen in the District of Columbia ; one 
 hundred and forty-six in Pennsylvania; twenty in New Jersey; 
 thirty-two in Maryland ; ten in Delaware ; eight in New York ; 
 seven in Virginia; five in Connecticut; two in Louisiana; two in 
 Nebraska; two in California; one in West Virginia; and one in 
 Ohio. The rate of growth is indicated by an increase of fifteen 
 lodges in Maryland in the next ensuing nine months, and of eighty- 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 271 
 
 eight in Pennsylvania in the same time. The number of members 
 in Pennsylvania, on the 31st of December, 1869, was thirty-six 
 thousand and ninety-three, or one-half of the Order in the United 
 States. The revenue of the Pennsylvania Lodges during the year 
 was $277,627; the reliefs paid. $(30,734 a trifle less than twenty- 
 two per cent of the total receipts, thus falling below the proportion 
 of the reliefs of the Odd Fellow Order to their total revenue, about 
 eleven per cent. But this may very well be accounted for by the 
 recency of the organization of the Knights, and their probable less 
 liberal allowance to sick members; and the proportionally less 
 number of widows and orphans requiring support. The funds on 
 hand and invested by the Order in Pennsylvania, at the last-men 
 tioned date, were $183,664; so that they may be regarded as amply 
 provided for the contingencies which call for their charities. 
 
 The locality of these beginnings of the Order are found, like 
 those of the Odd Fellows after fifty years of progress, nearly con 
 fined to the middle belt of States, or, climatically stated, between 
 the 38 and 42 of north latitude. 
 
 The qualifications required in candidates for initiation are: they 
 must be white males, over twenty-one and under fifty years of age, 
 of good moral character, with all their parts, healthy, sound, and 
 free from any mental or bodily infirmity, able and competent to earn 
 the means necessary for the support of themselves and families, and 
 a belief in the Supreme Creator and Preserver of the Universe. 
 The initiation fee, not less than $5.00; weekly dues not less than 
 ten cents per week, with an assessment for the funeral fund; the 
 amounts of each, subject to the decision of the several subordinate 
 lodges, at any rates above these minimums prescribed by the Grand 
 Lodge of the State. A probationary period previous to vesting the 
 right to claim benefits, is imposed, and benefits are refused to 
 members disabled by infirmities previous to admission, and for any 
 disability originating from intemperance, and vicious or immoral 
 conduct. The minimum fixed for funeral expenses of members is 
 $30. The support of widows and orphans is obligatory upon the 
 subordinate lodges, but the amount of appropriation is left, as it 
 must be, to the discretion of the particular lodge to which the de 
 ceased member, through whom they claim, belonged. The average 
 cost of all the benefits provided and secured to the members seems, 
 from the data afforded by the statistics of the Order in Pennsyjva- 
 
272 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ma, to fall under the sum of eight dollars per annum, exclusive of 
 the initiation fee, which is paid but once, with a trifling addition 
 for two or three degrees afterwards conferred. The whole of these 
 degree expenses being less than ten dollars. Suspension is inflicted 
 for failure to pay dues, and for minor offenses against the rules and 
 requirements of the Order. Fine, suspension, or expulsion, is the 
 penalty for offenses against the corporate laws, for frauds, drunkenness, 
 and immoral or criminal conduct of any kind, but the Order is more 
 chary of its penal records than the Odd Fellows. They make no re 
 port of their expulsions, either of the number, names of offenders, 
 or of their misdemeanors. In the report of the Grand Lodge of 
 Pennsylvania for the term ending June 30, 18G9, the initiations 
 reported are 6,779; the suspensions 1,507; and the deaths 96; to 
 gether, 1,603. 
 
 Nearly twenty of these lodges use the German language in their 
 (t work " or in the conduct of their lodge business. Almost all of 
 these are situated in Philadelphia, and are, probably, natives of 
 Germany. 
 
 The actual condition and the prospects of this Order cannot be 
 confidently inferred from the statistics given to the public ; but if 
 not among the forces they are certainly one of the signs of the 
 times. They utterly exclude women and colored men from their 
 association, and they are ,remarkable among their chss of associa 
 tions for embracing immigrant residents, who yet use a foreign 
 language in their proceedings. Their rules do not require citizen 
 ship. 
 
 The Temperance Reform had its beginnings in the United States 
 it has had several revivals and beginnings in various organized 
 forms. Its history may be thus briefly stated: New York organized 
 the first temperance society in 1808. The first in Great Britain 
 was started in 1829. In 1831 the first Congressional society was 
 formed in Washington City. Before this date a great number of 
 local societies were formed throughout the country. A very gen 
 eral movement in all our communities prevailed about the year 
 1830, and all the auxiliaries of propagandism were vigorously em 
 ployed with apparently great success. In 1840-1-2 the Reformed 
 Drunkards , originating in Baltimore, awakened a general revival ; 
 signers to the total abstinence pledge were added until of both sexes 
 all ages they numbered millions. The multitudes, however, 
 
OUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. -273 
 
 had no common bond of union, except that of their voluntary obli 
 gation to practice abstinence from the use of all inebriating drinks, 
 and the com in on effort of the discipleship to propagate reform by 
 oral and printed appeals, and with very great unanimity, an endeavor 
 to check, or prevent, the use of intoxicating liquors, by legislation 
 in restraint or prevention of the retail trade in intoxicating drinks. 
 Of weekly and monthly periodicals, in newspaper and pamphlet 
 forms, there have been as many as thirty-five or forty in existence 
 at a time, and nearly all the time, within the last thirty-five or forty 
 years. The tracts and handbooks devoted to the same service have, 
 perhaps, not been exceeded in quantity by the like publications of 
 any one religious denomination in the country; and. out of the 
 general movement has grown a general advocacy of the cause in all 
 the pulpits, and a constant support by the secular press. As an ad 
 vance step in the same direction there are more than half a dozen, 
 perhaps twice as many, inebriate asylums in the nation, established 
 for the cure of the disease of drunkenness, and all of them reason 
 ably successful in effecting their intention. 
 
 Simply as a voluntary endeavor by a host of earnest men and 
 women, in every rank of life, for the promotion of a great, and 
 greatly needed, social reform, the general movement is a grand indi 
 cation of the distinguishing character of the century in helpfulness 
 of associated benevolence. About thirty years ago, the felt necessity 
 for a closer tie among the subjects and agents of this reformatory 
 work, and a greater efficiency, and better direction, of its agencies, 
 put vast numbers upon the formation of " Orders" after the type of 
 Masonry and Odd Fellowship, in the hope of strengthening the 
 bonds and securing, as well as extending, the success of the cause. 
 
 The Order styled the SONS OF TEMPERANCE was, I believe, a 
 little the earliest of these. It was instituted in the year 1842, and 
 as early as 1845 availed itself of degrees, honors, paraphernalia, 
 secret signs, and whatever of such fascinations as c^ould be com 
 manded for propagation and permanency. They added to it the 
 protective and remedial features of the common type of " Beneficial 
 Societies," by which an allowance was provided for sickness of the 
 members, for their burial expenses, and for the charities required by 
 widows and orphans. 
 
 From their official reports we gather these prominent points in 
 the history of the Order : after the model of the United States 
 
274 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Government the jurisdiction of the Order with organizations con 
 forming is divided into subordinate, grand, and national divisions. 
 A grand division in general, embraces the territory of a State. As 
 early as 1847 they had twenty-two grand divisions in the United 
 States and Canada, and thirteen hundred subordinate divisions, 
 embracing one hundred thousand members. In the twelve years 
 184859 they initiated an average of sixty-three thousand per 
 annum, and had a revenue of about $428,000; out of which they 
 paid $118,000 yearly in benefits to members and their families. 
 This amount is twenty-eight per cent of the total receipts; in this 
 respect falling very little short of the charities of the Odd Fellows. 
 The total receipts of all the subordinate divisions in these twelve 
 years amounted to $5,084,477, which exceeds the total receipts of 
 the American Bible Society, in the same time, a full million of 
 dollars. 
 
 The reliefs paid by the Order, as by other societies of kindred 
 character, were determined by the members of the particular 
 divisions to which they belonged, but may be stated, accurately 
 enough, at about as much for a week s sickness as the annual tax 
 upon the members, along with whatever might result to the family 
 at death. The average mortality in years quite recent has been 
 one-half of one per cent of the membership. The violations of the 
 pledge have been a little over ten per cent of the total members per 
 annum, and the members annually expelled were nearly twenty-four 
 per cent of the number admitted. 
 
 The prosperity of the earlier half of the Order s past lifetime, 
 seems to have greatly declined in the last twelve years. The receipts 
 which in the former period were about $425,000 per annum, have 
 fallen off to $182,000. The benefits paid have declined from 
 $118,000 to $17,000; and the membership does not now exceed 
 ninety-seven thousand. This is all that is left of quite a million of 
 initiates, claimed by the Order since its first establishment. The 
 reduction of the annual benefits to one-tenth of their former amount, 
 with a nearly equal number of members, is accounted for by the fact 
 that the beneficial provision has been dropped from the constitutions 
 of perhaps nine-tenths of the subordinate divisions; and the actual 
 diminution of their numbers, is accounted for, by themselves, by a 
 great absorption of the material of recruitment by other societies 
 and Orders that have arisen in the mean time. In the beginning of 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 275- 
 
 the year 1870, their activity was somewhat revived, and they seem 
 to be partaking of the general progress which the principle of total 
 abstinence is again experiencing iu the country. 
 
 As an organization it has, in a great measure, lost the associate 
 principle of health insurance, and has fallen that far out of harmony 
 with the spirit of the times. The Order is, indeed, little else than 
 a temperance society, held together by the attractions of their 
 ceremonial. Women have, within the last four or five years, been 
 admitted to equal privileges in the Order. In 18G8 they reported 
 nearly ten thousand ladies admitted, and forty thousand lady visitors 
 to their social assemblies. The Grand Secretary speaks of the ini 
 tiation of women as not only a feasible project, but of great ad 
 vantage to the Order. This feature of their policy had a sort of 
 beginning fifteen years ago ; but has become an integral part of the 
 movement only within two or three of the last years. 
 
 In 1859, when the Order was at the height of its success, its offi 
 cials believed they had put themselves at the head of the temperance 
 movement, and expected a future of stability and progress corre 
 sponding to that which they had enjoyed in the past. 
 
 I know not what were all the causes which have disappointed 
 this confidence, but I think that a misapprehension of the force of 
 the cooperative impulse, at work in the mass of society, is a suffi 
 cient explanation, without any other. There may, there must, have 
 been many untoward influences besides ; but without provision for 
 this demand, no excellence of aim or of organization would have 
 availed; and with it, all other imperfections would have been 
 greatly lessened in effect, and amended in fact. The mutual insur 
 ance principle, in decided force, would have taken care of all the 
 concomitants of the associations. Mere Temperance Societies have 
 again and again failed to perpetuate themselves. They have not 
 the religious bond of unity, and, without the ties of material 
 interest, they die out as organizations as soon as the revival fervor 
 abates. Besides, the " sons " were too slow in securing the correct 
 ive and inspiring aid of the " daughters " of temperance. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the National Division embraces the British 
 American Provinces. A National Division was established in 1868 
 in Australia; and the United Kingdom of Great Britain has one 
 of its own. 
 
 This society has a propagation fund, and keeps a lecturer in the 
 
276 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 field. It has its own newspaper organs, also, and seems determined 
 to work its machinery vigorously; but it needs reconstruction, or, 
 what will answer just as well, the absorption of its active elements 
 in other Orders which have grown out of it. and, for that reason. 
 
 The societies, based upon the Temperance pledge, or embracing 
 it as a condition and a duty of membership, are so numerous that 
 their statistics are not attainable with tolerable precision. Nearly 
 all of them which are offshoots of the Order of the " sons " have 
 the beneficial provision in their constitutions. The names of a few 
 of these several "Orders" which, I believe, are the most numerous 
 in membership and prosperous in their achievements and prospects, 
 will give a hint of their spread and prevalence. There are of this 
 class such as : The Temple of Honor ; The Temple of Honor and 
 Temperance; Good Templars; Ancient Order of Good Fellows, and 
 Good Samaritans. 
 
 There are, besides these, many other " Orders " whose principal 
 aim is provision for ill health, and burial benefits. A few of their 
 names will serve to indicate the prevailing spirit of association : 
 The Social Friends; Sons and Daughters of Arcanum Ark; Inde 
 pendent Daughters of the Union ; Anglo-American Beneficial So 
 ciety ; Ancient Order of Female Druids ; Mount Moriah Temple of 
 the Masonic Tie; Annunciation Female "Beneficial Society, and a 
 host, besides, of the like general character.* Of their numbers, 
 
 * I am indebted to Mr. Thomas M. Coleman, of the Ledger, for the following 
 list of Secret Orders in Philadelphia, whose existence is known to him, and in a 
 large majority of which he is himself a member: Improved Order of Free Sons 
 of Israel, Beneficial Knights of Helcium Arma Knights of Friendship 
 Knights of Honor Knights Templar Ancient York Masons Ancient Order of 
 Good Fellows Order of Heptasophs, or Seven Wise Men Sons and Daughters 
 of Arcanum Ark Sons and Daughters of America Order of Masonic Ladies 
 Daughters of Temperance Daughters of Samaria Independent Order of Good 
 Samaritans, both sexes and colors Order of Progress, loth sexes United Order 
 of American Mechanics American Protestant Association Brotherhood of the 
 Union Improved Order of Red Men Independent Order of Red Men. Sons 
 of Temperance, both sexes Temple of Honor and Temperance Cadets of Tem 
 perance Independent Order of Cadets of Honor and Temperance, both sexes 
 United Order of Sacred Temple of Liberty, both sexes Knights of Pythias In 
 dependent Order of Odd Fellows Encampment of Independent Order of Odd 
 Fellows Order of Female Druids Association of Independent Order of P , 
 female Temperance Beneficial Association Independent Order of Good Tern- 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 277 
 
 resources, and differences of constitutional provisions and adminis 
 tration, it is impossible to obtain complete reports. Like the forty 
 or fifty religious sects of a great city, they have shades of differ 
 ence in doctrine and ritual, with no common centre of registration, 
 and the most active in the membership of either are not able to 
 give a census of all. 
 
 Some peculiarities of one of the societies of very recent origin, 
 and unusually rapid growth, deserve special notice the Order of 
 United American Mechanics. The constitution declares the pur 
 pose of the Order to be protection against " foreign competition 
 and foreign combination ;" to promote the interests, elevate the 
 character, and secure the happiness of the working men and me 
 chanics of this country. In particulars, the objects of the Order 
 are declared to be " 1st. To assist each other in obtaining employ 
 ment } 2d. To encourage each other in business ; 3d. To establish a 
 sick and funeral fund; 4th. To establish a fund for the relief of 
 widows and orphans of deceased members ; 5th. To aid members 
 who, through Providence, may have become incapacitated from fol 
 lowing their usual avocation, by obtaining situations suitable to 
 their afflictions." The members must be natives of the United 
 States. Relief in sickness is refused when it results from intem 
 perance, or other immorality. Suspension or expulsion is the 
 penalty for intemperance, and for gambling. In 1869 the num 
 ber of members in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Mary 
 land, and Ohio, was twenty-one thousand, of which Pennsylvania 
 had eighty-four and one-half per cent. The total increase of the 
 year was twenty five per cent upon the membership of 1868; and 
 the increase of 1870 was very greatly more rapid. With respect to 
 its financial condition, the same facts hold that we have observed in 
 all other societies which provide for the relief of sickness of the 
 members, funeral expenses, and allowances to widows and children. 
 
 The 0. U. A. M. in 1869 were taxed in benevolences of this 
 kind with no more than twenty-eight per cent of their receipts in the 
 year. The receipts of the widow and orphan fund were above 
 
 plars Junior Order of United American Mechanics True Temple of Honor 
 The Mystic Band of Brothers Patriotic Order of Liberty. 
 
 That this list, made by the most competent Reporter of the Secret Societies in 
 Philadelphia, does no/ embrace the whole of them, is certain, which shows how 
 numerous and various they really are. 
 
278 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 $6,000 the expenditure less than 83,000. The balance in this 
 fund was then $23,000. The councils of Pennsylvania in the year 
 paid out, total reliefs, $33,622, about two dollars, average, per head 
 of the membership, the average receipts from the members being 
 $7.76 for the year. At so slight an expense the society is able, 
 and more than able, to meet the assurances it gives. The death 
 rate of the year was only seven-tenths of one per cent. 
 
 The Order has a junior branch, temperance being a prominent 
 feature of their constitution. In 1869 they had seventy councils 
 in Pennsylvania. They meet weekly ; attendance reported to be 
 good. Their exercises are educational in the conduct of meetings 
 and of debates. The juniors must not be under sixteen years of 
 age. The head of the Order says these junior societies are to the 
 parent Order what Sunday-schools are to the churches. 
 
 The Order excludes negroes, foreigners, and women from mem 
 bership. As a counterbalance, in part, there are quite a number of 
 Mechanic Councils in the country to which none but Germans, or 
 sons of Germans, are admitted. 
 
 These secret societies differ from the churches in this, that they 
 are wonderfully interlocked, and generally hold to each other the 
 most harmonious relations. Many persons belong to several of 
 them at the same time, and are entitled to reliefs from all that they 
 belong to. It is not an unusual thing to see obituary notices in 
 our cheapest daily papers, in which two, three, four, or even six or 
 eight secret orders are notified of the funeral. These notices 
 always indicate very plainly that the subjects belong to the class in 
 the community which specially needs the reliefs which they have so 
 providently secured; such persons, as for the most part must, 
 under the disabilities of sickness and the bereavements of death, 
 fall into the " supported class" if they have not wisely put them 
 selves into the provident class by fair purchase of an insurance 
 against the casualties of life. One man assured the writer that he 
 belonged to twenty-three societies, and carried all their passwords 
 in his memory. He must have been paying seventy-five to one hun 
 dred dollars a year for the chance of an equal allowance for every 
 week of sickness with a funeral allowance to his family from each of 
 the Orders of which he was a member. It is probable that, as a 
 rule, the people, in very moderate circumstances, who adopt this 
 kind of insurance provision, fortify themselves with the rights and 
 
GUARANTYISM SECRET SOCIETIES. 279 
 
 claims of two or three societies, so that for a premium of say 
 fifteen dollars a year, paid in monthly installments, they are entitled 
 to draw three reliefs, amounting to as much per week, and three 
 funeral benefits to the use of their families, which may amount to 
 a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars. 
 
 The most significant feature of this great movement among the 
 populace is, that it prevails just in the right regions and grades of 
 pecuniary condition most general just where it is most needed. 
 For example, upon inquiry, I have had the one answer from house 
 keepers, that in their opinion all ^he better class of colored female 
 domestics of the city belong to one, two, or three beneficial 
 societies. 
 
 One of the most observant and best informed among the leaders 
 of this popular movement expressed this drift of the common people 
 of the time, by saying, as a summary of his own observations : 
 " Orders are the Order of the day." "Indeed," he remarked, "if 
 you will worm your way through the popular promenade of a holiday, 
 when crowds are taking their exercise and airing you may be as 
 sured that a great majority of the mass hold membership in relief 
 societies." 
 
 A number of the " Orders," here spoken of, admit women to 
 full membership ; and this seems to be the tendency of the most 
 prosperous among them. Many others have established branch or 
 side degrees, to which women are admitted ; some have gone no 
 further than establishing social degrees, which carry no " benefits" 
 with them, but allow women to contribute to and enjoy the open 
 festivals and convivialities of the Order. A few organizations, with 
 very fair prospects, make women eligible to membership and to the 
 offices of the Order, even to that of the chaplaincy. The greater and 
 older, and as yet, more powerful of the secret societies, have done 
 little for women, except by their charities proper. But even with 
 them the beginning of the end is getting a footing, and the assured 
 promise is, that on the great common ground of mutual assurance, 
 the long rejected sex will promptly be admitted to an equality of 
 right, coextensive with its equality of need. The prejudice of color 
 is another embarrassment to the practice of that universal benevo 
 lence which all the " Orders" profess. This feeling deprives the 
 people of African descent, in the United States, of the great assist 
 ance which a broader liberality would afford them, but it has the 
 
280 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 effect of driving them upon self-help, and, to their credit, it must be 
 said, that among them there are very fair imitations of their white 
 exemplars in every sort of associative organizations. They, too, have 
 their u Orders" of the upper class, and of all grades from the 
 aristocratic brotherhoods down to the simplest and least pre 
 tentious. Of the humbler grades they are, in proportion to ways 
 and means, actually in advance of the corresponding classes of white 
 people. They are organizing in the ratio of their need, and rela 
 tively, this is generally greater, for all reasons, than in the parallel 
 ranks of the dominant race. 
 
 Of one Temperance Beneficial Order we have this report : The 
 Good Samaritans, organized in the year 1847, had a year or two 
 since twenty-two thousand members. It claims to be the first of all 
 the Temperance Orders to admit women and colored people to full 
 membership. How will these things be in the millennial " Order ?" 
 That is, how are they in the Divine Order ? In the mean time, the 
 progressives must wait, and the conservatives may console them 
 selves with the certainty that no change will come until society is 
 ready for it, and then, it will hurt nobody. 
 
 The attention of the writer was first drawn to the astonishing 
 number and activity of the secret societies of the day, by noticing as 
 often as two or three times a week, in one of our morning papers 
 having a circulation of above fifty thousand copies, from ten to 
 twenty calls for their meetings. Whoever will any day examine 
 these notices of society meetings, and the reference to society mem 
 bership in the obituary column of the most popular papers, will be 
 convinced that " Orders are the Order of the day/ and will see 
 abundant reason for concluding such an examination with the 
 conviction that, indeed, the present is the age of guarantyism, and 
 that the associative movement is the distinguishing feature of the 
 time. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 COOPERATION SURVEY OF THE FIELD. 
 
 COOPERATION Survey of the field: Three classes of guaranty associations those 
 which organi/.e the social charities those which economize the expenses of 
 subsistence those which equitably divide the profits of production. Selfhood 
 made social by expansion of its aims. A nation, a loose political association. 
 Organix.ation vitalizes its constituents. Difference between money lending, at 
 interest, and profits of capital invested in production. Slavery and wages. 
 Labor at wages and money at interest, both hirelings. Interest of money. 
 Notions need correction. Stages in history of business development. Cooper 
 ative stores. Elimination of middle-men. Merchant service, uses and abuses. 
 Merchants of old. The merchant a "producer." Monopoly of common 
 carriers. Monopoly of large capital. Domination of wealth. Any remedy? 
 Political power grew in the past as wealth does now, and worked its own cure. 
 Resistance to domination of wealth, commenced. Revolt of philanthropy. 
 Historic parallel. The remedy grows with and outgrows the evil. Current 
 products of industry immensely greater than accumulated capital. Labor s de 
 pendence upon capital in modern production. Freedom arises in bondage. 
 Education by labor, and of the laborer. The baby giant not yet weaned or 
 named. Trade unions and strikes correspond to the insurrections from Wat 
 Tyler till the French Revolution. Laws of order working in disorder. Cooper 
 ation, the lawful marriage of capital and labor. 
 
 HAVING now done what we could in the presentment and dis 
 cussion of that class of voluntary associations which make provision 
 for relief of the casualties which affect health and life, with the 
 necessarily incident discipline exercised over the public morals of 
 the membership, the drift of our inquiries leads us, next, to con 
 sider the associative enterprises which look specially to the business 
 interests of the people engaged in them. A general classification of 
 the associations which we include under the term guarantyism, may 
 help to a clearer apprehension of their characters and differences. 
 They may be distinguished sufficiently well as of three kinds; Isf., 
 those which organize the social charities; 2d/those which secure 
 economy in the expenses of subsistence ; 3d, those which intend 
 an equitable division of the profits. of productive industry: all these 
 19 281 
 
282 QUESTIONS or THE DAY. 
 
 have a community of risks and benefits as their conditions of 
 association. The first class we have treated in the preceding 
 chapter. They are all, in the points with which we are here con 
 cerned, characterized by their tendency to convert the charities of 
 social life into equitable claims, held by right of proportionate 
 contributions by the beneficiaries, and by giving a new nature to 
 the acquisitiveness of individualism ; changing it substantially into 
 benevolence when trained into the service of corporate aims and 
 ends. 
 
 "We have spoken of the two springs of societary action, the 
 material and the spiritual. In the class of relief societies, both these 
 motor forces are active in the results, no matter which prevails in 
 the purpose of the agents, or which is wholly wanting in the im 
 pulse. In all cases the pecuniary benefit is secured, and may be 
 enjoyed even by the man whose social affections are not at all en 
 gaged. The providence which his selfhood prompted is, by the 
 corporate direction given to its accumulations, transubstantiated 
 into charity in action, and a private vice is thus transformed into a 
 social virtue. Association, we have seen, vindicates its material 
 policy by ample success in every well-managed organization. They 
 all grow rich relatively to their required expenditures. The in 
 vested property and reserved funds grow always more rapidly than 
 the numbers and wants of the claimants. Just as the accumulated 
 wealth of every advancing nation in the world grows much more 
 rapidly than its population ; and the latter for the like reason as the 
 former : a nation is a society loosely combined in its methods of 
 accumulation, but closely united in the general and ultimate divi 
 dends of the common industry. 
 
 The consideration of those two classes of associations which have 
 the savings and profits of business for their respective objects, 
 and which intend and endeavor a change in the economic order of 
 trade and production, requires such a preliminary examination of the 
 existing order of the business system as may discover the promise of 
 their coming, and the prophecy of their success, in the signs of the 
 times, as the shadows of the dawn herald the coming of day. 
 
 Money, the ripened fruit, and embodiment of the energies of in 
 dustry, is naturally earliest in availing itself of the productive force 
 of association. All institutions designed for the investment of 
 savings, for safe-keeping and accumulation, are of this class. Con- 
 
I 
 
 COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 283 
 
 spicuous examples are banks of deposit, discount, and circulation, so 
 far as their capital is held in partnership. All money-making 
 corporations belong to it, whether they be concerned with public 
 improvements, such as railroads, canals, telegraph lines, or manu 
 factories, worked by partners, who participate in the expenses, 
 losses, and profits ; Savings banks are in the same category, and so 
 are all kinds of insurance companies. They are all marked by one 
 common character association of capital ; and they all have the 
 force of the material and moral spring combined in their results. 
 It may sound oddly to ascribe anything of moral or social to money- 
 making corporations, that are proverbially destitute of soul that in 
 law are only artificial persons that cannot die or go to judgment, 
 in the sense that natural persons do and must; but, under that 
 government which " from seeming evil still educes good," and 
 makes the evil of the world answer the ends of a wise purpose that 
 must ultimately triumph, and will not be baffled for want of either 
 wisdom or power, in the administration of disorder that makes 
 martyrdom a means of fresh vitality, and death and hell efficient 
 servants of life and order why may not money banks, as well as 
 parsimony, avarice, and all the forms of a blind acquisitiveness, in 
 all other shapes and apparatus of their activity, by the simple con 
 version of their selfishness of motive into social operation in their 
 effects, be made beneficent, and so, moral and spiritual, too, in their 
 service ? Association, with the aim of accumulation, is the regen 
 erating instinct of capital ; and equitable divisions of the product, 
 are the good works of these incorporated bodies, into which a spirit 
 enters in lieu of the lacking human soul, just as the lightning of 
 heaven informs and vitalizes a rubbish of zinc and copper scraps in 
 orderly organization. Organism springs to life, whatever be the 
 material in the structure, provided only the material be capable of 
 the vitalizing influx. The business brotherhood of men, takes 
 form earliest in capital, for the " dried fruits" of labor have 
 none of the repugnances, the incompatibilities, the incapacities of 
 the live laborer; to whom the benefits of a corresponding coopera 
 tion cannot come till he is fit, and to whom it will come in the degree 
 of his fitness. Labor in its savage, its barbarous, and, even in its 
 early civilized phases, either consumes all its produce, or hands 
 over the surplus to organized capital dead to its producer, but 
 
284 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 with a germ of growth in it to the cultivator, who makes it yield 
 some thirty, some sixty, some an hundredfold. 
 
 Savings banks and similar institutions, under other names; and life, 
 fire, and marine insurances, having either accumulation of profits to 
 the stockholders, division of profits among all the contributors or in 
 sured persons, or only indemnity against losses, ought to be separa 
 ted in classification by this rule : are the investors only money-lenders 
 in effect, as all those are who make their deposits at a stipulated rate 
 of interest; or, are they partners in the losses, expenses and profits ? 
 The distinction is a broad one. The lender of savings parts with 
 the great agent of production. The borrower has its use and service 
 to the utmost of its capacity. He is working his credit as capital; he 
 puts credit into stock, and makes other people s capital work for 
 him at lower rent, wages, or interest than it earns for him. The 
 mere lender of savings works for other people s capital, and with 
 it, for them, at a loss of some of the profit, and a greater loss 
 of development and power in himself. The wages system is 
 certainly a grand advance upon the slave system, for it is free in its 
 spirit, and may be free in action under favoring circumstances. It 
 differs from the state of being property, sold and bought, by the 
 circumstance that wages means the sale of whatever is salable of 
 the man % himself, and the buyer is another party with interests 
 that may be either adverse or favorable. 
 
 The self-employed man, like money employed by the owner, 
 is never on sale, either for wages or interest. Interest is the wages 
 of money which is not in the active service of its owner. His 
 money is a hireling. The laborer, with his little deposit in a 
 moneyed institution, is a hireling in person, and his property is a 
 hireling in use, just as he himself is. 
 
 Just here lies the difference between a savings bank and a build 
 ing and loan association : the deposits in the latter work to their 
 utmost for the depositor, who is both lender and borrower. In -the 
 former he is only a lender, and that necessarily, at a rate of interest 
 less by the expenses of the institution, and the difference of interest 
 rate which makes up the profits of the institution. These profits 
 Are really very large so large that they actually do refund the 
 entire investment in building associations in about eleven years, or 
 in about the time that money at six per cent doubles itself at com 
 pound interest, with the solid practical effect of making a man the 
 
COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 285 
 
 owner of the building he occupies after paying only the equivalent 
 of its rent for about a dozen years. 
 
 The same principle rules all business engagements in which the 
 man is his own employer, either jointly or severally either in 
 association or with a sufficient capital of his own to carry on his 
 business and hire others to do its work. 
 
 The science of labor has not been so devised as to command a 
 general understanding and acceptance, but its theory is clearly 
 capable of logical statement. 
 
 Many of the prevalent opinions and partial judgments concern 
 ing the questions involved need correction for the vindication of 
 fundamental principles. 
 
 In the matter of interest, for instance, it is commonly felt to 
 eat like a canker into the means of the borrower. It is known to 
 be, according to its rates, one of the most potent forces ruling pro 
 duction. Its low rate in Europe against double or treble its rate in 
 the United States employed in like productions, and which compete 
 in the same markets, is enough of itself to settle the fortunes of 
 the rival enterprises. It is known, moreover, that money-lenders, 
 upon a large capital of money and credit, make larger accumula 
 tions than any other industry can command ; and it may be hastily 
 inferred that money, by force of its rent or interest, makes larger 
 gains than labor and skill employed in the production of commodi 
 ties. There is confusion in the conclusions thus drawn from 
 premises individually true enough in themselves, but not in their 
 relations and mixed results. 
 
 The lender of large sums at short intervals has compound interest 
 upon them, and the current yield is large in amount. The lender 
 of very small sums may have his interest compounded, indeed, and, 
 like the greater capitalist, has all his time on his hands for making 
 other gains. But the one has commanding means for opportune 
 operations in the markets j the other may sink all his in a month s 
 sickness. The one reserves them for opportune employment; the 
 other lays them up idle for the very reason that they must not 
 be used. 
 
 Whoever has wealth enough to maintain him for twenty years 
 may do nothing but receive his interest at five per cent per annum, 
 and he is provided for his lifetime, and at the end of it has his 
 capital intact and uncliiniuished. The difference between a consid- 
 
286 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 erable and sufficient surplus, and the small savings that will not 
 more than cover contingencies, is world-wide. To the one it is 
 an implement, a machinery of large production, substantially with 
 out risk ; to the other, it is a crutch, to be used only when he breaks 
 a leg ; or a reserve, to be consumed when his daily bread fails with 
 his working strength. 
 
 In the matter of the support afforded by interest, it is true that 
 only too much capital is plenty, and, that too little puts the owner 
 upon looking for the best way of making his little useful in active 
 service, rather than in waiting for accidental need. 
 
 The policy of business, like other things, has its growth and 
 successive stages of development. First, the capital consisting of 
 surplus gets organized; afterwards, the social charities, beginning 
 with public almsgiving; then to insurance of property against 
 risks; next, provision for "rainy days," with a slowly growing 
 mutual fund for relief against sickness and the privations that 
 follow death all these are a sort of insurances ; but they all take, 
 in their earlier stage, the shapes that give their profit over and 
 above the provision required, to the capitalists, as distinct from the 
 contributors ; they all have, indeed, the germinal power of associa 
 tion in them, gradually unfolding; some of them yielding their 
 proper fruits to the cultivator ; some of them, reserving largely of 
 those fruits from his grasp, and leaving little of the residuary 
 for the equitable owner. At a still later stage the advance is from 
 the blade of promise toward the corn, with the assurance of the 
 full corn in the ear to the use of the husbandman, who having sown 
 his own seed in his own ground, reaps the whole harvest that his 
 labor yields. 
 
 This brings us, in the growth of guarantyism, to cooperative 
 stores, as that system of provision for current consumption is called, 
 which is not yet self-employing, but is so far self-helping that it is 
 self-supplying, so far, at least, as the elimination of middle-men, 
 merchants, hucksters, and mere exchangers, can be dispensed with, 
 and with relief, in proportion, from their support, from their frauds 
 and their gains. 
 
 These intermediate exchangers are interested to tmt as great a 
 distance and difference of place and of price between production 
 and consumption as they can. This is their inherent vice. They, 
 as a distinct order of industrials, are necessary and serviceable m 
 
COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 287 
 
 the degree that they are indispensable, and, no further. In all 
 beyond this, they are mischievous. How they have thriven in their 
 department of the work that life demands ! Twenty-five hundred 
 years ago, the merchants of Tyre were described as " Princes, and 
 her traffickers as the honorable of the earth." Later, upon equally 
 sacred authority, those of a prophetic Babylon are said to be " the 
 great men of the earth " and, again, the people of that symbolic city 
 are doomed to destruction, for this reason, among others, that, " the 
 merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her 
 delicacies." And yet again they figure in the threatened catastrophe as 
 deeply involved in the ruin which their agency wrought : " The mer 
 chants which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off, for the fear 
 of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, alas, alas ! that great 
 city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and 
 decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls ! For in one hour 
 so great riches is come to naught. And every ship-master, and all 
 the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, 
 stood afar off, and cried, when they saw the smoke of her burning. r 
 It seems, however, that these princes and great men of the earth 
 were, by professional instinct, very free traders, indeed, for, besides 
 the stuffs of the artisan, and the products of the agriculturist, 
 crowding the list of their goods like a ship s manifest of our own 
 day, they also traded " in slaves, and the souls of men," whatever 
 the last item may mean that can have any application to the busi 
 ness of our modern sea-ports, which, however, the whole invoice 
 seems to have in its purview. 
 
 That the merchant is a necessary intermediate a producer in 
 fact and as much so, in his way as the miner, the transporter, or 
 any other agent or invention that saves time and overcomes space, 
 is clear enough. By his service the perfection of all production is 
 made attainable, for by the division of labor its products are im 
 proved and multiplied. This makes the exchanger a necessity to 
 all the ends of useful industry; and, while conformed to his func 
 tion, and restrained to his proper use in the world s business, it is 
 idle and unmeaning to class him as a non-producer, or in any sense 
 an impediment or a parasite. But he is intermediate between the 
 producer and consumer, and by perversion of his office he becomes 
 an obstacle in commerce, and a burden upon the parties which he 
 should serve. It is to the necessity for intervention that he owes 
 
288 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 his place in the world s required exchanges; and he finds his 
 interest and his temptations of interest, in increasing the dis 
 tance and cost that can be put between the parties to the com 
 merce which he conducts. Roads, carriages, ships, which econo 
 mize time and abridge the inconvenience of space, can be used to 
 counteract their true intention. They are instruments of associa 
 tion in themselves, but they are capable of multiplying the interme 
 diate agencies of commerce, and increasing the dependency of the 
 parties which they should liberate. The better these instruments 
 are the more they take the conditions of monopolies. The larger 
 the number of persons they are made capable of serving, and the 
 greater the commerce they can move, the further they are removed 
 by. their value from the control, and by their management, from the 
 best service of the community. It is essential to the railroad that its 
 owners shall have the exclusive right of way. No one but its man 
 agers can put a carriage upon it. No outside traveler or trafficker 
 can compete with its facilities of transportation. It has exclusive 
 privileges. Even the natural highways and the common roads and 
 rivers may be monopolized by capitalists, and the servants of the 
 public, within certain limits, become its masters in the matter of 
 travel and transportation. Competition, in most other branches of 
 industry, the regulator of charges, is easily defeated of its power in 
 transportation, and, accordingly, as we know, rivalry here always 
 fails. Opposition omnibuses on our city streets cannot hold out 
 in their struggles half a year. They are either underworked to ex 
 haustion, or, bought up, if that proves the cheaper way to the 
 monopolist lines. Railroads, like city water-works, forbid all at 
 tempts at limitation of their prices by exclusive occupation of the 
 route, and of the agents of transit. A gas company once in posses 
 sion of the ground is in position to defy all resistance. It can and 
 does regulate its prices by the balance of its own interests. The 
 rivers are free in their course. They are not private property; but 
 their use is easily monopolized by commanding capital. Common 
 carriers upon their waters are run off the track, as omnibuses are 
 in our streets. The heaviest capital soon starves out its competi 
 tors or buys them up ; and steamboats settle into lines, and have 
 the privilege without charters, by virtue of the wealth that needs no 
 odds in the struggles of competition. Passenger lines in ocean navi 
 gation fall within the same influences, and are controlled in the 
 
COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 289 
 
 same way. Common carriers everywhere soon get sole possession, 
 and the occupancy of the world s highways, by land and water alike, 
 may be treated practically as private property. Neither the breadth 
 of mountain or prairie, of river or ocean, with all the room they 
 give, can secure the free practicable use of their capabilities to any, 
 against companies which have the means of occupying and com 
 manding their passage ways. Tracks over land, and routes over 
 ^seas, are free, indeed, to private carriages and to vessels of every 
 kind for whomsoever can bear the cost of their own conveyance 
 and commerce in them ; but no one can become a common carrier, 
 or take any part in that branch of the mercantile function, in the 
 face of a heavier capital that would monopolize it. 
 
 Doubtless, such monopolies must address the interest of the com 
 munity in securing its custom, but they need go no further in 
 accommodating the public then cheapening their service in the 
 smallest degree that will secure their own ends. Even while carry 
 ing goods and passengers for nothing, they are only aiming at 
 the monopoly of the route, and intending to replace the losses of 
 the strife when they shall be in condition to make their own terms. 
 Roads that divide business often reduce fares and freights for the 
 purpose of selling out on their own terms to their rivals. Charters 
 for roads that threaten competition are obtained to be sold with the 
 same view, and the protection of competition is thus constantly 
 defeated. In a word, transportation companies and corporations are 
 fast becoming the masters of commerce, under the system of 
 modern improvement in its methods; just as wars are decided by 
 the power of wealth in providing their instruments and engines. 
 The dominion has passed from the lords of blood to the lords of 
 gold, as the aristocracy is dominated by the millocracy of England. 
 Is there no remedy for the inevitable tendency of the age in this 
 direction ? Was there no remedy for the civil despotism that grew 
 step by step with all civilized progress, a few centuries ago ? The 
 common people s strength only enhanced the disparity of power in 
 their masters while it was growing, but had not yet grown to self- 
 assertion and self-defense. Governments that did not consult or 
 regard the public interests, nevertheless, did depend upon the very 
 power which they trained into their service. The basis forces had 
 some room left to grow; not much, but still enough for their own 
 enhancement. Tyranny was deluded into increased oppression by in- 
 
290 QUESTIONS OF THE DAT. I 
 
 creased aggrandisement through the growing worth and wealth of 
 its subjects; but, at last the embryo life burst into independence by 
 force of just those powers which had before aggravated its bondage. 
 
 Is there any parallel of promise in the struggle now going on 
 between accumulated wealth and its sources and subjects ? Let us 
 see every civilized country in the world is now growing in wealth 
 twice or thrice faster than in population. The distributive shares 
 of all peoples have greatly increased in the century which we have 
 named as the age of guarrantyism. All the means of production 
 have been multiplied incalculably, through the aid of machinery or 
 the substitution of artificial for natural labor. The people of France 
 have thrice the food that they had a hundred years ago, the people 
 of England have thirty times the cotton cloth; and capital in the 
 hands of the wealthy class of both countries is increased by tale of 
 coin and credit money tenfold, with an efficiency in production multi 
 plied ten times again, as against the mass without property other 
 than labor-power and skill. The power of wealth in the world s 
 work now is as a hundred against one in the times when the plough, 
 the loom, and the anvil were driven solely by hand-power a hun 
 dred to one in an array of antagonism, and growing, as all soeietary 
 forces are growing now, with accelerated rapidity. Considered only 
 in their past and present potencies, it is not at all to be wondered 
 that philanthropy has been for a century or two devising radical 
 revolutions in the policy of distributing the wealth which labor and 
 capital jointly produce. 
 
 Communism, St. Simonism, Fourierism, Shakerism, and many 
 other forms of reorganization, or social reconstruction, sometimes 
 with, sometimes without, the religious sentiment of brotherhood 
 incorporated, have arisen and gone into abortive endeavor, from no 
 other conviction and impulse than the demonstration of the ever 
 growing disparity of power between wealth and labor. These recon 
 structive efforts are exactly the counterparts of those other blind 
 struggles of the levelers of political and civil power, which began 
 with Wat Tyler and ended in the primal days of the French 
 Revolution. Absolute democracy in civil and social polity, and 
 communism of property, are cousins-german in reform, and each is 
 grounded in the correlative maxims " power is always stealing from 
 the many to the few." " Policy is ever making the rich richer and 
 the poor poorer." 
 
COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 291 
 
 Neither of these proverbs of the people is true, nor ever was 
 true. The few, indeed, grew, and are yet growing, more powerful ; 
 but the many are growing more rapidly, only they have not yet got 
 a commanding hold of the machinery of civil government. The 
 rich are being made richer, vastly richer. It is no longer a figure 
 of speech to call a merchant, in goods or money, a millionaire. We 
 have them in hundreds; men in England and America, of whom a 
 dozen or two could pay off those vast national debts, which nobody, 
 fifty years ago, believed the whole nation could ever pay. David 
 Hume said, in 1776, that the national debt of England, then not 
 one-third of its present amount, was a mortgage on half the wealth 
 of the whole nation. Yet there is wealth enough in London or 
 Liverpool, or New York, now, to redeem the national debts to the 
 last dollar, without spoiling a holiday in either. Yes, the wealth of 
 the wealthy has grown fabulously; yet it is as nothing to the 
 increase of the aggregate wealth of the millions of men who are 
 now doing the world s daily work. Our civil war cost us more than 
 five thousand millions ; it was all actually contributed day by day 
 as it was expended. If all the assets of all the banks of the 
 Union, in 1800, had been confiscated; if their capital, real estate, 
 coin, and other resources over their liabilities, had been tumbled 
 into the Treasury, the sum would not have reached 8900,000,000 ; 
 yet the two-thirds of the Union paid up six times that amount in 
 four years, and were richer than when the first loan was raised. I 
 say, all the expenses of the war were actually paid during the 
 war ; for the national bonds, which we call the national debt, are 
 the receipts for it. In the aspect of debt, these bonds are only 
 claims for distribution of the expenses borne unequally by indi 
 viduals while the unsettled balances were accumulating. The 
 amount of the bonds held abroad, which, in 18C5, were as nothing 
 to the total expenditure, is the only deduction to be made in esti 
 mating the current contributions of our own people. A little 
 reflection will show how erroneously the wealth of the wealthy is 
 commonly contrasted with the accumulations of the people. At 
 any county fair now held, there is more money s worth in the 
 equipments, the "turn outs," and the apparel and jewelry of the 
 visitors, than the whole real and personal property of that county 
 would have been rated at seventy, or even fifty, years ago. There 
 is more money spent by the industrial populace in travel, amuse- 
 
292 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ments, furniture, and dress, than the whole country was worth in 
 the very recent time when there was not a daily paper published 
 outside of the Atlantic cities. What are the fortunes of the thou 
 sand millionaires of the nation to the massed wealth of the millions 
 of the people ! 
 
 We are constantly forgetting this, and so we are foolishly fearing 
 the issue ; and the best men are prone to turn to the devices of 
 despair for the remedy of the apparently ever-growing evil; not 
 perceiving that the corrective is growing potentially with still 
 greater rapidity: just as men s hearts failed within them in that 
 other strife of the many against the few, in the age of civil revolu 
 tions, forgetting that the many were the many, and that every 
 failure of open resistance showed the growing strength of the 
 resistance which failed not knowing that success is the outgrowth 
 of failures oft repeated, and that men blunder into success as a 
 <;hild toddles into pedestrianism, strengthening its limbs and steady 
 ing its steps by every stumble it makes, and gathering new strength 
 like Antasus, every time it touches its mother earth. 
 
 What have we now at work upon the popular welfare ? On the 
 one side, productive industry, so welded to machinery that every 
 workman is the hireling of capital, so that to make a pin. which 
 will pay cost in the market, you must begin with an outlay of fifty 
 thousand dollars; and no man will buy a cotton shirt unless a 
 hundred thousand dollars were employed in producing it. All 
 forms of industry, which the times permit, require an aggregate of 
 capital that no workman of merely ordinary means can at all com 
 mand, either in cash or credit. On the other hand we have, in the 
 possession of the unpropertied mass, an amount of skill, without 
 which the millionaire s mill cannot turn a wheel, or run a spindle, 
 or head a pin. They have, also, an education, acquired in service 
 at wages without profits, by which capital has grasped the wonderful 
 wealth which the modern methods of production have yielded ; and 
 along with this grandest element of all this new-made force of 
 skill an education of brain in literature and available science, or 
 science applied, which we still call skill. For want of knowing 
 what it is in essence and force we have not yet invented a descriptive 
 name, or descriptive names, for distinguishing between the art that 
 builds a bridge, runs a locomotive engine, manages a stationary one, 
 constructs a railroad, or levels a canal. They are all engineers, 
 
COOPERATION SUBJECTS AND FORCES. 293 
 
 forsooth, though they must understand mineralogy, hydrostatics, 
 architecture, geometry, mathematics, mechanics, and half-a-dozen 
 other sciences, for either construction, reparation, or superintend 
 ence: very respectable portions of Michael Angelo, Archimedes, Sir 
 Christopher Wren, Sir Humphrey Davy, Benjamin Franklin, and 
 Robert Fulton^ must be rolled into one man, in various assortments, 
 to make what we call an engineer, or foreman of a factory, or of a 
 machine shop; and all such men, with their multifarious adaptations 
 of their great exemplars, we class together under our meagre 
 phrase, " skilled artisans." 
 
 Do we apprehend the wealth-producing force there is in these 
 hirelings of capital ? Do we understand how much they have 
 grown into their several arts, and how much they are able to grow 
 out of them, for their own service? What is the meaning of trade 
 unions and trade strikes, that act now throughout all advancing 
 communities like free masonry, issuing their orders from the grand 
 lodges that are the foci of their mind and muscle ? Are they only 
 a declaration of helplessness under wrongs ? Are their frequent 
 failures only a proof of their feebleness ? Are they not, on the 
 contrary, the riots, insurrections, and revolts, that ripen into revolu 
 tions, arid, at last, establish governments, and administer them ? And 
 what will come of them when they shall have blundered, and sinned, 
 and suffered enough to grow wise and good by their purgatorial 
 development ? Slaves, emancipated by powers not their own, by 
 mere docility get into positions of harmony; but rebels, that work 
 out their own freedom from actual bondage, have their own follies 
 and crimes to struggle with ; but nothing that they do or leave 
 undone affects the final result, however that result may be postponed 
 or hastened. The laws of order are ever working through their 
 disorders, and from seeming evil are still educing good. 
 
 The working men of the time see colossal fortunes growing out 
 of their toil, which, however better and better requited, as it grows 
 more and more efficient in producing its joint results with capital 
 and machinery, are still not evenly divided to them. Their wants 
 grow with their wages, and they want, above all other wants, some 
 share of the profits, because they think that products are the joint 
 issue of the agents which are their parents; and they are beginning 
 to see that lawful marriage of the generators of wealth must 
 establish the legitimacy of the issue, and the lawful claims of each 
 
294 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 party to its production. Cooperation is the marriage of labor and 
 capital, and they are beginning to perceive that bone and muscle 
 must be able to say to capital "bone of my bone and flesh of my 
 flesh," and let no man put them asunder or keep them asunder, 
 that the lawful fruits of the union may be jointly and justly 
 enjoyed. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 COOPERATION STORES, MANUFACTORIES, BANKS. 
 
 Cooperation stores, manufactories, banks embrace all the branches of business 
 economy. Disjunctive conjunction" of "Political Economy." A science of 
 labor promises a true political economy. Lawless competition against orderly 
 emulation. Cooperative stores or economy in expenditure. Burdens of the 
 retail trade. Force of aggregated capital. Every dozen of families support 
 one of traffickers. Conditions of reform. Rochdale Pioneers. Self-help and 
 self-supply success. Profits rise with increase of capital from four and one- 
 half to twelve and one-half per cent, in twenty years. Benefits and safety of 
 cash sales. Avoidance of the vice of "buying cheap and selling dear." 
 Cooperation differs from ordinary partnership. Spread of the system in 
 England. Statistics. Central organization of cooperative societies. Coopera 
 tion in Germany. Herman Schultze. One thousand associations in Germany 
 in 1869 business of sixty millions a year. Rise in connection with popular 
 education obstructed by French radical agitation. Popularity among all 
 classes. German differ from English, societies. Credit banks principles gov 
 erning their management. Capital. Reserve fund. Rate of interest indiffer 
 ent to the borrower. Money value of credit extent of the business. A Jacob s 
 ladder of credit. Profit and loss. Statistics. Statistics of all branches of 
 cooperation in Germany. Interaction of banks and stores. Cooperation in 
 Spain. Education and association. Indoctrination after the manner of the 
 Roman Rostrum. Russia. Communes. Emancipation of the serfs. Rural 
 population, nine to one of the total. Russian fairs. Cooperation indigenous. 
 Insurrectionary spirit of Western Europe unfriendly to cooperation. Radical 
 ism in Prussia. Agrarianism. Labor unions of Prussia. Wages of colliers 
 a strike and its results. Hostility of the insurgent spirit to property rights. 
 
 IN common use this term is restricted to such organized combina 
 tions of individuals as are designed to relieve them, as far as 
 practicable, of intermediates in productive industry and commercial 
 exchange. Cooperation is partnership in profits, equitably distribu 
 ted in proportion to the severalties of contribution of capital, labor, 
 skill, and management. This is more exactly the description of 
 those associations which are properly called " Cooperative Labor 
 Societies," or partnerships of industrial producers. 
 
 Another, and in natural order, an earlier form of cooperative 
 
 295 
 
296 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 business associations, are partnerships of consumers, who purchase 
 in gross such commodities as they require for ordinary use, and 
 distribute them according to their respective needs, at the least 
 possible cost of distribution; being jointly the owners and venders, 
 and severally, the final purchasers of the goods provided; thus 
 eliminating the merchant, at least in the last stage of distribution. 
 The company are the purchasers at wholesale ; and the agents of 
 the retail have no interest in the business, other than that of 
 employees, or servants, of the company. This form of the move 
 ment is known as " cooperative stores/ 
 
 There is a third form the natural outgrowth of the two stages 
 just noticed, which in Germany is styled " The Credit Banking 
 System." The emphasis of the descriptive name falls properly upon 
 the word credit, in the title. They differ from the ordinary money 
 banks mainly in this, that they lend only to the members, or 
 depositors, of whom each for all, and all for each, are virtually the 
 indorsers. By this provision of the organization credit is given to 
 borrowers who can command credit nowhere else, nor on any other 
 possible conditions. 
 
 Here, in these three modifications of cooperation, we have pro 
 vision made 1st, by cooperative stores, for economy in the necessary 
 expenses of subsistence ; 2d, retention and equitable apportionment 
 of all profits to the active partners in the production of commodities ; 
 and, 3d, a provision of credit, and distribution of the profits of 
 money as a money-maker, among those who furnish the capital 
 stock. 
 
 There are no more, and no other, branches of the economy of 
 the individual, and of the household, than these. Men in business 
 are either consumers, industrial producers, or bankers in effect. 
 All the interests and functions of material wealth and well-being 
 are these, and these only, when reduced to their substantive forms. 
 The transporters and traffickers in unorganized business are but the 
 adjectives or ministers of consumption. The capitalist, the mana 
 ger, the employer, and the hireling, in productive work, merge into 
 one in coiVperative industry; and the Credit bank depositor is in 
 like manner lender, borrower, and banker, in one, as far as credit and 
 interest on capital are concerned. Put these three forms and aims 
 of cooperation together, and the entirety of wealth-producing and 
 wealth-preserving agencies are embraced. They mean that sub- 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 297 
 
 sistence shall cost no more than aetual labor deserves that the 
 entire profits of production shall be secured to the actual producers, 
 and, that money shall yield all its earnings to its true owners; and, 
 still further, that credit, or the benefits of anticipated earnings, 
 shall be provided and accorded in equitable proportion to investment 
 and proved character. 
 
 Having passed, in our review of societary progress, the partial 
 and incomplete, in its varied methods and means, and arrived at the 
 stage which is logically symmetrical, self-sustaining, and having a 
 circumference defined, and supported upon its centre; our study 
 begins to take the proportions and relations of a science. 
 
 Political Economy, as it is, has too many incongruities, too many 
 inconsequences, too many disjecta membra, too many refractory, and 
 too many accidental, forces, to offer anything but a diversity of 
 topics for logical inquiry. It lacks relation, dependency, and 
 corroboration of points; but cooperation, which, in its inmost mean 
 ing is harmony, looks as if destined to work itself into a system 
 that, with organized labor as a basis, firmament and continent, may 
 be constructed into a science in the true sense; having only the 
 incident of exchange, in its present disorder, as an exceptional 
 appendage an exception not subject to law but ruled by expe 
 diency. The great function of exchange, within the sphere of 
 organized labor, is controlled by its own harmonic principles; but 
 outside exchange, reacting upon that within, is necessarily abnormal, 
 intrusive, and discordant. 
 
 The deadly action of Competition, which is the dominant force 
 in trade, as trade now exists, is in constant hostility to the correla 
 tive and corrective principle of cooperation. As an associative 
 stimulus it should take the name, as it has the character of Emula 
 tion. So long as cut-throat competition is the reigning spirit in 
 the world s business affairs, it will beleaguer, invade, and disturb 
 the better order, and compel more or less departure, for necessary 
 accommodation. 
 
 Cooperative stores are the earliest embodiment of the grand har 
 monies which progress must achieve. Their characteristic features, 
 their working forces, and their general results, will suffice for the 
 presentment of their qualities and promises. They are but a step, 
 and, therefore, the first step, in advance of the common partner 
 ships in business affairs, with which the world has long been 
 20 
 
298 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 familiar. The principles involved are not novel, but the parties 
 and the special aim of their adoption is decidedly new. The opu 
 lent class have never had any difficulty iii combining capital with a 
 view to the profit of its operations in large amounts; but coopera 
 tive stores are the invention of the needy, the economical, whose 
 policy is not accumulation directly, but economy of expenditure, 
 pressed upon them by their necessities. Unable, as individuals, to 
 buy at wholesale, they have been heretofore obliged to bear 
 the burden of many intermediate profits, before the necessaries of 
 daily life reached them. The support arid the gains of a host of 
 intermediaries are always charged upon those who must buy at 
 retail. The whole merchant class, with their dependencies, rests 
 upon the ultimate consumer, in the old mode of distribution; and 
 the supporters of this great burden, aware that their evils lie in 
 the interruptions of the route between the producer and consumer, 
 begin their removal by clubbing their little means into a mass that 
 will advance them nearer to the earliest grade or stage of purchasers. 
 For this end they require only so much of concurrence and combina 
 tion as jointness of their aggregate contributions affords. This is far 
 short of such agreement of action as jointness of industrial production 
 demands; and is just so much the more easy and practicable. A clear 
 perception of their simplest interest is motive enough, and some 
 wisdom in the selection of the necessary agents, and trust in their 
 capacity and honesty, are all the moral qualifications required for 
 the effectual working of the enterprise. The resources of the 
 company are not the greatest difficulty, by any means; because the 
 individuals have, and must have, the funds to buy the prime neces 
 saries of life ; and all that is necessary is to combine the little rills 
 of outlay, which are wasting in their separate routes to absorption, 
 into a river of the several affluents, and then they have all the massive 
 strength of union. If a hundred men must, and do, find five 
 dollars a week each, to be expended upon food for themselves and 
 families, purchased at retail prices greatly enhanced by the inter 
 mediate charges, then they have, by uniting their funds, five hun 
 dred dollars in a lump, with all the power the larger sum gives 
 them to avoid the burden of the middlemen s support; and, what 
 ever this amounts to in percentage of increase upon the wholesale 
 costs is saved, less the trivial expense of purchasing and dis 
 tributing by their own agent, who works in their employ and 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 299 
 
 for wages, without profit, and without the temptation of the 
 trafficker to deteriorate the quality, or reduce the quantity passing 
 through his hands. The possible savings of this policy are not 
 easily calculated, but a safe basis for estimation may be founded 
 upon the report of the mercantile agencies of New York, which 
 gives one store and storekeeper for every one hundred and twenty- 
 three persons of all ages in the United States. This would give 
 one family to be supported by every twenty-four. This statement, 
 however, does not embrace any but such of these agencies as rank 
 as merchants who purchase their goods in the principal cities; 
 leaving out of view the mass of small traders, peddlers, transporters, 
 and other middlemen, all of whom live better and more expensively 
 upon the profits of their trade than do the laboring class which 
 contributes so large a proportion of their gains. It seems not 
 extravagant to say that every ten or twelve families who live on 
 wages must support one other family in far better style than they 
 can live themselves, under the prevalent hand-to-mouth system, of 
 supplies through the multitudinous machinery of the retail trade. To 
 get the idea sufficiently impressed, one need only walk the business 
 streets of our cities, towns, and villages, and observe the unbroken 
 blocks of retail stores, held at high rents, employing hosts of 
 dealers, and supporting their families and their lawyers, doctors, 
 and clergymen, with their luxurious indulgence of leisure and 
 of dissipation added, to form some idea, or, at least, feel some of 
 the force of the burden that the last and poorest purchaser of their 
 goods and wares must bear. To get rid of this prodigious tax 
 cooperative stores offer themselves, in theory at least, as a remedy 
 more or less coextensive with the evil. 
 
 But there is a wide distance between a principle and the facts in 
 which it takes effect. A thousand contingencies intervene; and the 
 worst of all the dangers in the route to realization, is the incapacity, 
 the unfitness, of those who most need the working benefits. The 
 thing in itself is practicable, surely. But has it ever yet gone into 
 practice successfully? Are the necessary conditions at the command 
 of those who would make the experiment? There is one grand 
 model instance, which, however familiar to those who have been 
 students of the cooperative question and attentive to its history, is, 
 nevertheless, such an exemplification of the principle that it is 
 worthy of rehearsal here. 
 
300 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 THE ROCHDALE PIONEERS. 
 
 In November, 1843, twelve of the laborers of Rochdale, North 
 Lancashire, one of the great wool manufacturing counties of Eng 
 land, met to talk over the one great subject of their life struggle 
 their subsistence ; and to devise some way of making the two ends 
 of the year meet somewhere else than in the parish work-house. 
 All the usual resorts and devices of despair were discussed and 
 dismissed; for they had all been tried, abundantly, and had as 
 abundantly failed. The discussion ended in the conclusion, "there 
 is no help for us but self-help; and, as we cannot get higher wages, 
 there is nothing left for us but to make what we do get go further" 
 Out of that wondrously wise word there has grown not only a 
 fabulously abundant fruit, but an exemplar of the redemption of 
 labor from its hopeless pauperism in Western Europe, and its more 
 hopeless strife with capital, yet to be realized, all the civilized world 
 over. These twelve men made their beginning, and thirteen months 
 of persistent effort gave them a membership of twenty-eight flannel 
 weavers, and a capital of 28 (8135). They rented a store-room, pay 
 ing the rent in advance, which, with other expenses, left them at the 
 time with only 15 to enter upon business. This sum they invested 
 in flour, butter and sugar. In 1865, twenty-two years 
 
 after their first meeting, the Pioneer Society had five thousand three 
 hundred and twenty-six members. In the first quarter of 1SG6 
 their sales amounted to 52,870 (equal to $1,025,678 for a year), 
 of which the profit was 6,516, or twelve and one-quarter per cent. 
 The stock of the members amounted to about 15 each, in the 
 aggregate, 78,610. 
 
 In Blackwood s Magazine, of March 1867, we have the following 
 general statement of results up to the 18th December, 1866, being 
 taken from the eighty-eighth Quarterly Report of the " Equitable 
 Pioneers." " The afl airs of the society are in a prosperous condi 
 tion; the number of members steadily increases; the amount of 
 cash received for goods sold during the quarter was 68.216, being 
 an increase upon the corresponding quarter of the year 1865 of 
 13,042; the profits of the quarter, 9,281. The gross profits of 
 the year were 31,934." The gross profits for the year appear to 
 be about fourteen per cent. Their goods being sold at about the 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 301 
 
 same prices charged by other retail dealers, the average gains of 
 the trade are fairly indicated by this percentage of advance upon 
 wholesale cost. 
 
 The success of the store operations is established. The figures 
 given show the extent. Its prosperity led to an extension from the 
 mere business of vending commodities to enterprises successively 
 adopted for producing the supplies most demanded by the custom 
 ers. In 1850 a butcher shop was set up. In 1861, from five such 
 shops, belonging to the society, they sold nearly six hundred thou 
 sand pounds of beef, mutton, pork, and veal. In 1852, shoemaking 
 and tailoring; a little later, coal dealing, and in 1867, a bakery 
 were added. In 1865 these pioneers of the cooperative store, under 
 a different name and organization, had a flouring mill running that 
 was doing a business of 143,533 with a yearly profit of 12,511, 
 or nearly ten per cent. In 1855 the same persons established a 
 cotton factory, employing three hundred hands and two hundred 
 and fifty looms. Since 1863 a building association has arisen, 
 employing a capital of 52,500, which furnishes its members 
 with good houses at a reasonable cost; and, to all this, a life 
 insurance and burial society has been added, with a capital of 
 over 15,000. So, the working capital which stood at one hun 
 dred and thirty-five dollars in 1843, in twenty-four years grew ta 
 over one million. 
 
 These facts and figures must be accepted as a demonstration, on 
 a large scale, and on a sufficient experience, of the practicability 
 and the utility of the cooperative plan of self-help and self-supply. 
 By this policy the Rochdale weavers broke through the thicket of 
 their distress, and fairly earned the title that they prophetically 
 gave themselves equitable Pioneers. They have shown how the 
 poorest laborers, on the scantiest wages, may escape the wretched 
 quality, and beggaring cost, of such retail purchases as their class 
 generally are exposed to. 
 
 Beside the economy in expenditure, and the accumulation of 
 capital and credit secured, they have been able to do some other 
 things for themselves, quite as worthy of note. They have a library 
 of nine thousand volumes. Not less than two and a half per cent 
 of the profits are annually devoted to educational purposes. In 
 1866, the sum of SI, 450 was expended for newspapers, microscopes, 
 globes, maps, and other educational apparatus, and increase of the 
 
302 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 library. The news and reading rooms are provided with English 
 reviews and magazines, and metropolitan and local newspapers. 
 
 Does this statement seem extravagant, and such results, achieved 
 from such resources in one-quarter of a century, impossible? The 
 product is astonishing but not incapable of convincing proof. 
 Every one knows that single individuals have built up fortunes as 
 great, from means as small, and in time as short. But the answer 
 is these individuals have done it by lucky speculations. The thing, 
 however, is demonstrable by the simple rules of arithmetic. Let an 
 expert take one shilling as capital, treat it as invested in merchan 
 dise paying a profit of but ten per cent per annum, reinvest these 
 profits, and the interest also, four times a year, and he will see that 
 this trivial capital, united with an equal amount, contributed by six 
 or eight thousand other persons, will bear all the incidental expenses, 
 the necessary charities, and collateral donations to educational uses, 
 reported of the Rochdale enterprise, and leave a working capital of 
 at least a million of dollars. This calculation allows nothing for 
 withdrawals of dividends, interest or principal, which, of necessity, 
 must occur, and have, of course, occurred in the business of the 
 Pioneers. In their eigthy-eighth quarterly report, they give the 
 account current of their business for twenty years from 1845 to 
 1864. The first of these years stands on their books thus : 1845, 
 No. of members, 74; amount of property, 181 12s. 5d.; amount 
 of sales, 710 6s. M. , profits, 32 17*. Qd. 1864, No. of mem 
 bers, 4,580 ; amount of property, 55,840 ; amount of sales, 174,- 
 206 8s. 4(7.; profits, 22,163 9s. 9<J. In the twenty years, the 
 total amount of sales was 1,294,830, the profits 130,300 an 
 average of over ten and one-half per cent. Will the reader notice 
 the vast increase of the profits per cent on the larger sales of the 
 last year of this period. The four and one-half per cent on the 
 sales of 1845 could not be made to cover more than the expenses 
 of the store, however economically conducted ; but the twelve and 
 one-half per cent upon a total of sales two hundred and forty-five 
 times greater, left a large margin of net gain above expenses. This 
 is a simple and direct demonstration of the benefit of increased 
 amounts produced by aggregating lesser sums, and giving them 
 the momentum, the weight and velocity, of forces massed and 
 united. This is the effect of association in the material elements 
 of power. 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 303 
 
 The system uuder which this store and its branches (for it has as 
 many as eight of them iu the towu) conducted business, needs 
 consideration. The society did not attempt to sell goods below the 
 rates that individual dealers could afford. They attracted business 
 by the assured quality of their goods, and by dividing, quarterly, 
 the net profits among the purchasers, in exact proportion to the 
 amount of their several purchases. They avoided the rivalry and 
 strife of underselling a game at which greater capital would have 
 bankrupted them so soon as their business had become worth the 
 crushing, and at which their antagonists would have worsted them 
 in one day s struggle. They sold at the fair ordinary prices of the 
 general trade, registered the sales, and induced their customers to 
 invest the dividends, by all that is influential in the policy of 
 ordinary savings banks, and in the feeliug of property funded to 
 those who never had any other. A fair trial of the plan, by which 
 nothing was hazarded, had its proper effects. The declared divi 
 dends, however small, were bonuses to the customers and were felt 
 to be gratuities in fact a feeliug happily expressed by an old 
 woman, who was advised to draw out her money from the store, 
 which she was told was going to break. Well, let it break. If it 
 does, it will break with its own. I put in but 1, and I have 50 
 there now." 
 
 The store sold only for cash. All the improvidence on the part 
 of customers, and all the risks to the vender of the retail credit 
 system, were thus wholly escaped. The sales were not only for 
 cash but at the current fair prices, by which the purchaser escaped 
 the temptation to buy and consume so much the more, and so waste 
 the difference, which the store reserved for them, to be divided and 
 credited in due time. 
 
 Again, the word "equitable" had even more potential signifi 
 cance than the word "pioneers," iu the title. The system left no 
 place for, and gave no encouragement to, the plundering spirit of 
 " buying cheap," which eats out the very heart of honesty. Here 
 there could be none of that higgling over price, which, if not 
 stealing quite, has the tone and purpose of getting something for 
 nothing, and in turn, generates that kindred necessity of selling 
 nothing for something, which is called " selling dear," in the creed 
 of the worshipers of competition. At the pioneers store price 
 has almost nothing to do in the purchase; the article is good, and 
 
30-4 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the cost at retail, in the end, will be exactly what it costs wholesale 
 with nothing but expenses added. 
 
 And again, these expenses are as nothing to those of the 
 traffickers, who must gain custom by extravagance of advertising in 
 all its forms in handbills, gay fronts, high rents, numerous clerks 
 and solicitors for custom, with the multifarious expenses of the enter 
 prise which rivalship compels. All this mischief and its resulting 
 burdens are escaped by the store, whose attractions are the equitable 
 principles of, only good goods, cash sales, and pro rata division 
 of actual expenses and profits. Clerks, storekeepers, and all assist 
 ants alike, do their work for their stipulated wages, and have no 
 temptation to either extend the business by any indirection, or to 
 deal unfairly with any customer. The common inducements to 
 common offenses are all that they are exposed to ; the business adds 
 nothing of its own. It will be observed that all the features of this 
 business look solely to the one object of making the same outlay 
 for the necessaries of life, for the things that we consume, go 
 further than it can go in the competitive retail trade that prevails 
 in the usual course of business. 
 
 It has been objected that the term, cooperative, is not strictly 
 descriptive of the stores which are distinguished by that name 
 that they differ in nothing essentially, as a business system, from 
 ordinary commercial partnerships from joint stock companies, or 
 from life assurance companies, that give bonuses to their policy 
 holders ; because all these are either commercial associations or 
 dealers in something which allows participation of profits. Reduced 
 to their elements, and stated in verbal definitions, it may be so; 
 but chemists find very different properties in combinations, pro 
 duced by mere differences in quantities and modes of combination 
 among the same constituents. These stores are associative in 
 impulse and in operation, and are in act and fact cooperative, in 
 many of the best efficiencies of their working forces. There 
 is a difference of degree in the cooperation that runs a mill to 
 grind our corn, a shop to prepare our meat, or make our boots and 
 clothes, saving the profits for the joint operators, and in running a 
 store for the distribution of their products ready to enter into con 
 sumption; but there is no difference of kind in the cooperative 
 movement. The difference of degree is in this, that the one 
 requires little more concurrence than paying money and receiving 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 305 
 
 goods over the same counter, while the other demands a persona,! 
 friendliness, a personal association, at least, and a union of minds in 
 all the processes necessary to production. At Rochdale the one 
 led to the other by mere increase of strength, and enlargement of 
 trust and confidence in the agents of the respective stages. It 
 seems to me sufficient to mark whatever of difference there is in 
 them, by the familiar terms, cooperative store, and, industrial 
 cob peration. 
 
 The practicability, and the working method, of the cooperative 
 stores, have had a largely varied trial in other conditions and in 
 other hands than those that belong to the model instance which we 
 have just detailed, so far as an exposition of the system requires, 
 and, as might be expected, the history has the usual diversity of 
 successes and failures. 
 
 The example of the Pioneers had the effect of spreading a 
 net- work of similar societies all over England. By an official 
 report, laid before the British Parliament, it appears that in 1863 
 there were four hundred and sixty associations in England with a 
 membership of one hundred and nine thousand ; their sales 
 amounted to over $15,000,000, their property was valued at 
 $3,000,000, and the profits, shared among the members that year, 
 amounted to more than. $1,000,000. Most of these were new 
 societies then; not more than one-eighth of them over three years 
 old, and only one in fifteen was seven years old. The inevitable 
 difficulties of beginning were upon the most of them ] yet, they 
 were fairly successful and full of promise. Those of the North 
 of England created a central association for the purchase of 
 merchandise at wholesale. This is managed by the Rochdale 
 Pioneers. In 1865 they disposed of goods to the amount of 
 142,000 to one hundred and sixty-five cooperative stores, which 
 was an increase of 55.000 upon this business in the preceding 
 year. We give these figures with the dates for the purpose of 
 showing the rate of their growth, which is very striking in the four 
 next succeeding years. In 1867 the number of Cob perative-Store 
 Societies in England and Wales, registered under the Industrial 
 and Provident Societies Act, was five-hundred and seventy-seven r 
 comprising one hundred and seventy-one thousand eight hundred 
 and ninety-seven members; having an aggregate share capital of 
 1,473,199 ($7,144,628); doing business to the amount of more 
 
306 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 than $30, 000,000 annually, and realizing thereon a net profit of 
 nearly 82.000,000, or six and two-thirds per cent above expenses. 
 The expenses of some of these stores do not amount to two per cent 
 on the amount of business done ; some of the newest and weakest 
 make scarcely any profit at all. The best established, with the 
 largest capital and business, clear as much as ten per cent, and the 
 dividends of these would be much larger to their members, but for 
 the very considerable amounts paid to customers who are not mem 
 bers; to whom, however, a less rate is allowed, with the difference 
 inuring to the depositors. The percentage allowed to members is 
 generally as three to two to non-members. A very equitable pro 
 portion, and one that answers well all the interests of both parties. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 The establishment of cooperative stores was later in Germany 
 than in England, and did not, as in the case of the great exemplar, 
 proceed from the laborers, but from men who belonged to the edu 
 cated class. Herman Schultze, of Delitzsch, formerly a District 
 Judge, and more recently a Prussian deputy, began in 1850 to 
 propagate the doctrine and to organize these institutions. The 
 movement took its rise among small independent tradesmen, formed 
 into societies which aimed by cash advances for the wholesale 
 purchase of raw materials and supplies, to maintain successful 
 competition with the manufactories which, by force of capital, held 
 the monopoly of production. 
 
 This movement already extends all over G-ermany, and throughout 
 all classes of its people. In 1850 the associations numbered only half 
 a dozen; in 1869 they had multiplied to more than one thousand, 
 embracing three hundred and fifty-thousand members, doing a 
 business of sixty millions of dollars in the year, and holding three 
 and a half millions worth of property. It is worthy of note that 
 cooperative store societies, now so generally prevalent, made very 
 little progress for full ten years after their first introduction. The 
 factory employees, who were mainly interested in their formation, 
 had then but little experience of any sort of organization, and but 
 a vague and ineffective consciousness of their jointness of interest, 
 and still less notion of the mechanism required for the advance 
 ment of their common welfare. Those most conversant with the 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 307 
 
 history agree that the decisive impulse followed upon the establish 
 ment of the system of educational societies, which dates about I860. 
 Herr Schultze was able to report in 1S61 no more than fourteen 
 cooperative-store societies, when there were no less than one hun 
 dred and sixteen of small independent tradesmen whose operations 
 were limited to the wholesale purchase of raw materials. 
 
 In 1863 the movement was temporarily checked by the radical 
 agitations, led by the great socialist, Ferdinand Lasalle, who 
 pressed upon the people the French doctrine of help from the 
 State, in opposition to the great leading principle of self-help, 
 which is the corner-stone and grand distinctive principle of 
 cooperation. This conflict of policy led to discussion through all 
 the ranks of the laboring population, and the result, besides the 
 education in the principles arid measures involved, has been such a 
 general and resistless spread of the policy inaugurated by Schultze 
 Delitzsch, that anything like definite statistics of the progress 
 would be adequate only for the immediate date of their publica 
 tion. 
 
 The plan or plans of these German stores are considerable modi 
 fications of the English Pioneer system, without any decided 
 improvement upon it in any particular, and upon the whole, less 
 sound in theory and beneficial in practice. They are, however, not 
 so closely confined to the class of workmen. They have been 
 adopted extensively by societies of civil officers, and military men, 
 and not a few nobles, also, have availed themselves of the felt ad 
 vantages; even ladies of rank drive in their carriages to these stores 
 in Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg, showing a general feeling in all 
 classes of the community of a necessity for reforming the retail 
 trade. The Germans resident in St. Petersburg, Russia, have also 
 adopted the policy to a marked extent. The gentry there engross 
 the advantages and participate very largely through all Germany, 
 but on the whole, the laboring people of Berlin, Upper Silesia ; and 
 the Lower Rhine, hold the greater share of them, and in them. 
 
 The German societies in general differ from the English in three 
 particulars ; 1st, they, for the most part, confine their trade to their 
 own members, with the view of providing for their own consumption 
 more advantageously than they can in the ordinary retail trade, and 
 do not seek gain by dealing with outsiders. 2d, the German 
 societies take their dividends out of the store as soon as they are 
 
308 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 declared ; not looking to accumulation of the capital and extension 
 of the business and of its profits. 3d. Many of the societies furnish 
 their members with tickets which serve for purchasing at other 
 stores, doing in this way a commission business, which is every way 
 far removed from the cooperative principle ; and forms no such bond 
 of union as belongs to ownership of stock and joint interest in 
 profits. 
 
 CREDIT BANKS. 
 
 In another branch of economic association Germany has far out 
 stripped the kindred reforms of other countries. They have added 
 to savings in expenditure for necessary consumption, and to joint 
 interest in productive industry, that other crowning achievement 
 which provides the capital of Credit, with all its attendant advant 
 ages ; thus completing the circle of self-supply in all the elements 
 of material wealth. Much for the amelioration of the condition 
 of the laboring masses is achieved when the profits of the retail 
 trade are secured to the customers who support it; much more is 
 accomplished when the laborer receives the whole value of his con 
 tributions to productive industry; and there only remains to be 
 made provision for the use of capital at the easiest possible rate 
 this the Credit bank system of Mr. Schultze supplies. Theoreti 
 cally, he " regards capital as surplus produce, the result of absti 
 nence, set apart for production. All that is required for Credit is 
 security and profit in production. The only requisites for pro 
 duction are labor and capital. If labor can borrow capital there i& 
 no reason why it should not reap the usual profit of capital. The 
 great want is security for the lender." This he proposes to find by 
 association. A single laborer, having no property, can give no 
 security. He may die, but in association the aggregate members 
 are the*security. 
 
 The essential features of the plan are : risks reduced to a mini 
 mum by granting loans only for productive purposes, and limiting 
 their amounts to the average requirements of the borrowers; and, 
 the maximum of responsibility is secured by limiting the borrowers 
 to members of the association. The members being all liable for 
 the debts of the association, and the association for the indebted 
 ness of the members. All members are required to pay an entrance 
 fee of one thaler, (seventy-two and one-half cents) and a monthly 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 309 
 
 contribution toward the price of a share, of not less than twelve and 
 one-half cents. The shares are about forty thalers, each member 
 can hold but one share, but its full price may be paid up at once. 
 The capital of the bank is the total of the subscriptions, and of the 
 money borrowed for its use. The credit of the bank is well based, 
 for there is a capital, a reserved fund, and unlimited liability of all 
 the members. Responsibility continues after a member withdraws, 
 but it may be released after twelve months. The reserve fund is 
 formed of entrance fees and a percentage of dividends with which 
 retiring members are taxed. 
 
 The gains are from interest on money lent. The expenditures 
 are interest upon money borrowed by the bank, cost of adminis 
 tration, and losses. 
 
 The business is governed by the general rule of lending for no 
 longer period than the bank can borrow. The bank borrows at four 
 and one-half per cent, and lends at from eight to fourteen per cent. 
 The rate of interest charged to its borrowers is of little moment. 
 They are members and receive again their dividend of the surplus 
 earnings of the money so borrowed by the bank, and of whatever of 
 capital is owned by the bank itself. The borrower here is assumed 
 to be one who can give no such security as is required by ordinary 
 bankers or lenders, and, therefore, can borrow nowhere else. If the 
 bank by its great credit can borrow at say four or five per cent, the 
 borrower from the bank gets his supply from it at no greater in 
 crease than his share of the expenses of the institution, no matter 
 what rate of interest is charged to him. In other words he pays his 
 fellow members the smallest possible commission for substituting 
 their aggregate and absolute credit for his own individual negative 
 credit in the money market. The money value of this credit is all 
 the profit which he can make out of capital, working for himself, 
 or, all the difference that can be made out of working with capital 
 for its profits, and working for capital at wages. 
 
 The success and the rate of growth of the system in Germany are 
 shown by the following report of its business : in 1862 there were 
 two hundred and thirty-three credit banks, with seventy thousand 
 shareholders, doing a business of 810,790,000 in the year. In 1865 
 Mr. Schultze established a central bank, to give the smaller associ 
 ations access to the general loan market, thus interposing an estab 
 lishment of the highest credit, for associations less known and 
 
310 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 esteemed, just as these interpose their higher credit for the benefit of 
 their individual members a Jacob s ladder of credit planted on the 
 earth and reaching the zenith of the system. This central bank 
 began with a capital of 8150.000, in shares of 8150 each. There 
 were in that year, 1805, in business connection with the central, 
 four hundred and ninety-eight associations, having one hundred 
 and sixty-nine thousand five hundred and ninety-five members; 
 doing a business of 867,509,903. There were, besides, about eight 
 hundred other associations, with one hundred and fifty thousand 
 members, who made no report to the central bank. The losses on 
 this business of sixty-seven millions were but 820,000; the net 
 profits were 8371,735. 
 
 The latest information that I have, shows the workings of the 
 cooperative stores and credit banks upon each other and upon the 
 extension of the principle to productive industries. In April 1870, 
 thirty-seven societies of the Prussian-Rhenish provinces had com 
 bined agriculture with cooperation, employing steam engines among 
 their implements. There were sixteen hundred and eleven work- 
 ingmen s banks and loan associations. Of these six hundred and 
 seventy -five were in Prussia, four hundred and eighteen in Germany 
 and Austria, and two hundred and eighty-nine in Bohemia. In six 
 hundred and sixty-six of these there were two hundred and sixty 
 thousand and seven hundred members, who were working upon a 
 capital of 810,240.499, which was all their own, and on a borrowed 
 auxiliary capital of 832,888,142, from which they make an average 
 clear gain of two per cent a year. Their total business of 1869 
 shows an average gain of seventeen per cent. Some of the associ 
 ations do not report, but so far as is known, the entire German 
 cooperative societies number about two thousand six hundred and 
 fifty, with an aggregate of one million members, and a business of 
 not less than $220,000,000, in 1868. 
 
 The founder of the German system, in a recent publication, 
 speaks of the process of its growth, in effect, thus : " With the 
 banks have grown up cooperative stores, to enable the members 
 to secure advances on their work, and to find in the store a place 
 of deposit and of sale. The guarantee of the maker enables the 
 store to warrant the goods to the purchaser, and, as the manage 
 ment is in the hands of practical workmen, their examination is an 
 incentive for the manufacturer, and a security for the customer. 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 811 
 
 The members of the cooperative stores and of the banks are nearly 
 the same, so that they are able to participate in the profits and 
 advantages of both institutions; and the workman, who gets 
 advances from the bank, is enabled to pay them off promptly with 
 the proceeds of his work deposited in the store." 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 The formation of industrial societies was fairly commenced in 
 1862; a few of them have a still earlier date. In 1870 one hun 
 dred and ninety-six were reported, with twenty-five thousand mem 
 bers, and doing an aggregate business of twenty-two and a half 
 millions of dollars a year. The movement here is exclusively 
 among the operatives. An independent enterprise, formed by 
 people of wealth and education, for the purpose of giving free even 
 ing instruction to workingmen and their children, beside its own 
 excellent objects, is made to subserve the cooperative movement 
 among the industrial populace. Masses of illiterate men, who have 
 absolutely uo other means of education, are brought together. The 
 method is by lecturing and questioning the audience on topics of 
 household economy and cooperation, not unfrequently mingled with 
 political discussions, and employing assistants mixed with the 
 crowd to excite interest, and encourage participation by the 
 audience. In this way cooperative stores, bakeries, social kitchens, 
 and the general policy of the labor interests, are familiarly and 
 effectively presented. The English and G-erinan laboring people 
 have their popular tuition well supplied by printed books, tracts, 
 and newspapers, but Spanish propagandism, in lack of these, makes 
 its dusty-foot forums answer for the time and circumstances quite 
 
 as well, or better. 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 Previous to the emancipation of the serfs the working policy of 
 the Communes considerably resembled the cooperative system, as it 
 might be applied to agriculture. The Russian Commune may be 
 generally, and sufficiently well, described for our purposes, thus : 
 A plot of fertile land containing, say one hundred thousand acres ; 
 on its border are situated the villa, stables, and offices of the lord 
 of the manor. He owns, by inheritance, ten thousand acres, the 
 
312 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 remaining ninety thousand are virtually the property of the serfs, 
 which they work for themselves in their hours of leisure. In the 
 centre is the communal village, with the gardens and farms around 
 it. The village has about one hundred and fifty inhabitants. Each 
 of the fifty families is entitled to garden and farm land in equitable 
 proportion to its number in family, with enlargements or diminution 
 of area according to the increase or decrease of the number and 
 need. The partition and appropriation of the lands is under the 
 government of a Board, elected for the purpose by universal suf 
 frage. The lands thus divided are, however, the property of the 
 commune, and not of the individual to whom they are assigned. 
 He cannot convey or sub-let his lot. When the households are 
 diminished by marriage or death the Board alters the lot and 
 apportions the quantity deducted to a newly-formed household or to 
 some family which has increased in number. It is said that no real 
 mischief results from such changes of apportionment, and very 
 little trouble attends them. The commune is a little republican 
 nation, ruling itself comfortably within the limits of its liberty. 
 Emancipation has made the old-time serfs nominally free, but it 
 has not, by any means, removed the grievances of their former con 
 dition. They are made owners of their lands, but they are bur 
 dened with the heavy obligations that in Russia attach to property 
 holding. When they were slaves they enjoyed almost the entire 
 product of their lands ; now, this is taxed to a very large part of its 
 value. There are nearly six thousand of such communes in the 
 country, with as many chief villas or little cities, and these are 
 taxed very heavily to meet the necessities of the government. 
 
 More than ninety per cent of the population is rural, and the 
 cities are very few. The internal commerce of the people is mainly 
 through their fairs. But little encouragement is afforded for build 
 ing towns; and the merchant class is but an insignificant part of 
 the nation. The number of the merchants is but as one to one 
 hundred and eighty of the population. The merchant evil is, there 
 fore, not very great, and the need for cooperative stores is com 
 paratively small ; barter at the fairs answering most of the ends of 
 necessary exchanges. The agricultural labor of the country is 
 already nearly all that cooperation in production, in that depart 
 ment, requires; and the communal habit and instinct are ready for 
 such extension of the system as the rising fortunes and expanding 
 
COOPERATION FORMS AND EFFECTS. 313 
 
 business of the people may require. Feudalism is a rude outline 
 of industrial association in political and social bondage. Civil 
 liberty, replacing slavery, will have less of the savage spirit of 
 repellant individualism to combat in establishing the proper relations 
 of men, in Russia, than it finds in the modern democracies. 
 
 What we have shown of the industrial cooperative movement in 
 Europe will suffice for its presentment and analysis. It has a foot 
 hold in Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, as well as in the countries 
 which we have so exhaustively discussed for the purpose of exhibit 
 ing its rapid growth, great success, and the many modified forms 
 impressed by the characters of the nations now making the trial. 
 
 In Europe the system has encountered a great resistance, both as 
 to principle and policy, from the insurgent spirit of the laboring 
 class among the nations, where the evils of poverty have inspired 
 a revolt against the oppressive dominion of capital, combined 
 with political despotism. The laboring people of Western Europe 
 are now, and have been for a long while, and threaten to continue 
 for a long time to come, in a state of insurrection against the ex 
 isting rule of capital in production. France holds the lead in the 
 agitations of theory and plans of reform, and is formidable in pro- 
 pagandism among the people of Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. 
 Her philosophy is socialistic; communistic, and radical, in various 
 modifications of the terms; and its doctrines and devices are hostile 
 to those of the cooperative movement. The principles and policy 
 of Ilerr Schultze Delitzsch s system have been everywhere resisted 
 and embarrassed by the attractive, and zealously urged, theory of 
 the French propagandists. A meeting of the Workingmen s Union 
 of Prussia, held in January, 1870, at Berlin, fully reflects this 
 influence, and exhibits its characteristic features. There were 
 present eighty-nine delegates, representing over twenty thousand 
 contributing members, efficiently organized, and a total constituency 
 of about one hundred thousand. After full discussion, resolutions 
 were unanimously adopted, embodying such doctrines as these : the 
 recently enacted laws of Prussia, regulating industry, are an advance 
 toward its freedom and assurance of its rights, but the unequal 
 strength of labor and capital is only increased by the amendment in 
 principle. This practical aggravation of labor s disadvantages, 
 however, will hasten the crisis, by precipitating a solution of the 
 social question. On the subject of landed property, one speaker 
 21 
 
314 QUESTIONS OP THE DAY. 
 
 said that the sole capital possessed by any one is the capacity to 
 work ; the soil which supplies the means is the property of humanity, 
 and it is the will of the Creator that it shall be reconquered for 
 humanity. The laborers, he said, are eighty-six and the proprietors 
 are but fourteen per cent of the population ; the laborers are the 
 real owners of the land; all means of production, including the 
 soil, should be common property. With the first productive organ 
 ization, and the assistance of the State, the disorganization of the 
 present, and the construction of the new order begins. The other 
 speakers concurred, and the convention adopted the sentiments 
 expressed. 
 
 The first effect of the law of 1868, conceding the right of the 
 workingmen of North Germany to combine against their employers, 
 was the formation of labor unions. The next, was a strike of the 
 miners in Lower Silesia, where wages are lowest, even in Germany; 
 a coal-digger getting but forty-five cents, and a carrier but thirty- 
 five cents a day. These people struck for higher wages in December 
 1869. Six thousand were thrown out of employment. In a month 
 their funds were exhausted ; 870,000 in wages were lost, and 
 880,000 were expended in supplies. Then nine hundred married 
 men submitted; three hundred unpracticed hands were added, and 
 the work went on as it best could, with the diminished force. The 
 unmarried men held out. The final result was a sort of triumph for 
 the strikers, at the cost that may be inferred from the submission 
 of those upon whom it pressed hardest, and the actual losses of all 
 the re^st. 
 
 It is specially unfortunate for the laboring people now every 
 where combined in unions for the betterment of their condition 
 and advancement of their rights, that their speculative principles 
 are so largely derived from the French school of agitators, who, 
 while organized as labor unions, are much more largely occupied 
 with socialistic and political objects. They are better understood by 
 the name assumed by their compatriots in Spain where they call 
 themselves " Unions of Resistance." The governing spirit of the 
 French movement is hostility to property rights, to capital in the 
 hands of the present holders, and resultingly, to a practical union 
 of existing capital with labor in productive industry. This is not 
 progressiveness, or reformation, but revolution : a war with, not an 
 amendment of, the present order of things, as impracticable in effort 
 as false in theory. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES: Recent introduction. Attitude of labor 
 to capital in the United States. Labor not in despair saving, not the rule or 
 the means. New England, harder pressed and more provident. Cooperative 
 stores of the St. Crispin Order very few stores in Pennsylvania none in the 
 West or South. Very few cooperative industrial unions in the country. Troy 
 Foundery immense profits of. Economy of cooperative production. Dividend 
 of net profits, as wages for good behavior. Economy of material and tools esti 
 mated at ten per cent of the product. Somerset Foundery. Aristocratic Asso 
 ciations. Advantages of the per cent dividend of profits and faults of the plan. 
 Sjores ought to be connected with cooperative factories. Carriage factory in 
 New York. Building and Loan Associations. First established in Great 
 Britain. The earliest in the United States in New Jersej and other States 
 Failure of in New York and New England. Number and capital invested in 
 Philadelphia. Plan and policy complete fulfillment of the design in ten years 
 or less. How a renter becomes owner in a dozen years. Slaves buy their 
 freedom with profits of extra work. Custom against conviction. Capital 
 associated with service in the whaling business. Possible savings of skilled 
 labor in the United States accumulation of in three years, equal to forty- 
 three per cent of the capital employed in the nation in 1860. French popular 
 loan. Popular loans in the United States during the Rebellion. Competitive 
 versus cooperative system. Labor Unions versus the union of labor. " Supply 
 and Demand" doctrine. " Division-of-labor" doctrine. Prevalent political 
 economy, the apologist and philosophy of disorder merely a huckstering 
 theory. Bastiat glorifies the cut-throat competition of individualism. Pro 
 fessor Perry against Labor Unions. Free trade labor auction. International 
 Labor League. Labor Unions against the union of labor and capital. Des 
 potism surrenders its own liberties. Necessity and rightfulness of Labor 
 Unions. Tacit combination of capitalists. Labor Unions drifting and tending 
 to a happy issue, but must be directed by a policy of peace, self-help, and 
 harmony with the existing order of industry. 
 
 IT must be recollected that these papers are studies in Political 
 Economy, and that we are no further concerned with the histories 
 and statistics of economic affairs than as they serve to elucidate the 
 particular subjects under consideration. The topics involved in 
 this section of our inquiries, are, for the most part, concerned with 
 
 315 
 
316 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the industries and exchanges of the passing time ; they are matters 
 of the latest dates. The movements just now considered are affairs 
 of but a dozen or twenty years experience. They have scarcely 
 settled themselves into permanent forms. They are all subject to 
 the contingencies of time and trial. Their histories are rather 
 promises than accomplished facts. Moreover, it is next to impossi 
 ble to collect reports of their actual states, and as hard to judge of 
 their working forces from the immature experiments which they 
 have as yet undergone. They are studies still even to the agents 
 engaged in them, as well as to those who are only occupied with 
 their principles of action and their apparent drift towards complete 
 realization. This is more especially true of cooperation in the 
 United States. The country is yet so young, its conditions so full 
 of reliefs and escapes from the evils which press upon the old 
 world, that its people are not driven with the same force into 
 measures of defense against social evils, everywhere else almost 
 unendurable. The demand for labor here is relatively so great, that 
 in respect to all its products, except those which foreign trade 
 supplies, it is able to command quite reasonable and mutually 
 equitable terms from the capital that employs it. At least, labor 
 here, however many and however just its complaints, is not in 
 despair. It is not in the conditions that left the Rochdale Pioneers 
 destitute of all hope except in self-help. For one of our working 
 men that lives in apprehension of the poor house, a hundred are 
 thinking of going to the State Legislature or the Federal Congress, 
 and a thousand entertain very promising expectations of a house 
 and lot in town, or a farm in the West, in good time for the estab 
 lishment of a family, that shall begin life well advanced in the 
 means of living and of enjoyment. The common school in all its 
 grades, the current instruction of the newspaper, accessible to every 
 body, with the examples, within every one s own observation, of 
 grand successes among the poorest who aspire to, and industriously 
 work for, the advance of their fortunes, amount to an assurance of 
 hope full of the happiest influences. A system of savings that 
 must run twenty or thirty years to the fulfillment of the intention 
 has not much attractiveness. Very few of our laborers have any 
 thought of living and dying where they are born. Everything 
 among us is on springs, and everybody is locomotive. It is a 
 wonder to find members of three generations of one family in any 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 317 
 
 of our cemeteries, just as it is as likely that one shall find a man 
 wearing his grandfather s coat as owning his grandfather s land. 
 We are very seriously engaged in making money making fortunes, 
 rather ; but we are not so hard pressed yet as to do this by making 
 savings. A penny or two of difference either way in the price of 
 a pound of tea, makes a corresponding difference in its consumption 
 in England. With us a difference of ten times as much in the 
 cost, would never be seen in our importations for consumption. 
 Insurance institutions of every sort that provide for accidents, and 
 in relief of casualties, we embrace freely, but cooperative organiza 
 tions for saving expenses, or for building up fortunes, are not felt 
 to be pressing necessities by our common people. It is for these 
 reasons, and owing to this general state of mind, as I think, that 
 neither cooperative stores, nor industrial associations, have made 
 much headway among us. In the New England States, which have 
 drawn nearer to the conditions of the old countries than any of the 
 Middle or Western States, these stores are regarded as firmly 
 established ; yet even there, only forty-two of them were reported 
 in January, 1870, and the oldest of these, except one, had been in 
 existence but three or four years. Twenty-five years ago, " Pro 
 tective Unions," somewhat resembling these in aim and principles, 
 had quite a run ; but they have all disappeared except one in 
 Worcester, Massachusetts, and it owes its continuance to essential 
 changes in its administration, bringing it more nearly into con 
 formity with present requirements than by the original plan of its 
 organization. For the rest, it is curious to observe that the suc 
 cessful establishment of cooperative stores of supply, which dates 
 no further back than the year 1866, is mainly due to the auxiliary 
 influence of the Order of The Knights of St. Crispin, which have 
 in Massachusetts alone one hundred and seventeen lodges, and 
 thirty thousand members. Corroborated by the ties of brother 
 hood in a secret society, and governed by its organization, coopera 
 tion in retail selling and buying is made practicable. This Order, 
 and a dozen or a score of similar orders, embracing other callings 
 and businesses, exist everywhere in the Union, but scarcely any 
 where else have they adopted the provident system of supplies in 
 the common necessaries of life simply, as I suppose, because 
 Yankee thrift and economy are nowhere else so imperatively 
 demanded. So far as these stores have been tried and well man- 
 
318 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 aged, they have yielded profits and benefits in kind and degree 
 quite equal to the best of similar establishments in Europe. 
 
 Pennsylvania has one successful store of this kind in the anthra 
 cite coal region. It was set up in 1856 ; and in 1869 was able to make 
 a handsome report of its business, its prosperity, and its prospects. 
 There may be others in the Middle States, but if there be ; they 
 have gained no notoriety. 
 
 It is true that these stores have in every instance fully vindicated 
 their policy when well conducted ; yet it is just as true, that they 
 are only adopted where their need is most imperatively felt. 
 
 The history of industrial cooperations among us is still more 
 meagre of instances. There are several examples of marked success, 
 indeed, but even these are not organized on the principles that cover 
 the whole broad ground of the associative policy. At Troy, New 
 York, for instance, thirty-two iron moulders, in the year 1866, 
 associated with a capital of 819,500. They have been abundantly 
 successful. It is said that they divided ninety per cent upon their 
 stock and labor in the third year. Their dividends, however, were 
 not paid out, but were invested in new stock in the firm, enabling it 
 to employ more men and rapidly enlarge its business. But the insti 
 tution is so far from being an instance of cooperative association, in 
 the sense and service which addresses itself to the relief of the 
 industrious unpropertied poor, that it is, in fact, only a partnership 
 of capitalists, Or of workiugmen who are their own employers, by 
 virtue of the considerable stock which they were able to bring into 
 the concern at its commencement. They had but eighty-five mem 
 bers in their third year, and they hold it as a condition of their 
 business that there shall not be more than one member in it for 
 every $2500 of stock paid up. A strike in 1866 drove them into 
 the enterprise on a capital of $600 to each member; but the gov 
 erning policy is a return to the amount first determined upon. 
 Notwithstanding the enormous profit made, they do not undersell 
 their rivals, nor are they tempted to do so. Their profit is princi 
 pally the result of the economy in the conduct of the business, due 
 to the interest of proprietorship in the workmen. The foundery 
 conducts itself; for every man in it is an interested conductor. The 
 executive chief of the works says that, " out of twelve hundred tons 
 of pig iron, we can make, using the same pattern, one hundred more 
 tons of stoves than any private establishment in Troy." Here asso- 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 319 
 
 elation gives a profit of about ten per cent upon the value of the 
 products. This is margin enough for defense against rivalry in the 
 market, and enough to build up the fortunes of the partners. 
 These Troy founderymen do not even profess benevolence to the 
 craft. They seek no extension of their system ; but, availing them 
 selves of the benefit of the associative policy, they derive its ad 
 vantages and demonstrate its benefits to all who would adopt it. 
 
 We have met with another mode of inducing and securing 
 economy in the use of materials, the employment of tools, and in 
 crease of production, by dividing ten per cent, in one instance, of 
 the net profit of the business to the workmen, on condition of good 
 behavior in all respects which concern the prosperity of the pro 
 prietors ; and we have seen the case in the newspapers under the 
 caption of "successful cooperation." But the scheme differs in 
 nothing from the common system except in extending wages from 
 work paid by the piece or by time employed, to a wages reward for 
 good behavior. It is worth notice that this ten per cent of profits 
 so offered is abput the equivalent of the ten per cent of larger pro 
 duct at the Troy foundery, and thus shows the money worth of the 
 economy secured by giving the workiogmen the full value of their 
 care and fidelity to the proprietary interests, and so, is good evi 
 dence of the policy of the association of labor and capital in pro 
 ductive industry. 
 
 There is a foundery in Somerset, Massachusetts, on the plan of 
 that of Troy, a " close corporation," confining its membership to as 
 many as the capital can employ ; keeping its secrets and its results 
 to itself. It was established to make as much money for itself as 
 possible, not to prove that manufacturers make too much. Its basis 
 is fixed at $2,000 capital for each member. They say that no less 
 sum will give a moulder constant and remunerative employment; 
 that smaller subscriptions too greatly enlarge the membership, and 
 that from this cause other similar establishments have failed, as 
 at Pittsburgh and West Troy. This establishment gives support to 
 about fifty families. At Worcester "The Bay State Boot and Shoe 
 Factory" employed five hundred hands in 1867. It divides the 
 net profits, pro rata, according to the work done to males, 
 earning above $100, and above 850 to females. The sum divided 
 in the first year was equal to four and one-half per cent of the 
 wages paid to all the laborers. Casual hands get nothing but their 
 
320 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 wages. The advantage to the firm is constancy of the workmen 
 and the avoidance of strikes another instance of a joint interest 
 of capital and labor, and of the available influence of labor upon 
 capital found in its reserve of moral power. 
 
 In a currier s shop in Boston a similar policy has resulted in 
 $100 extra to each of five workmen employed during eight 
 months. The good results under such a system to the employer are 
 more work from the same tools and machinery, no strikes, con 
 stancy of the workmen ; and, to the employees larger reward, or 
 reward for good qualities and good behavior, with all the moral 
 benefits arising to them. 
 
 The injurious error in all these plans for inducing the laborers 
 best services by extra wages in the form of a dividend of the net 
 profits is in distributing, instead of funding, the share of profits. 
 The sums so allowed are never sufficient for, nor are they invited 
 into combination, as capital in the business; nor are they of much 
 account as saving-fund deposits. Their aggregate in large establish 
 ments, however, would be large enough for the institution of 
 cooperative stores. In Charleston, for instance, one such store, on 
 a $7,000 capital, does a business of $150,000, furnishing food for 
 three hundred and eighty-five shareholders at first or wholesale 
 cost, less the expense of management, and it repays, besides, to 
 non-stockholding customers a good percentage upon their purchases. 
 Such stores should be connected with all industrial institutions. 
 The small extra dividend of profits, added to the usual wages, 
 impresses no one, but, joint ownership in a store or bank, with 
 thousands in capital, is felt, and it works as a force, over and above 
 all the other advantages which it affords. Such stores induce men 
 to settle down near their place of work. A rise of value in adjoin 
 ing real estate is a noticeable and important result. The Troy 
 manager says : " We have colonized the neighborhood. Lots of 
 land that cost the first purchasers $123 have already risen to 
 $800." Among all the advantages of a thoroughly cooperative 
 system, this last mentioned is not the least important. 
 
 In the city of New York a very extensive carriage manufactory 
 has now for several years been conducted under the policy of allow 
 ing the workingmen a dividend in the net profits, as compensation 
 for the greater care and fidelity which a participation in the value 
 of the product induces. 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 321 
 
 These instances are cited only for the purpose of exhibiting their 
 principles and policy. The prevalence of the plan is so great that 
 I cannot even attempt to enumerate the examples, nor to mark their 
 great variety of modifications. Merchants have, time out of mind, 
 been in the habit of giving their chief clerks a share in the profits 
 of their business, for the purpose of securing and rewarding their 
 best services, and manufacturers often do the same thing. Such an 
 interest held by a non-capitalist employee, however, involves him in 
 the risks and liabilities of the concern as a partner by legal con 
 struction, and exposes him to the consequences of the management 
 in which he generally has no potential control. When the extra 
 allowance is held as a mere gift by the proprietors, the liabilities of 
 partnership are escaped, but the interest accorded loses something 
 of the influence of the possessory feeling determinately settled. A 
 marked example is afforded in the case of the great Paris printer, 
 M. Paul Dupont, who carried on a business of five millions of francs 
 a year before the late war in France. He divided ten per cent of 
 the net profits among his workmen, according to their individual 
 merit, and not in regular proportion to their salaries or wages. He 
 has done this for twenty years, and has combined with the system 
 of donatives, saving funds, cooperative stores, libraries, and benefi 
 cial institutions. 
 
 All this, however, is not cooperation in its true sense. It lacks 
 the essential principle of making the workman his own employer, 
 but it proves the practical advantages to both parties of giving the 
 employee a joint interest in the results to such an extent as 
 will command the best service by equitably rewarding it. The ten 
 per cent allowance adopted in the instances cited seems to be the 
 estimated profit of the plan in almost all the many cases which 
 have fallen under the writer s notice, and it is repeated here as a 
 significant fact. Can it be possible that the very best hands at 
 wages are this much less profitable to their employers, than when 
 they are stimulated by an equitable regard for their best care, 
 economy, and skill in the performance of their work ? Capitalists, 
 one with another, and one time with another, do not make more 
 than ten per cent of the product as net profits for themselves ; yet 
 it seems that they can afford as much to their workmen on the 
 better plan of a modified cooperative system, and still save as much 
 for themselves. We do not give too much emphasis to this practical 
 
322 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 result of an equitable distribution of the joint product of capital 
 and labor, but, it illustrates the principle which lies at the bottom 
 of the system, and prophesies, while it provides, a remedy for the 
 existing disorders in industrial pursuits. 
 
 Besides the forms of associated business organizations already 
 noticed, we have in the United States, an active and considerably 
 extensive system which nearly resembles the Credit banks of Ger 
 many in principle, with a difference in objects and operation, but 
 even more immediately and largely capable of the like intention. 
 These are thje Building and Loan Associations. In Pennsylvania 
 they are incorporated and regulated under a general law of the 
 State. Edmund Wrigley, Esq., of Philadelphia, in 1869, published 
 a very well digested exposition of their history, plan of operation, 
 and general results, to which the reader is referred for the details 
 which are not compatible with the limits and objects of this 
 treatise. 
 
 The first institution of the kind, it seems, was established in 
 Scotland in the year 1815, under the supervision of the Earl of 
 Selkirk. They thence gradually extended into the manufacturing 
 districts of England and Wales; were afterwards established in 
 London, and soon became general throughout Great Britain, until 
 they reached the number of two thousand and fifty societies in 
 1851, with an annual income of four millions of pounds sterling, 
 according to the report of the Registrar. The earliest in the United 
 States, it is believed, was established in Frankford, Philadelphia 
 County, in 1840. In the City of Philadelphia they now hold the 
 first rank in number and amount of invested funds. They prevail 
 very extensively in the State of New Jersey. A few exist in North 
 and South Carolina. There are some in Minnesota, more in 
 Nebraska, and a considerable number in Baltimore. In the City of 
 New York they have failed of success, and they are scarcely known 
 in New England. 
 
 In Philadelphia above a thousand of these societies have been 
 chartered ; some of them never organized, some failed through mis 
 management, a number have closed their business upon a complete 
 fulfillment of their design ; and there remain now about seven hun 
 dred in active operation, with an aggregate working capital of 
 between five and six millions of dollars. 
 
 The value of the shares is limited, by the incorporating law, and 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 323 
 
 is usually fixed at two hundred dollars, payable by the subscribers 
 in installments of one dollar monthly on each share. The society 
 commences its business as soon as a sufficient number of shares are 
 disposed of. The funds of the society are derived from the monthly 
 dues of the subscribers, the premiums upon loans made to the highest 
 bidder among the stockholders, upon mortgage on real estate, the 
 profit retained upon withdrawals of stock before the ultimate result is 
 reached, and very largely, from the interest upon loans which is paid 
 monthly, and reinvested during their continuance. The great accre 
 tions of interest compounded monthly are seen in the fact that one 
 thousand dollars, at six per cent simple interest, paid annually, doubles 
 itself in sixteen years and eight months, while the same sum, with its 
 interest compounded monthly, doubles in eleven years and seven 
 months. It is clear, therefore, that in less than twelve years the 
 interest alone would refund their money to the subscribers, and it 
 is, therefore, quite credible that some of these institutions, by the 
 addition of fines and premiums added to the accruing interest, are 
 able, as they have proved actually, to complete their enterprise in ten 
 years. A few very well managed ones have accomplished their 
 intention in even less time. Mr. Wrigley gives the figures to show 
 how a tenant availing himself of the profits of membership in a build 
 ing and loan association, by adding about twenty dollars a year to 
 the rent of a house, may, in eight or ten years, become the owner of 
 one equally valuable. 
 
 By complying with the conditions of membership a man, by so 
 small an advance upon his ordinary rent, gets possession of a lot of 
 land suitable for his use, erects a building upon a loan from the 
 society, secured by mortgage upon the premises, and without much 
 additional effort eventually becomes the owner. The association is 
 to him a credit bank, enabling him to anticipate the savings of a 
 dozen years, and to enjoy their fruits in the mean time, all the 
 while perfectly secure of the result, and ever afterwards the absolute 
 owner in fee of his domicile.* 
 
 The argument from successful instances might be greatly ex 
 tended, without being proportionately strengthened. The advant- 
 
 *The activity of this movement in Philadelphia is only fairly indicated by the 
 fact, that of thirty-two applications for charters to the Court of Common Pleas, at 
 the April term, 1871, seventeen were for building and loan associations, while 
 seven of the remainder were for beneficial societies. 
 
324 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ages of reformed and improved methods in the conduct of men s 
 business affairs are more frequently demonstrated than adopted. 
 Human nature is not by any means a stupid, but it is a very willful, 
 thing. It may be convinced without being practically conformed. 
 Many years ago, a slaveholder in Louisiana, sold their time to his 
 slaves to be paid for out of the value of their extra work. Two or 
 three successive sets of them, under this stimulus, purchased their 
 freedom. The proprietor made more money out of them by this 
 policy than if he had sold their bodies upon the auction block. No 
 one failed to see the pecuniary advantages of the system, and no 
 one adopted it. They maintained the slave system till it exploded. 
 Customs obstinately resist convictions and conditions, and usually 
 refuse reform until revolutions compel. 
 
 Where business cannot be safely or profitably conducted upon the 
 wages system, partnership of profits, without capital invested, is, of 
 necessity, accorded, as in the whaling business, which has been 
 carried on for a century in the United States under this kind of 
 cooperation, or policy of rewards proportioned to risks and services 
 requiring the higher qualities of the laborer. 
 
 Reformers are very confident that the best way of doing things 
 will sooner or later be adopted ; but it is well for them to possess 
 their souls in patience, for, usually, it is only when no other way 
 will work at all that the best is accepted. Nothing short of oft- 
 repeated business disasters in the cotton States will drive the 
 planters into a system of self-sustaining and self-supplying diversi 
 fication of agricultural production. Slavery is abolished there, but 
 the industrial system proper to it must die by inches, and the inci 
 dental suffering will be ascribed to anything and everything else 
 than the inherent vice of the obsolete policy. Every season that 
 their crop goes into the market which it gorges, the planters see 
 and acknowledge the mischiefs of their system, and threaten a 
 reform, and accordingly (to custom) never do; but they will, when 
 no choice is left to them, and, probably, not before. 
 
 Under correction of these convictions, let us now look at the 
 practicability and necessity of cooperation in productive industry. 
 
 The relation of labor to capital in modern production is shown 
 by the census of 1850, I860, and 1870, to hold the proportion of 
 about twenty per cent of wages to the value of the products. If 
 we deduct ten per cent from that value for the profits of capital, 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 325 
 
 the agency of labor in the business is about twenty-two and one- 
 quarter per cent or two-ninths of the investments concerned in 
 the work or business. Labor s equitable share cannot be claimed 
 to be more than one-quarter of the joint product of capital, 
 machinery, and industry at wages. In other words, the accumula 
 tions of past labor are as three to one in the forces currently 
 employed in further production in the manufacturing, mining, and 
 mechanic arts, as they are now carried on in the United States. 
 
 This shows the part that capital plays in these branches of busi 
 ness, and labor s dependence upon it, for its effectiveness, that is, 
 the measure of the relations subsisting between them. 
 
 There are now about six millions of Americans working for 
 wages. Suppose that their savings could be made to reach, in the 
 average, seventy-five dollars a year; the aggregate would be four 
 hundred and fifty millions a very pretty capital this if associated 
 in active use. Now let us see how such possible accumulation of 
 savings in other than agricultural pursuits counts up. In I860 
 the reported capital invested in such business, consisting of real 
 and personal estate, including cash and credit, amounted to one 
 thousand and ten millions ] the raw materials consumed in the year 
 cost one thousand and thirty-one millions, and the wages of labor 
 three hundred and seventy-nine millions. The products were 
 valued at eighteen hundred and eighty-five millions products to 
 capital, one hundred and eighty-six per cent. 
 
 There were one million three hundred and ten thousand hands 
 employed. Their /savings, at seventy-five dollars per annum each, 
 would be ninety-eight and a quarter millions. Add to this sum. 
 accumulated in one year, the credit which it would command, and 
 we have a working capital of one hundred and fifty millions, equal 
 to fourteen and one-half per cent of the capital which, in 1860, 
 yielded eighteen hundred and eighty-five millions of products, and 
 which would, at the same ratio, give them one-seventh of the total 
 yield of the mines, mechanic arts, and manufactures of 1860. But 
 their wages that year amounted to one-fifth, or twenty per cent 
 of the product. This loss of current profit is to be set to the 
 account of the real estate and machinery which must be provided 
 to begin with. A larger capital must, therefore, be provided. to 
 increase the profits. Take two years savings, and the yield would 
 be twenty-nine per cent of the product of 1860, and three years, 
 
326 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 by the same rule, would cover forty-three and a half, or seven- 
 sixteenths of the like yield the usual wages being all the while 
 allowed for current support, less the savings assumed to be prac 
 ticable. 
 
 We conclude that, whatever may be said upon the moral possi 
 bility or probability, of such cooperation of the laborers as might 
 achieve these grand results, the economic possibility is demonstrable, 
 and its realization is the right drift of reformatory endeavor. The 
 latent capability of the masses has been more than once demon 
 strated within the last twenty years. The instances show how the 
 account stands between the aggregate of existing and disposable 
 capital, and the possible savings of the industrial masses. 
 
 In France, when Louis Napoleon required a large loan for the 
 purpose of carrying on the Crimean War, he turned from the 
 bankers of Europe to the people and asked them for five hundred 
 millions of francs. They subscribed, and were ready to pay into 
 the treasury, fifteen hundred millions ! In the United States, in 
 the second year of the great Rebellion, the Secretary of the 
 Treasury appealed to the people of the loyal States (when, if the 
 whole capital of the banks had been emptied bodily into the Treas 
 ury, it would not have sufficed), and they responded by furnishing 
 him with one hundred and forty millions of dollars. This vast sum, 
 of which not less than eighty millions were supplied by the working 
 people, was a trifle compared to the contributions from the same 
 source in the following three years of the war. 
 
 Our argument thus far assumes or supposes a continued antag 
 onism of capital and labor. But capital is not necessarily, and will 
 not long be, actually excluded from fraternity with industry. As 
 we have seen, in Germany, the people s Credit banks borrow money 
 abundantly, and take all its profits, beyond the interest paid. So 
 everywhere, the accumulated wealth would easily be drawn, upon 
 sufficient securities, into a partnership of harmonized interests. 
 Property is not robbery, as the French Socialists regard it; and 
 communism, as they propose it, is opposed in all its features, alike to 
 individual rights and the general welfare, and is at the same time, 
 the worst enemy of true association. False principles inserted into 
 the machinery of associative organizations, must in the end grind 
 themselves out, by the counter-working of the essential truths which 
 they encounter ; but at all the cost of the sufferings and failures of 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 327 
 
 misdirected effort and misapplied power. It is not the strikes, which 
 express hostility to capital, that achieve any of the triumphs casu 
 ally secured, but it is the power of combination, which they evince, 
 that indirectly furthers their intention. 
 
 COMPETITION VCrSUS COOPERATION. 
 
 " These are contrary the one to the other," as St. Paul says of 
 the "lustings of the flesh against the spirit and of the spirit against 
 the flesh." We have already noticed the conflict between the 
 Delitzsch system and that of the French radical reformers as it 
 occurred in the earlier days of the cooperative movement in Ger 
 many, and indicated the obstructive action of the " Labor Unions" 
 upon the union of labor in Europe and America. This spirit of 
 antagonism between the two great parties into which the pro 
 gressives and the revolutionists of the laboring mass are divided, has 
 one of its roots in the common and natural feeling of resistance to 
 wrong and its resulting evils; and another, in the theoretical system 
 of a very large and influential body of political economists, who 
 have for their help the essentially rebellious spirit of modern 
 civilization. The authorities upon which the competitive school 
 stands, justify its spirit, but curiously enough, while they oppose 
 the procedure of the " Labor Unions," supply their doctrinal basis. 
 Adam Smith and after him J. B. Say and John Stuart Mill, teach 
 that the law of " supply and demand" is the sole regulator of the 
 rewards of labor, as well as of the value of all products ; and they 
 all alike insist upon the free play of this law of theirs in all circum 
 stances, and in all cases of exhange. No place or force is allowed by 
 this theory for combination of either labor or wealth to regulate 
 prices. The authorities of this school, on the contrary, agree in 
 sustaining the philosophy and policy of free competition between the 
 producers, the consumers, and the venders of all commodities, and 
 between the individuals of each class. They all alike hold that the 
 utmost possible division of labor, both in industrial production and 
 in territorial distribution, is its highest and happiest organization, 
 and the aim and end of all possible improvement of its system, and 
 the thing to be pursued and achieved; which means nothing else, 
 under the present order of things, than the reduction of the 
 industrial classes into a wonderfully complicated form of machinery, 
 
328 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 with capital for its motor power, director, and employer. Indeed, 
 when closely examined, the system of doctrines which we have 
 accepted from them is simply a logical underpinning of the very 
 order of things, which the " Unions" are organized to resist and 
 which the theory of reform criticises and condemns. It is simply 
 an endeavor to find a philosophy that will justify the reigning 
 disorder in the existing relations of capital and labor. A philosophy 
 which considers the well-being of neither producer nor consumer, 
 but, looking only to the interests of the trader, has all the law and 
 the prophets in this, the greatest of its commandments, " buy 
 where you can buy cheapest and sell where you can sell dearest." 
 The life and soul of this school s teachings is fully expressed by 
 Frederick Bastiat, and accepted by his party everywhere as the 
 latest and best of its oracles, thus : " Competition is democratic in 
 its essence ; the most progressive, the most equalizing, and the 
 most communistic of all the provisions to which Providence has 
 confided the direction of human progress." If further exposition 
 and application of this fundamental principle were wanting, we 
 have it in the language of Professor Perry, the American champion 
 of the system, explicitly given in these words: "The guilds of the 
 Middle Ages, and the Trades Unions of our own day, are examples 
 of voluntary associations for the purpose of regulating the wages of 
 their members by combined action. * * The spirit of 
 
 Political Economy, which is the spirit of freedom, is against such 
 associations for such purjioses. If any man has a service to render, 
 let him offer it freely, and make the best terms he can with who 
 ever wants it." This is free trade carried from the province of in 
 ternational exchange of commodities into the domestic workshop, 
 where not only products, but all that has a market value in the body 
 and brains of the producers, are to be subjected to a chaffering and 
 huckstering of manhood for money. 
 
 The International Labor League, established, I believe, in 1864, 
 and the Labor Unions which are in sympathy with, and sustain it, 
 drift in the same channel they are all Unions of resistance, to 
 capital, first and always, and to cooperative industrial associations, 
 next, because these accept and avail themselves of the ruling order 
 in the functions of productive industry, and withdraw themselves 
 from the hostile array of the resistants; their attitude being, in 
 effect, a protest against the doctrines and policy of strife, and their 
 
COOPERATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 329 
 
 successes a demonstration of the harmony, or rather identity, of 
 interests in the parties now unhappily and unwisely at war. 
 
 Labor Unions, by their scales of prices, indeed, prohibit compe 
 tition between the members of the same craft, but this is done only 
 the more effectually to maintain competition between the buyers and 
 sellers of labor. They do not aim at the abolition of the wages 
 system, but, by all the force which combination can command, to 
 rule its rates, and compel compliance of the capitalists who employ 
 it. Their constitution is one of unnatural and impracticable inde 
 pendence independence attempted in an order of things of which 
 the essence and governing spirit is mutual inter-dependence ! To 
 assert its own rights and liberties it wars upon the rights and 
 liberties of the party opposed ; and in their procedure this uni 
 versal law follows them and vindicates itself " Whoever will put 
 a chain on the heels of any man shall have the other end of it 
 fastened around his own neck." The spirit of domination, must 
 to itself be despotism freedom must be surrendered by any that 
 deny it to others. War cannot be maintained but by implicit 
 obedience to the commanders. The soldier in any field of strife 
 puts his liberty and life under the power of his commanders. 
 The array is cooperation in bondage, just as the association of a 
 poor-house is brotherhood in beggary. Whoever closely watches 
 the situation of Unions, driven to extremes of resistance, will see 
 reason for the saying that " the way to make hell is to turn a 
 heaven upside down." 
 
 Trades Unions are, nevertheless, not only thoroughly well war 
 ranted by principle, but they also derive no small authorization from 
 their universal prevalence. Every trade, and every distinct branch 
 of every trade, is, in the cities and principal villages of all free 
 countries, effectively organized. This, so far as it goes, is coopera 
 tion, and is capable of its best uses. It is, indeed, a necessity. 
 Without such concurrence as true and rightly directed association 
 secures, workingmen would be helpless in the hands of their em 
 ployers. They would, in lack of mutual support, invite despotism 
 in the management of their business interests. The very best 
 promise of the very best results to such Unions is in the great fact 
 that they are capable of association. In the multitude of coun 
 sellors there is safety, when a common interest brings them into 
 conference. The capitalists who now hold the machinery and 
 22 
 
330 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
 materials of production, which in relative value and efficiency are 
 as three to one against the labor employed, are easily combined for 
 their own purposes. They are tacitly and effectively, even where 
 they are not formally, united in action, as in interest. The coun 
 terpoise of Unions among workingmen for the like purpose is just 
 as legitimate, but not more or less so. When righteousness and 
 peace meet they may kiss each other, but self-defense at least is a 
 necessity where strife is the rule. The machinery is right in so far 
 as it is mutual and necessary; and the comfort in it is. that, work 
 as widely as it may from the right way in the days of its infancy, 
 the trials and training of experience, leading it forward still, and 
 upward, through defeats and triumphs, through all its sins and 
 sufferings, as well as successes, will be ever tending toward the 
 desired ends. That saying of Goethe is every way true " A good 
 man, even in his dark strivings, is ever in the right way." But the 
 sooner workingmen attain to soundness of directory principle, a 
 clear view of the true aim of all their efforts, and an earnest con 
 formity in practice, the sooner they will escape the troubles and 
 sufferings of the educating discipline which they must more or less 
 undergo. They are " endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit " 
 among themselves, but they must be careful to observe the other 
 limb of the Apostle s injunction "in the bonds of peace/ They 
 must learn that they must adjust themselves to whatever there is in 
 the order of things which cannot be resisted, and, as a first step 
 toward the reform of their circumstances, put themselves right. Do 
 they intend to take the rule of the world s business affairs into their 
 own hands, for their own benefit ? Let them begin by ruling their 
 own share of that business, and thus test their fitness, and qualify 
 themselves for the agency they would assume. Until they are 
 generally capable of cooperation within the range of their present 
 possibilities, they will not be ready to administer the whole range 
 of industrial operations; and, when they are so capable, they will 
 not need or desire to usurp a larger authority. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE LAW OF CLIMATE IX PARTY POLITICS. 
 
 THE reader, if a student of economic and social questions, cannot 
 fail to feel a profound, and at the same time a curious, interest in 
 the climatic law of migration, generally and briefly stated in our fourth 
 chapter. He, perhaps, will have looked for our reasons for dividing 
 North America, including Canada, into three, rather than any other 
 number of, political departments, under the rule of geographic and 
 isothermal laws. It would be tedious to indicate the details of fact 
 and speculation upon which the division adopted seems to me to 
 rest. Mr. Carey, in his first announcement of the law, arranged 
 the States and territories of the United States into four climatic 
 zones or belts, as will be seen in the appended article extracted 
 from Forney s Press of the 22d of December, 1859, and in my 
 statistical elucidation I followed the scheme of his proposition. 
 This point resting, as it does, upon speculation (which I trust may 
 never be verified by a corresponding political division of the Union), 
 and liable to such a number and force of counter-balancing influ 
 ences as promise to effectually prevent its demonstration in the 
 experience of the nation, may be remitted to the consideration of 
 the curious. The isothermal divisions may be fixed at three or 
 four or six, as further and closer examination shall dispose inquirers 
 to determine. The number within this range is, in point of 
 principle, indifferent. 
 
 The idea of such natural divisions of the territory of Xorth 
 America, with corresponding political organizations, is not new, 
 though the law upon which they rest has been so lately promulgated. 
 "While the adoption of the Federal Constitution was in debate, the 
 writers of the Federalist gave the question of the possible number 
 of distinct governments, that would result, on failure of the general 
 
 331 
 
332 APPENDIX. 
 
 union, their most earnest attention; and it is curious to notice that 
 Mr. Jay, in the fourth number of that inspired work, speaks of 
 three or four possible governments, into which the original thirteen 
 States might be divided. Alexander Hamilton in the thirteenth 
 number, devoted almost exclusively to this subject, holds this 
 language : 
 
 " The entire separation of the State? into thirteen unconnected sovereign 
 ties, is a project too extravagant, and too replete with danger, to have 
 many advocates. The ideas of men who speculate upon the dismember 
 ment of the Empire, seem generally turned towards three confederacies : 
 one consisting of the four Northern, another of the four Middle, and a third 
 of the five Southern States. There is little probability that there would be 
 a greater number." 
 
 This he gives as the more generally prevailing notion of the dis- 
 uuionists of the time ; but, now look at his own management of the 
 premises, and the results which he draws from them : 
 
 "If we attend carefully to geographical and commercial considerations, 
 in conjunction with the habits and prejudices of the different States, we 
 shall be led to conclude, that in case of disunion, they will most naturally 
 league themselves under two governments. The four eastern States, from 
 all the causes that form the links of national sympathy and connection, may 
 with certainty be expected to unite. New York, situated as she is, would 
 never be unwise enough to oppose a feeble and unsupported flank to the 
 weight of that confederacy. There are obvious reasons, that would facili 
 tate her accession to it. New Jersey is too small a State to think of being 
 a frontier, in opposition to this still more powerful combination ; nor do 
 there appear to be any obstacles to her admission into it. Even Penn 
 sylvania would have strong inducements to join the northern league. * * * 
 The more southern States, from various circumstances, may not think 
 themselves much interested in the encouragement of navigation. They 
 may prefer a system, which would give unlimited scope to all nations, to 
 be the carriers as well as the purchasers, of their commodities. Penn 
 sylvania may not choose to confound her interests in a connection so 
 adverse to her policy. As she must, at all events, be a frontier, she may deem 
 it most consistent with her safety, to have her exposed side turned towards 
 the weaker power of the southern, rather than toward the stronger power 
 of the northern confederacy. * * Whatever may be the determination of 
 Pennsylvania, if the northern confederacy includes New Jersey, there is 
 no likelihood of more than one confederacy to the south of that State." 
 
 The number of the Federalist from which this extract is made, 
 is dated November 28. 1787, and Hamilton was then considering the 
 
APPENDIX. 333 
 
 divisions into which the old thirteen States must immediately fall, 
 if the adoption of the Federal Constitution should fail. 
 
 To understand him exactly the opening words of this last quota 
 tion must be attentively noted ; he says : " if we attend carefully to 
 geographical AND commercial considerations, in conjunction with the 
 habits and prejudices of the different States," that is, of the States 
 then existing, they would most naturally league themselves into two 
 government, in the event of their immediate separation. 
 
 The purpose of these citations is to show that the natural divisions 
 of the Union as held by the observant men and enlightened states 
 men of that day correspond sufficiently well to aiford the support of 
 observation and experience to the climatic distinctions of pursuits, 
 populations, and policy which Mr. Carey s law alleges. And just 
 here the late fulfillment of Hamilton s theoretical views, by the 
 great Rebellion, is sufficiently close to give great weight to 
 the climatic principle which, though unknown to him, was the 
 efficient cause of the effects which he clearly understood. The 
 division between the loyal and the secession States in 1861 fell 
 just where Hamilton indicated it, though with a strip of " debatable 
 land/ consisting of Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky, between 
 the broadly and decidedly separated States. 
 
 We would have it noticed, also, that the lines which are given as 
 the supposed boundaries of the division into three governments, as 
 well as that one which Hamilton fixes between the two political 
 organizations which he thought the more probable, all alike run 
 east and west, and that they correspond accurately to well dis 
 tinguished belts of temperature. 
 
 The phenomenon, like the full of the apple, was familiarly known, 
 and it only remained for a Xewton in social science to reveal the 
 law, and give it exactness of application. 
 
 On the 36th page, ante, we ventured to assert that if the climatic 
 law of migration and inhabitation of the earth is true, it must be 
 also true that science, literature, and religion must obey it ; and in 
 their migrations, follow the same line of march, and this for the 
 obvious reason that the races who modify opinion and speculation, 
 according to their respective mental and moral constitutions, and 
 impress themselves upon all their pursuits, enterprises, and achieve 
 ments, migrate along their several lines of climate; let me now add 
 that the politics of the emigrants carry with them their native hue, 
 
334 APPENDIX. 
 
 of which rather astounding doctrine, the annexed article is sub 
 mitted as curiously but conclusively in proof. We commend it to 
 examination, especially of those who may meet it with the strongest 
 feeling of incredulity ; and we take the liberty besides of recommend 
 ing our younger readers to take up the census report of 1870, so soon 
 as it shall be published, and for themselves try the doctrine upon the 
 facts which it will afford them. The method and process of the 
 inquiry are plainly indicated in our management of l^ie problem. 
 Moreover, we take the liberty of saying here, to young men, ambi 
 tious of distinction in the practical questions of social and economic 
 relations, that without a good ground-work in statistics, they will 
 never attain an available and well-assured proficiency in political 
 economy. This advice seems all the more required after the fre 
 quent and emphatic denials that we have given, in the course of 
 this book, to the commonly preferred claims made by statisticians 
 and politicians for their arithmetical data. 
 
 (From THE PRESS of Thursday, December 22, 1859.)* 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA S POSITION IN THE UNION. 
 
 A letter written by MR. CAREY, our well-known political economist, 
 to a friend in Massachusetts, and first published in the Boston Tran 
 script of the 26th November last, is attracting very general atten 
 tion among the politicians who are concerned with the forecast of 
 the coming Presidential campaign. The subject of the letter is 
 the proverbial preponderance of Pennsylvania in our national 
 elections. It is a fact that no candidate for the Presidency has yet 
 been elected by the popular vote of the Union against or without 
 the vote of Pennsylvania, except the elder ADAMS. In 1824, she 
 gave her twenty-eight electoral votes to JACKSON, which secured 
 his plurality of fifteen in the electoral college. In the seventeen 
 Presidential elections of the past, her vote has uniformly indicated the 
 choice of the nation, except in the case of JOHN ADAMS. Yet, it 
 is also true that only in one instance has her electoral vote, of itself, 
 determined the result; that is, the majority of the successful can 
 didate has generally been larger, sometimes greatly larger, than the 
 number of her electors in the college. 
 
 MR. CAREY, looking for the causes of a fact so steady and reg 
 ular in its manifestation, traces them to conditions, circumstances 
 *See note on page 39, an e. 
 
APPENDIX. 335 
 
 and facts, where they have not heretofore been looked for. It is 
 obvious enough that a State which has never held more than one- 
 seventh of the electoral power of the Union could not thus con 
 stantly, by her own proper power, determine its Presidential elections. 
 It must, therefore, be ascribed to some constant cause of concurrence 
 with her political action, on the part of other States, whose votes, 
 with hers, make up the constitutional majority which she is ob 
 served to lead or carry with her. 
 
 For the natural cause of such concurrence and sympathy of 
 political action, MR. CAREY inquires, and finds it as he believes, in 
 the law of emigration, or that tendency which determines men to 
 choose their new residences in climates nearly resembling those 
 which they are accustomed to previously to their removal. The 
 circumstantial, or, in philosophical language, the accidental cause 
 of Pennsylvania s constant supremacy in the politics of the nation, 
 is in the fact that she is one of a number of States which are the 
 balance of power in the Union. The States which lie north of her 
 northern line of latitude are so nearly balanced against those which 
 lie south of her southern line, that her power, combined with that 
 range of central States of which she is the exponent, easily deter 
 mines the contest in favor of one or the other party. Divided as 
 the North and South are, and have ever been, the middle or central 
 States as they lie geographically, and the moderate and conservative 
 as they always are politically, must have the power to hold the 
 antagonists, on either side of them, at arms-length, and to settle 
 their disputes by the exertion of the balance of power principle, 
 and thus maintain the position of political supremacy in the Union. 
 
 To present MR. CAREY S views upon the subject of emigration, 
 and its political results in our history, we extract his own very brief 
 and general statement : 
 
 "To begin, let me ask your attention to the simple law which governs 
 the movements of men, who by the process of peaceful emigration are 
 seeking improvement of their condition. Look where you may, you will 
 see that such persons seek the nearest approach to the temperatures to 
 which they have been accustomed the Highlander going to Canada, and 
 the Irishman coming to our middle States, leaving to the- Spaniard and the 
 Portuguese the more sunny lands of the South. So, too, has it been among 
 ourselves the people of New England having overrun New York north of 
 the highlands, a part of northern Pennsylvania, the northern third of Ohio, 
 Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, and having settled the three northwestern 
 
336 APPENDIX. 
 
 States: those of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, 
 having meanwhile colonized nearly all the remainder of the four Western 
 States, and being likely soon to occupy the larger portion, if not almost the 
 -whole, of the Territories which are now to enter the Union as the States of 
 Kansas and Nebraska. 
 
 " To Virginia and North Carolina have fallen the Territories that are now 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, while South Carolina and Georgia have 
 taken possession of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,, and most of Arkansas 
 and Texas. As a consequence of this, we find the Union divided into four 
 great zones, the white population of which, as ascertained by the last census, 
 may approximately thus be stated : 
 
 Northern, say 8,000,000 
 
 Northern Central 5,700,000 
 
 Southern Central 4,000,000 
 
 SoutherD 2,300,000 
 
 20,000,000 
 
 " Nearly three-tenths of the voting population, as here is shown, sympa 
 thize much with Pennsylvania, and hence it is, and not merely by reason of 
 her own intrinsic strength, that as she goes, so goes the Union. Not only are 
 the tendencies of this portion of our people, as now exhibited, eminently 
 conservative, but, as reference to history shows, they have been more con 
 sistently in accordance with the ideas of the men who made the Revolution, 
 than those of any other. Hence it is that they have been so much in 
 harmony with those of North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well 
 as with those of the better days of Virginia, all of these, with Missouri, 
 now passing so rapidly toward freedom, constituting the Southern centre." 
 
 The propositions of our author here given are so new, and, in all 
 respects, so important for other purposes, as well as for those of 
 national politics, that we have taken the pains to subject the data on 
 which they are made to rest to a careful examination. Let us state 
 the results in our own way. After examining the facts and figures 
 as thoroughly as our time and resources allowed, we found that 
 State boundaries, as they exist between the north and north-central 
 zones, could not be made to conform to the facts of the case, as they 
 turned up under examination. Nor do they serve with mathematical 
 accuracy for the limits of the more southern zones. As lines of 
 latitude and lines of equal temperature were not consulted in the 
 location of State boundaries, it was not to be expected that exact 
 correspondences between isothermal and territorial lines should 
 occur. Adopting the four zones of MR. CAREY, however, on 
 grounds that seem to us entirely conclusive, we locate them thus : 
 
APPENDIX. 337 
 
 Taking the southernmost point of Connecticut for a starting point, 
 the southern line of the north zone will fall at about 411 degrees of 
 north latitude. This line, carried westwardly, will cut Pennsylvania 
 a little south of Wilkesbarre, Williamsport, and Mercer, on the Ohio 
 boundary, and will throw all the Pennsylvania counties north of it 
 into the north zone. The same line, carried through the State of 
 Ohio, will pass by Warren, Norwalk, and Defiance, on the Indiana 
 border, throwing something between one-fourth and one-fifth of 
 Ohio into the north zone. The same line, continued westwardly, 
 will throw about one-seventh of the State of Indiana, one-fourth of 
 the State of Illinois, and three-fourths of Iowa, into the northern 
 zone. For the southern line of the north-central zone we adopt the 
 thirty-ninth degree of north latitude. This line enters at Cape 
 May, passes by Annapolis and Bladensburg,in Maryland, and through 
 Hardy and Barbour counties, in Virginia, and enters Ohio at the 
 mouth of the great Kanawha river. Two or three counties of Ohio, 
 about one-seventh (at the southern end) of Indiana, and one-fifth of 
 southern Illinois (Egypt), will fall south of this line ; and entering 
 Missouri above the mouth of the Illinois river, and emerging at the 
 mouth of the Kansas river, throws the northern two-fifths of 
 Missouri, or all north of St. Louis, into the north-central zone. 
 
 The south-central zone, bounded on the south by the thirty- 
 fifth degree of latitude, and by the thirty-ninth parallel en the 
 north, will embrace the southern half of Delaware, the southern 
 half of Maryland, nearly all of Virginia, North Carolina, all of 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, the southern corners of Illinois and Indiana, 
 the southern three-fourths of Missouri, and the northern half of 
 Arkansas. 
 
 To the south zone will fall South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
 Alabama, Mississippi, the southern half of Arkansas, Louisiana, 
 and Texas. 
 
 Carrying these lines out to the Pacific coast, the northern one- 
 fourth of California falls into the north-central, the middle half 
 into the south-central, and the southernmost one-fourth into the 
 south zone. 
 
 Now, let us look at MR. CAREY S law of emigration as the census 
 of 1850 exhibits the facts involved in it: 
 
 In Michigan the whole number of immigrants was 257,006. Of these, 
 there were born in the north 
 
338 APPENDIX. 
 
 New England, New \\rk, (and British America, 14,008) 178,717 
 
 Born in north-central zone 33,103 
 
 Born in the south-central 1,504 
 
 Born in the south zone 401 
 
 Born in Europe 39,023 
 
 Thus, of the inhabitants not born in the State, five-sevenths were 
 from the north zone, including Canada ; one-seventh from all the 
 States south of the north zone, and one-seventh Europeans. 
 
 In Wisconsin there were 242.376 immigrants. Of these, 202,758, 
 or five-sixths of the whole number, were born in the north zone and 
 in Europe. In the north-central zone 31,066, or a little less than 
 one-sixth of the whole, and in all the more Southern States only 
 4,413, or about one-fiftieth. 
 
 Passing from these two new States, which are high up in the 
 north zone, to two which lie low in the south zone, we have the 
 following facts from the census : 
 
 In Alabama, the whole number of immigrants 183,324 
 
 Born in the south zone 108,720 or T V 
 
 Born in the south-central 64,143 or ^ 
 
 Born in New England 1,861 or ^g- 
 
 Born in all the other States 2,367 
 
 Born Foreigners 6,538 
 
 In Mississippi, the whole number of immigrants 155,793 
 
 Born in the south zone 83,242 
 
 Born in the south-central 62,465 
 
 Born in New England 923 
 
 Born in all ihe other States 3,482 
 
 Born Europeans 5,500 
 
 Here only one-thirty-fifth of the whole number of immigrants in 
 Mississippi were born in the States north of 39 north latitude. 
 
 From these instances, we think the truth of MR. CAREY S gen 
 eral proposition is well sustained. Emigration is ruled by climatic 
 laws. We purposed to exhibit the same law as it applies to the 
 Western States which lie in the two middle zones, but must content 
 ourselves now with stating that their statistics bear as closely upon 
 the proposition under consideration as those of the States on the 
 extreme Xorth and South given above. 
 
 The emigration from Europe supports the theory well. Of 
 those from England, Ireland, and Scotland only one in fourteen 
 were found in the States lying south of 39 degrees north latitude; 
 
APPENDIX. 339 
 
 while of the Germans, one in seven are in that zone, as it is determined 
 by the lines of latitude ; but one-half of these are in Texas and 
 Missouri, and even here the climatic law most probably prevails, for 
 while the isothermal, or lines of equal temperature, correspond very 
 nearly with the parallels of latitude as far west as the Mississippi 
 river, those which enter the Atlantic coast at the 40th and 35th 
 degrees of north latitude deflect rapidly beyond the Mississippi 
 southward, falling as low in middle Texas as the 35th and 30th. So 
 that while a large portion of Missouri is in the north-central zone, 
 as determined by geographical lines, a very large portion of the 
 north and west of Texas is in the same zone, as determined by its 
 mean annual temperature. If this point holds, as we suppose it 
 must, then the German emigration is no exception. One-half of 
 the number must be subtracted for the States of Texas and Missouri, 
 and this will restore the average to one in fourteen of the foreign 
 immigrants settled in the south zone. 
 
 It will be recollected by our readers that the isothermal lines in 
 that part of Europe from which our emigrants come lie about ten 
 degrees farther north in Europe than they do in the Atlantic 
 States of the Union. Great Britain and Prussia lie above the 
 fiftieth degree, and all the rest of Germany above the forty-fifth of 
 north latitude. Their emigrants to this country find their customary 
 temperature above the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels here, and 
 accordingly the census reports thirteen out of fourteen of them re 
 siding in the States above these lines, or, more accurately, within 
 the isothermal lines of their native countries. This fact obtains so 
 accurately that the Danish and Norwegian immigrants, whose native 
 countries are above the sixtieth parallel, are found in this country 
 in our most northern regions. From Sweden there were 2,449 in 
 the north zone ; in the south only 436. From Norway there were 
 in the north zone 11,705 ; in the south zone but 211, and 105 of these 
 were in Texas. And while there were 147,711 from British America, 
 only 1.067 of them were found south of the thirty-ninth parallel. 
 
 We are accustomed to speak of man as a cosmopolite, and per 
 haps too hastily conclude that he is so much less governed by 
 climate than animals and plants are, that he is at once independent 
 and regardless of temperature. But the statement evidently needs 
 correction. The species is adapted to all climates, but the families 
 and kindreds are governed by it in their migrations. This to us is 
 
340 APPENDIX. 
 
 a new and surprising result of this investigation. We are helped 
 by it to understand the destination of the African race among us. 
 It is a question of geography much more than of institutions with all 
 the races. In a new country like ours, w^iere immigration has the 
 power to determine the institutions, sentiments and pursuits, avoca 
 tions and opinions; natural temperament and civil polity, go 
 together, and this may be the reason why the controlling influence 
 of climatic laws has not before exhibited itself to observation. 
 
 The next step in the theory we are considering is, that the emi 
 grants from Europe, and especially those from the Eastern States of 
 the Union, carry with them the characteristics of the several regions 
 from which they remove, and so give a similar complexion to their 
 political creeds and industrial policies. We have laboriously ex 
 amined the votes of the zones, as we have located them, in the last 
 Presidential election, and we obtain the following results : 
 
 In those sixteen counties of Pennsylvania which lie. according to 
 our division, above 41J degrees of north latitude, and within the 
 north political zone, FREMONT had 39,916 votes, FILLMORE 1,107, 
 and BUCHANAN 24,908. FREMONT S plurality over BUCHANAN, in 
 these counties which belong to the north, and, as we see, voted with 
 it, was 15,008, or as 40 to 25. In the balance of the State, 
 BUCHANAN S vote was 205,802, FREMONT S 107,594, or nearly two 
 to one. 
 
 In those sixteen counties of Ohio which lie north of the political 
 line, FREMONT had 39,488 votes, BUCHANAN 22,042 a plurality 
 of 17,446. FREMONT S plurality in the whole State was but 
 16,623. Again, in the State election of last October, the whole 
 Republican majority was 13,500, while in the Western Pxeserve 
 the counties which we give to the north zone the majority of that 
 party was 15,000, showing that, outside of these counties, the Demo 
 crats had 1,500 majority. 
 
 In the nineteen counties of Illinois which lie above the line of the 
 north-central zone, FREMONT had 41,847 votes; BUCHANAN had 
 16,122 plurality over BUCHANAN, 25,725. IQ the other counties, 
 BUCHANAN S plurality over FREMONT was 34,784. Not a county 
 in Illinois south of 40 degrees gave FREMONT a majority, and some 
 of them, in the extreme south of the State, gave him no more than 
 2, 5, and 9 votes respectively ; but these last lie all below the 39th 
 parallel, and belong, therefore, bodily, to the south-central zone. 
 
APPENDIX. 341 
 
 In the tvs*elve counties of Indiana which are north of the line as 
 sumed, FREMONT had 15,835 votes; BUCHANAN, 12,752; but in 
 the whole State BUCHANAN S plurality over FREMONT was 24,295. 
 
 Iowa gave FREMONT a plurality of 7,784 votes, but in the coun 
 ties lying south of the north zone BUCHANAN S plurality over FRE 
 MONT was above 4,000 votes. 
 
 Looking at the States and parts of States lying in the north zone, 
 we find the following results : For every forty votes cast in them for 
 FREMONT, BUCHANAN had, in Vermont, 11; in Massachusetts, 15; 
 in northern Illinois, 16; in northern Ohio, 22; in Maine, 23; in 
 northern Pennsylvania, 25; in New York, 28; in Michigan, 29; in 
 northern Indiana, 32. These proportions, it strikes us, indicate the 
 political sympathies of the people among whom they occur to be 
 closely connected with their respective nativities ; and we may here 
 state that the rule holds as well of the people of the north-central 
 zone where the institutions are very similar to those of their 
 northern sister States, and yet their political biases are as distinct 
 and different as if they were separated from each other by some cause 
 of quarrel or opposition of interests. 
 
 We confess that we are greatly surprised to find geographical and 
 climatic lines running through the politics of our people with so 
 near an approach to mathematical accuracy as our figures have 
 shown us ; but we can see no error in the process by which these re 
 markable results are arrived at. The subject is a study for the 
 curious and capable. Our data are not all given, nor, it may be, are 
 they quite clearly presented, but we submit the statement in the 
 confidence that it is substantially correct. The practical inferences 
 remain to be drawn, which can now be very briefly given : 
 
 The popular vote of the north zone in 1850 (making the necessary de 
 ductions and additions, to adjust the returns of the States to the lines which 
 cut them) was 1,625,913 
 
 The popular vote of the south zone 404,151 
 
 Do do south-central 715,766 
 
 Together 1,119,917 
 
 Plurality of north over south and south-central 505,996 
 
 The popular vote of the north-central zone (making the neces 
 sary additions and subtractions) ! 1,341,862 
 
 Balance of power in popular votes in the north-central, as between 
 
 the north zone and the south and south-central 835,896 
 
342 APPENDIX. 
 
 In the electoral college these several regions stand thils : 
 
 NORTH ZONE Maine 8, New Hampshire 5. Vermont 5. Con 
 necticut 6 ; Rhode Island 4, Massachusetts 13. New York 35, 
 Michigan 6, Wisconsin, 5, Iowa 4, Minnesota 4 making 95 elect 
 oral votes. 
 
 SOUTH ZONE South Carolina 8, Georgia 10. Alabama 9, Missis 
 sippi 7, Arkansas 4. Louisiana 6, Texas 4, Florida 3 51 electors. 
 
 SOUTH-CENTRAL ZONE Delaware 3, Maryland 8. Virginia 15, 
 North Carolina 10, Kentucky 12, Tennessee 12 60 electors. 
 
 NORTH-CENTRAL ZONE New Jersey 7, Pennsylvania 27, Ohio 
 23, Indiana 13, Illinois 11, Missouri 9, California 4 94 electors. 
 
 This geographic division puts the balance thus : The south and 
 south-central against the north zone, 111 electors against 95 or a 
 plurality of 16. But Ohio voting out of geographic order, gives to 
 the north a majority of 7. 
 
 The north-central zone has 94 votes when Ohio is in line, 71 
 without her leaving a clear majority of 64 to determine the issue 
 between the extremists who lie upon her north and south borders. 
 
 Now, if this doctrine of climatic and political sympathy holds 
 good in logic and in experience, Pennsylvania s position in the re 
 gion that rules the Union is demonstrated and accounted for ; and it 
 is presumed that the National Conventions of the coming Presi 
 dential campaign will consider the subject, and provide for the 
 struggle with reference to it. 
 
 Whoever will look carefully for the reason of dividing the south- 
 central from the more southern slave States, may find it in their 
 past history, and in the clear indications of their future destiny. 
 
 This subject invites further observations. It has its range through 
 the whole field of ethnological science and of civil history. 
 
 W. E. 
 
 P. S. For the geographic and climatic distribution of the secret 
 Orders of the United States, see ante pp. 268, 269, 271, 277; 
 and, of the Cooperative Unions in England and Prussia, see pp. 
 300, 306, and 308 ; noting the fact that the region in the United 
 States east of the Rocky Mountains, between 39 and 42 of north 
 latitude lies in the same belt of mean annual temperature as Prussia 
 and England another curious example of the coincidence of cli 
 matic conditions with societary movements. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACTIVITY of the vital organs, law of distribution of 79 
 
 A d valorems, mischiefs of in tariff of 1846 201 
 
 Ad valorems, rule of taxation, alien and hostile to the principle of 
 
 protection 200 
 
 vices of 210 
 
 Affinities result from differences, and in the ratio of their number 10 
 
 African negroes, not savage 28 
 
 Africa, savage 26 
 
 Africans, residence of, in the United States explained 35 
 
 Agricultural industry, exclusive, exposed to famines 59 
 
 Agricultural production, advance of, limited 57 
 
 Agricultural production of France, doubled in thirty years 48 
 
 Agriculture combined with cooperative stores 310 
 
 Agriculture in its infancy benefited by trade with manufacturing 
 
 countries 178 
 
 Agriculture, unmixed, cannot organize industry 217 
 
 Agriculturists, American, two classes, broadly different farmers and 
 
 planters ; farmers export but two and one-half per cent of their 
 
 product, planters export seventy-five per cent of theirs , 181 
 
 Almsgiving changed from a charity to a debt 201 
 
 America, European colonization of 26 
 
 American manufactures sheltered by the War of the Revolution 194 
 
 Analogies forced upon things not analogous 74 
 
 Analogy of savage society to individual infancy 18 
 
 of patriarchism to childhood 20 
 
 of barbarism to youth 23 
 
 of civilization to manhood 24 
 
 Anno Domini 1776 25-3 
 
 Annual production in U. S., value of 169 
 
 Anti-slavery, history of 253 
 
 A posteriori method, the vice of metaphysics and of political economy... 76 
 
 343 
 
344 INDEX. 
 
 A posteriori reasoning fails, where the focal point of facts falls outside 
 
 of observation and experiment 76 
 
 A posteriori, the system of, is capable only of unmixed materialism, and 
 has never had any success in subjects whose life is joined with 
 
 liberty 76 
 
 Arts and sciences, not the distinctive glory of the last centenary 252 
 
 Asia barbaric 46 
 
 Association and individuality, their necessity 9 
 
 their physical analogues 10 
 
 counter-balance and corroborate each other 10 
 
 Association freed and restored 251 
 
 Association in bondage in freedom 260 
 
 Association, stages in the growth of 260 
 
 Association without freedom is domination, not commerce 164 
 
 B 
 
 Balance, broken, of Europe being rectified 37 
 
 "Balance of trade" not in difference of values but of kinds of trade 171 
 
 Bank circulation exposes the banks to runs 147 
 
 Bank circulation never in excess except under free trade 200 
 
 Bank currency, inflation of, clue to excess of imports 200 
 
 Bank note as a traveler 144 
 
 Bank notes 143 
 
 the money of the common people 144 
 
 Banknotes, their service outweighs their faults 146 
 
 Bank of Amsterdam, history and service of 139 
 
 Bank of England, charter of, a failure 150, 155 
 
 Banker s certificates of deposit multiply the service of money 135 
 
 Banks of deposit as early as the Christian era 135 
 
 collect and employ idle money 138 
 
 sources of profit and credit . 141 
 
 instances 142 
 
 their service 138 
 
 Banks distribution of, in Scotland and United States 152 
 
 number and localities of, required 151 
 
 Banks of circulation may lend twice their capital and one-third of their 
 
 deposits..., 148 
 
 Banks of deposit, discount and issue 133 
 
 Banks, rule for distribution of 151 
 
 Banking business, elements of 142 
 
 benefits of 142 
 
 order of development 149 
 
 transfers the property in coins 139 
 
 Banking should be as free as any other business 154 
 
 Banking system, indispensable 151 
 
INDEX. 345 
 
 Bastiat on competition 175, 828 
 
 Barbarism a great advance upon the previous forms of society; . Moors 
 
 and Mahometans of the Middle Ages, superior in all things to the 
 
 contemporaneous civilization of the Caucasian family 20 
 
 Barbarism and civilization, distinctive characteristics of 22 
 
 Barbarism culminates in the youth of manhood.* 27 
 
 Barter, the type of a true commerce 109 
 
 Belgian tariff, eminently protective 240 
 
 protects her shipping 240 
 
 Belgium, growth of population in 241 
 
 Belgium, territory, population, manufactures, agriculture, commerce... 230 
 
 Beneficial societies among colored women 279 
 
 Beneficial societies, easy rates of insurance, liberal reliefs, and moral 
 
 influence they grow rich. 203 
 
 Beneficial societies in England, extent of 2G2 
 
 Beneficial societies in the United States 202 
 
 Berlin and Milan decrees 192 
 
 Bible, tract, and missionary societies of the age 253 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, on Political Economy 191 
 
 Bonuses and countervailing duties... 205 
 
 Books and newspapers published in 1800 255 
 
 Boot and shoe factory, Bay State 319 
 
 Borders of Asia and Africa, stationary 27 
 
 British demand for our provisions quantities and prices 184 
 
 British Economists, fundamental errors of 150 
 
 British navigation laws 194 
 
 British policy of trade and doctrine 179 
 
 Brougham would crush all foreign manufactures in the cradle 192 
 
 Building and loan associations, history of 322 
 
 great progress in Philadelphia, principles, profit of 323 
 
 Building associations 284 
 
 Business functions, three classes of 290 
 
 Business policy, stages in development of 280 
 
 C 
 
 Calhoun, Clay, in 1833 199 
 
 Capital and labor, harmony of. 325 
 
 Capital, association of, in various forms 283 
 
 Capital, definition of 40 
 
 Capital, finds a motive, in its interest, to afford equitable share of joint 
 
 products to labor 88 
 
 Capital in association 200 
 
 Capital in civilized labor 121 
 
 Capital, quantity of, and quality of labor, relation of. 87 
 
 23 
 
346 INDEX. 
 
 Carey and Bastiat 87 
 
 Carey s law of distribution of wages and profits 08 
 
 Carey, H. C., character of his system 5,0 
 
 Carey, H. C., law of climate 39, 331 
 
 Carriage factory in New York t 320 
 
 Cash sales, policy and principle of 303 
 
 Catallactics 103 
 
 Census estimates of wealth in U. S., sources of error 50, 108 
 
 Census reports, one-third less than annual products in the United 
 
 States 50 
 
 Centuries, the last five, how distinguished 252 
 
 Charities converted into equitable claims 282 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, would not allow the colonies to make a hobnail 104 
 
 Chemistry, a wonder-working adjuvant of human labor 50 
 
 Christendom, in the dark ages 30 
 
 Christian knowledge, spread of in the last centenary 253 
 
 Circulation, effect of rapidity of, not measurable by multipliers 137 
 
 Circulation of money and of the blood, in what respects unlike 13(5 
 
 Circulation, rapidity of bears relation to the quantity of represented 
 
 money 136 
 
 Circulating medium, its analogy to circulation of the blood 130 
 
 Civilization and liberty rest upon credit 1-13 
 
 Civilization, defined by its history only 32 
 
 Civilization, distinctive character of 251 
 
 Civilization, elastic and composite 30 
 
 Civilization, late development of 30 
 
 Civilization, not logically defined 247 
 
 difficulty of definition 247 
 
 Civilization, the European form of societary life .. 20 
 
 Civilized races of Europe, no decay of. 27 
 
 Clearing house, payment by set-off 118 
 
 Climate, laws of, govern human migrations 34 
 
 Climate limits science, literature, and religions 35 
 
 Climatic belts, three in North America 38 
 
 Climatic law determines the future unions of States 38 
 
 Climatic laws, prevent permanent domination of the superior races 36 
 
 Climatic law rules settlement in the United States 34, 331 
 
 Climatic law in party politics 331 
 
 Climatic law in distribution of secret societies, and cooperative 
 
 unions 208, 269, 271. 277, 300, 300, 308, and note 342 
 
 Clothing and lodging, equivalents of artificial heat 05 
 
 Coal, power evolved 55 
 
 Coal, seven tons give the power of seventy thousand women in manu 
 facturing 1 56 
 
 Cobden, on Portugal and Turkey 246 
 
INDEX. 347 
 
 Coinage, changes in value of, since the eleventh century 113 
 
 Coinage at, British and American mints lid 
 
 Colbert, fosters home manufactures 205 
 
 J. B. Say s account of his policy 241 
 
 Colonization, a relief of suffering during ages of disorder C 2 
 
 Color, prejudice of 279 
 
 Colvvell, Stephen 5 
 
 Commerce 157 
 
 faulty definitions of 158 
 
 Commerce and trade, distinctive definition of 100 
 
 Commerce is immediateness of intercourse and exchange 165 
 
 Commerce, legitimate, insures supplies to the oldest countries 62 
 
 Commerce of home 165 
 
 might suffice for the United States 165 
 
 Commerce of savages 16 
 
 Commodities, value of in exchange 124 
 
 Communism arises from fear of the ill-distribution of wealth a mis 
 take and a failure . 290 
 
 Communism, hostile to cooperation 313 
 
 Communistic opposition to cooperative stores in Germany 307 
 
 Compensations and substitutions in providential provision 63 
 
 Competition, Bastiat on 175, 328 
 
 Competition defeated and excluded in transportation 2,88 
 
 Competition of underselling avoided , 303 
 
 Competition, the enemy of harmony 327 
 
 Competition, the soul and centre principle of free trade 828 
 
 Competition versus cooperation "^27 
 
 Compromise, act of 199 
 
 Comte, on the stages of societary development and their correspond 
 ence to those of individual life, note 24 
 
 Consumers are also producers 227 
 
 Consumers, every ten must support one merchant 2 ( .)9 
 
 Consumption and production in United States 51 
 
 Convertibility, not the essence of the bank note 154 
 
 Cooperation, a fully rounded system 297 
 
 Cooperation between master and slaves in Louisiana 324 
 
 Cooperation in Spain, how propagated 311 
 
 Cooperation in the United States 315 
 
 Coo peration in the whale fisheries 324 
 
 Cooperation, in the United States, less urgent than elsewhere 316 
 
 Cooperation, practicability of 324 
 
 Cooperation, resisted by insurrectionary spirit of Western Europe 313 
 
 Cooperation, stores, manufactories, banks 295 
 
 Cooperation supplies credit, and market for 1 products 310 
 
 Cooperation, survey of the field 281 
 
348 INDEX. 
 
 Cooperation, the system of agricultural industry in Russia 312 
 
 Cooperative associations, what they mean , 296 
 
 Cooperative foundery at Troy, New York, great success of . 318 
 
 at Somerset, Massachusetts 319 
 
 Cooperative industrial societies in United States 318 
 
 Cooperative industry, economy of 318,321 
 
 Cooperative labor societies, definition of 295, 296 
 
 Cooperative movement, difference of, in England and Germany 307 
 
 Cooperative store in Charleston 320 
 
 Cooperative stores, dealings with members and non-members 300 
 
 Cooperative stores, definition of 295,290 
 
 Cooperative stores, extension of in England 305 
 
 Cooperative stores, inexpensiveness of 30-1 
 
 Cooperative stores in New England 317 
 
 Cooperative stores in Pennsylvania 318 
 
 Cooperative stores, practicability of 298 
 
 Cooperative stores, the first step in guarautyism , 297 
 
 Cooperative stores, their properties and uses 280 
 
 Coordination and subordination in living organisms 11 
 
 Corn, burnt for fuel in the West 183 
 
 Corporal punishment abolished 250 
 
 Corporation, legal, its meaning. 200 
 
 Corporations, moral character of 283 
 
 Cotton always a rebel 182 
 
 Cotton crop under slavery policy 324 
 
 Cotton crop of 1800, quantity and value 181 
 
 Cotton manufacture, how protected in England 238 
 
 Cotton, rapid decline in price of 220 
 
 Cottons, consumption of, in England 58 
 
 Countervailing duties in English policy 239, 200 
 
 Countervailing duties, not protective in principle 200 
 
 Credit, abuses of 143 
 
 Credit, a Jacob s ladder of 309 
 
 Credit banks, constitution and policy of 308, 309 
 
 statistics of 309 
 
 Credit banking system in Germany 290 
 
 Credit, how provided for uupropertied men 308 
 
 Credit, its functions and power 140 
 
 Credit makes capital of character 113 
 
 Credit modifies the money demand 117 
 
 Credit system must enlarge with all progress in society 150 
 
 Credit, the broad basis of civilized business 149 
 
 Crimes, capital, one hundred and fifty in England; diminution of. 250 
 
 Currency, depreciated, evils of, less than of a lack of the uiouey 
 supply , 155 
 
INDEX. 349 
 
 Currier s shop in Boston 320 
 
 Curse, the primal, has a promise iu it 7;} 
 
 Death rate, greatest in the least dense populations 72 
 
 Death rate in England, France, Prussia, and United States 72 
 
 Death rate iu London varied in one hundred years 72 
 
 Debts and funds, no evil in decrease of value of 130 
 
 Definition of value 87 
 
 Definition of wealth, the measure of man s power over nature 41 
 
 Definition of political economy y 
 
 Democracies of Greece, faults and virtues of 24 J 
 
 Democracy, the polity of savages 17 
 
 Deposits, largely consist of bank loans 148 
 
 Differences, the natural, enough for foreign commerce 223 
 
 Differences, unity and cooperation of 31 
 
 Discovery in natural law, followed closely by practical application 57 
 
 Disease, a broken balance of excitement 7U 
 
 Dismal school, conflicting theories of 74 
 
 Dispair, theory of, grounded in disorders of society 74 
 
 Distributive law of inhabitation of the earth 32 
 
 Distribution of wealth, laws of , 87 
 
 Diversification of industries, the aim of protection 215 
 
 Diversification of pursuits essential to the welfare of society 12 
 
 Division of labor, benefits of, exaggerated 15 ,), 101 
 
 Division of labor doctrine, abuse of 327 
 
 Division of labor, territorial, J. 11. McCulloch 158 
 
 Divisions of the United States Jay and Hamilton 331 
 
 Doctrine, a test of 84 
 
 Domestic exchanges in 1802, estimated value of ]00 
 
 Duty paid by the foreign producer ... . 220 
 
 Duties, protective, who pays them ? ". 225 
 
 Duties reflected upon domestic prices, absurdity of. 230 
 
 E 
 
 Earth, not one-tenth of the, fully cultivated 5V) 
 
 Economy in expenses, leads to cooperation in production 305 
 
 Edenism 14 
 
 conditions of society in 15 
 
 Education, as a counter-balance, to excessive fertility 81 
 
 Education in the arts repays its cost 227 
 
 Eighteenth century, achievements of 31 
 
 Electricity against time 55 
 
 Elements of matter, man s power over 50 
 
 England begins to advance in the fourteenth century 30 
 
350 INDEX. 
 
 England draws from foreign raw material four-fifths of her exports..... 61 
 
 England, history of protection in ................................................. 236 
 
 woolens ................................................. ......................... 237 
 
 iron .............................................................................. 237 
 
 wool, iron and coal, protection of cottons ............................... 238 
 
 England needs customers and feeders on cheap wages .............. . ...... 179 
 
 England our only European provision market ................................. 184 
 
 England, supplements her natural labor power by steam force equal to 
 
 one-fourth the inhabitants of the globe ..................................... 55 
 
 England, the world s debt to ........................................................ OS 
 
 England would crush foreign manufactures in the cradle ............ 192, 1*>3 
 
 England s foreign policy of trade, change of ................................... 103 
 
 England s sanguinary protective laws ..................................... 237, 238 
 
 England s war upon foreign manufactures ............................... 11)2, 103 
 
 English Colonies, growing independence, and industrial emancipation of 88 
 English domination in the world s markets, end of .......................... 88 
 
 English manufactures, foreign materials, wages, and profit of ........... 61 
 
 English protective duties never repealed till they were useless ......... 239 
 
 Engineers, iudefiuiteness of the term ....................................... ..... 292 
 
 Equivalence of money to values in exchange, unfounded... ............. 115 
 
 Era, new, in manufacturing industry, why fixed in 1814 ................... 99 
 
 Era, the new, in civilization begun a hundred years ago .................... 218 
 
 Europe and the United States increase their labor-power six times by 
 
 the aid of coal ..................................................................... 55 
 
 European people only have passed through all the stages of society, 
 
 and show no signs of declension ............................................... 27 
 
 European races, their work of three or four hundred years ..... .. ......... 31 
 
 Europe, stable goverments organized in, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 31 
 Evil is inverted good .......... ....................................................... 143 
 
 Excessive activity of one organ at the expense of others .................... 79 
 
 Excess of life supplies its waste ................................................... 42 
 
 Exceptions do not prove the rule*. ................................................. 83 
 
 Exchange the great disturber of cooperation ................................... 297 
 
 Exchanges, the life of man, a round of ............................................ 107 
 
 Experience, not always directory .................................................. 29 
 
 Extension of average lifetime in the present century ........................ 64 
 
 Exports, American, coarse and low-priced ............................ ......... 183 
 
 Exports of England, value of domestic and foreign materials .............. 61 
 
 Exports of manufactures to agricultural nations .............................. 187 
 
 Exports to manufacturing and non-manufacturing .nations, relative 
 
 value of .......................... ............................... ................... 187 
 
 Faculties, human, do not spring from suffering ............................... 16 
 
 Faith-force above fact-force... ............................................. 140 
 
INDEX. 351 
 
 Faith, like the mechanical powers, multiplies force miraculously 140 
 
 Faith sustains hope and charity 60 
 
 Famines in Ireland and India explained 51) 
 
 Famine in Northeast Prussia 50 
 
 Famines in the earlier ages, frequent 58 
 
 Famines and plagues disappear as population increases 58 
 
 Famines, remedy for 50 
 
 Famines, their frequency in modern India 245 
 
 Farmers question, the 177 
 
 Fasting commanded, the 12 
 
 Facts do not always indicate laws 48 
 
 Federal Government adapted to differences in union 88 
 
 Federal Union of the United States, the model of nationalities 37 
 
 "Federalist;" Jay and Hamilton 881 
 
 Fertility, human, contradictory theories of 74 
 
 Fertility of the soil, not exhausted by right cultivation 00 
 
 Feudalism allied to barbarism 80 
 
 Feudalism, association in bondage 818 
 
 Figures in statistics need rectification by facts 100 
 
 First free list in tariff act 100 
 
 First pair, the, provision for 15 
 
 conditions of Edenic Society 15 
 
 Flanders and Toulouse two centuries in advance of England in manu 
 facturing industry 80 
 
 Flax and cotton, supplement and displace wool G5 
 
 Food and life, possible quantities of, unknown and indifferent 75 
 
 Food and population disproportioned according to Malthus 58 
 
 Food, human, demanded, limited like the product 58 
 
 Food, increase of, in France CO 
 
 Food of men, vegetable cheaper and more abundant than animal 05 
 
 Food of the common people at end of the seventeenth century 02 
 
 Food, prices of, remain nearly stationary, why 120 
 
 Food of the inferior animals, vegetable against animal 05 
 
 Food, provision of, adequate , 50 
 
 Food, supply of France, increase of 48 
 
 Force and speed required in subjugation of nature 54 
 
 Foreign imports crush domestic manufactures 105 
 
 Foreign trade of United States in 1800 analyzed 180 
 
 exports seven-eighths raw and one-eighth manufactures 180 
 
 Formation of society 14 
 
 Fortunes, private, immense growth of 201 
 
 France excludes manufactures, growth of trade in 215 
 
 France, density of population in 48 
 
 France, growth of production one hundred and thirty-one per cent in 
 
 twenty years 47 
 
352 INDEX. 
 
 France, increase of food in GO 
 
 France, increase of food production f . 48 
 
 France outstrips England in rate of increase of wealth 47 
 
 France, success of protection in 241 
 
 Freedmen hanged in the reign of Henry VIII 29 
 
 Freedmen, their prospects in the new order of industry 99 
 
 Freedom must be surrendered by those who refuse it 329 
 
 Free foreign trade, no such thing rightly exists 175 
 
 Free Masons 204 
 
 Free-trade abuse of the maxims of liberty 225 
 
 Free trade, British, its character 239 
 
 Free trade driven to tax only the goods we cannot produce 2?>2 
 
 Free trade in the historic nations 212 
 
 Free trade in Turkey, Ireland, India, Portugal 243, 244, 245, 24G 
 
 Free-trade period 1833 to 1841, mischiefs of, repaired by tariff of 
 
 1842 205 
 
 Free-trade philanthropists 220 
 
 Free- trade policy, its preposterous consequences 233 
 
 Free trade suited to savages 177 
 
 Free-trade truisms are nothing in the dispute 224, 225 
 
 French communism, principles of 314 
 
 Free traders, description of 215 
 
 G 
 
 Galvanism, electricity, electric telegraph, dates of 57 
 
 Gas from water in expectation OS 
 
 German lodges of United Mechanics. 278 
 
 Germany, cooperative stores in 300 
 
 difference of origin, and movement 300 
 
 Godwin, Parke, acknowledgment to 
 
 Gold and silver, differ from paper money 115 
 
 Gold and silver money does not by its quantity depreciate 115 
 
 Gold, premium on 150 
 
 Goldsmiths, the deposit bankers as lately as 1601 135 
 
 Golden age 15 
 
 Good Samaritans, admit women and colored people 280 
 
 Government cannot administer a general system of banking 153 
 
 Governmental changes of the future, to be internal reforms 37 
 
 Government, best, definition of 225 
 
 Government, limitation of the powers of 222 
 
 Grain and provision market in England, our share of 184 
 
 Grant, General, on farmers foreign market 189 
 
 Grant, President, on our foreign food market ~ 183 
 
 Greeley, Horace, acknowledgments to 
 
 Greenbacks, popularity of 153 
 
INDEX. 353 
 
 Grounds of popular error in respect to relation of man and food 4H 
 
 Growth of wealth in the most recent decades, ln\v of 52 
 
 Guaranty associations, three classes of 281 
 
 Ouaranlyism 04. 7 
 
 Guarantyism, an effort at free association .. 251 
 
 Gulf States, the Southern zone 88 
 
 H 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander 
 
 report on manufactures 195 
 
 Handicraft answers to science in effecting uses 57 
 
 Hands employed in mining, manufacturing, and mechanic arts in 1800 93 
 
 Harmony of interests of laborer and capitalist 98 
 
 History, the habit of, broken in the United States 29 
 
 Home commerce and foreign trade, relative value of 105 
 
 Home markets for agricultural products 18;J 
 
 Home market, the farmers 180 
 
 Horde, formation of the * t 10 
 
 Horses, price of in 1096 <e H2 
 
 Human progress, in economics, tending over to better and cheaper 
 
 supplies ( ;,j 
 
 Human fertility not a constant quantity 42 
 
 Humholdt s estimate of increase of metallic money IK; 
 
 Hume ami Mill on effect of increase of money 123 
 
 Hume, on stimulus of money !_>! 
 
 Husbandry always loyal 182 
 
 I 
 
 Imponderables, the latest subjects of human dominion 07 
 
 Imports, economic value of 170 
 
 Imports, kinds of, from Western Europe 171 
 
 per capita under the free trade and protection tariffs...., 202 
 
 proportion of, legitimate subjects of trade 170 
 
 proporlion of, ready for consumption 170 
 
 small value of, to domestic transporters 109 
 
 Imprisonment for debt, abolished 250 
 
 Improvements in changes of form and place 108 
 
 Improvements in travel, transportation, and production 04 
 
 India, British residentsin 34 
 
 British rule in, history of her trade and decadence 245 
 
 impoverished by cost of transportation 108 
 
 in advance of England in the fourteenth century 30 
 
 Indian, American, population, spareeness of in time of Wm. I enn 04 
 
 Indian tribes, infertility of, explained 82 
 
 Indians, American, a degenerate race 18 
 
 2i 
 
354 INDEX. 
 
 Individualism giving way to association 251 
 
 Inductive reasoning, its limits in natural science 76 
 
 Industries, diversified, sure defense against famine 59 
 
 Industries of savage tribes, but little diversified 16 
 
 Inebriate asylums 273 
 
 Inhabitation, slight modifications of the law of 33 
 
 Innovations in productive labor, false alarms of 96 
 
 Insurance in the State of New York, statistics of 257 
 
 Insurance, life, property, and maritime 257 
 
 Interest, difference between small and large capitals 285 
 
 Interest, money at, a hireling interest, or profits? 284 
 
 International labor league, opposed to cooperation 328 
 
 Inventions and discoveries of fifteenth century 31 
 
 Ireland, English policy of extermination avowed 244 
 
 Ireland, history of her manufactures 244 
 
 Iron, English, prices as affected by varied tariff rut eg 228 
 
 Iron, English prices of, fluctuations in 100 
 
 Iron of England, not one-eighth of her total exports 61 
 
 Iron, protection of, in English policy 100 
 
 Isothermal line of Mahommetan conquests 34 
 
 Israel goes into slavery for a supply of corn 65 
 
 J 
 
 Jackson, General, on farmer s foreign market 188 
 
 K 
 
 Knights of Pythias, German lodges 272 
 
 Knights of Pythias, origin, members, rate of growth, proportion of 
 
 reliefs to receipts, law of climate 270 
 
 constitution, provision for casualties, trivial expenses 271 
 
 Knights of St. Crispin, their cooperative stores 317 
 
 L 
 
 Labor and capital, marriage of. 293 
 
 Labor and capital, respective gains from increased productiveness 97 
 
 Labor, artificial, substituted for natural 63 
 
 Labor, choice in kinds of, how determined 216 
 
 Labor cost of gold and silver, difficult of estimation 114 
 
 Labor is capital 121 
 
 Labor and money, yokefellows in production 121 
 
 Labor is capital, but is usually treated as an associate 40 
 
 Labor, its improved forms, promise to secure adjustment of life to food 81 
 
 Labor, its kinds and varied rewards 216 
 
 Labor, its repugnance to association 26, 283 
 
 Labor, more and more demanded as supplies are drawn successively 
 from the vegetable and mineral world 66 
 
INDEX. 355 
 
 Labor-power measured by its actual products 50 
 
 Labor, skilled and unskilled 172 
 
 Labor remitted from low to high-priced work 90 
 
 Labor, rise in wages of, since abolition of villenage 90 
 
 Labor unions, difficulties and drift 330 
 
 Labor unions, do not aim to abolish the wages system 329 
 
 Labor unions, their universal prevalence, their justification; their policy 
 
 requires a radical change 320 
 
 Labor, unskilled, favorable to fecundity 83 
 
 Labor value, Mr. Carey 87 
 
 Labor, value of, is the cost of its education and training 90 
 
 Labor value, tendency of, the law of, to equity in the distribution of 
 
 wealth 88 
 
 Laborer, the, what he is in the system of production 292 
 
 Laborers, general improvement in their condition 102 
 
 Laborers, their better condition in United States 310, 317 
 
 Laissez faire 223, 224 
 
 Land and labor, only increase in value in progressive conditions. 89 
 
 Land and labor, why their value increases 131 
 
 Land in itself valueless 120 
 
 Land, value of, is the cost of its improvement 90 
 
 Laws of nature tend to adjustment, of man and earth 00 
 
 Laws of nature vindicate themselves 00 
 
 Lead, price rises as the duty falls 229 
 
 Libraries in the United States 255 
 
 Life, extension of, in the present century 02 
 
 Life, reproduction of, in inverse ratio to the power of maintaining it.. 77 
 Life, term of, lengthens, and fecundity diminishes, with improvement 
 
 of the human race 78 
 
 Life, waste of, due to preponderance of the animal passions 83 
 
 Life, waste of, not a blunder of the Creator 83 
 
 List, Frederick, II. C. Carey and Stephen Colwell 5 
 
 Luxuries, not to be taxed as such 208 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, on bankers of the 17th century 135 
 
 Macaulay, on wages in England 91 
 
 Machinery, against weight and space 55 
 
 Machinery becomes bone and muscle to the brain and nerves of 
 
 science 57 
 
 Machinery, ignorance scared by, as horses are at locomotives -03 
 
 Machinery, its velocity in work 50 
 
 Madison, on causes that induced the Federal Union 190 
 
 Malthus corrective checks 42 
 
 Mai thus 1 doctrine of disproportion of food to population 58 
 
356 INDEX. 
 
 Malthus formula of disproportion of food to population 42 
 
 Man, a, the type of a society 11 
 
 Man, not prices, the leading consideration in trade 179 
 
 Man regarded as a beast, not a safe basis for a philosophy of his rela 
 tions and destiny 74 
 
 Mankind, collective, cosmopolitan, but the several families are bounded 
 
 by their natal latitudes 33 
 
 Man s adjustment to his conditions, not a question of numerals, but of 
 
 principles 75 
 
 Man s nature and destiny, philosophy of, rests on final causes 75 
 
 Manufactures, cheapen faster than the precious metals 114 
 
 Manufactures, Hamilton s report on, in 1791, great progress in 195 
 
 Manufactures, household, destroyed after peace of 1783 195 
 
 Manufacturing industry, new Era of, begins in 1814 99 
 
 Masses of matter, man s power over 5(5 
 
 Materalism in science -51 
 
 Material interests become social virtues 201 
 
 McCulloch and followers, their general maxim of trade falsified 214 
 
 McCulloch on territorial division of labor 158 
 
 McCulloch s doctrine of disproportion of man and food 43 
 
 Mediterranean border lauds, exceptional races of. 26 
 
 Merchant, a producer, the besetting sin 
 
 Merchant class supported by the consumers 298 
 
 Metallic money, estimated increase of 110 
 
 Metallic money, faults of 150 
 
 Metals, precious, effects of vast increase of. 131 
 
 Metals, the precious, their qualities 110 
 
 Mexico, Cuba, and Spain, in the same belt of temperature 34 
 
 Middlemen, merchants, history and functions of 
 
 Middle States, east and west, the middle zone 
 
 MIGRATION AND OCCUPATION OF THE EARTH 
 
 Military system reformed ...... 251 
 
 Mill bases his theory of political economy upon despair 45 
 
 Mill, corroborates Malthus 44 
 
 hopeless even of emigration as a remedy 
 
 Mill, John Stewart, scare at the exhaustion of English coal 03 
 
 Mill, population must overgrow provision of food 45 
 
 Millionaires insignificance to the wealth of the millions . 291 
 
 Mill s equivalence of money to values exchanged 123 
 
 Mineral kingdom, order of human control of 
 
 Money, a medium of exchange, but not a standard of value 90 
 
 Money as a producer of values 120 
 
 stimulous of its influx . 121 
 
 Money as an exchanger of values 106 
 
 Money by excess cannot overstimulate industry 137 
 
INDEX. 357 
 
 Money, change in the value of, since time of Henry VIII .................. 112 
 
 Money demand affected by the credit system.. ................................. 117 
 
 Money early goes into association ................................................. 283 
 
 Money, effect of abundance and scarcity of .................................... 124 
 
 Money, equivalence of to value of commodities in exchange .............. 115 
 
 Money, fallacy of the doctrine that it is only an exchanger ................ 129 
 
 Money in circulation, amount prior to 1800 .................................... 123 
 
 Money increase, effects of ............................................................ 128 
 
 Money, par value of, delined ......................................................... 128 
 
 Money, increase of, cheapens commodities faster than its own exchange 
 
 value declines ...................................................................... 131 
 
 Money, increase of, effect upon value of debts ................................. 130 
 
 Money, its essential property is in its convenience ........................... 151 
 
 Money, ils value is its labor cost ................................... ............... 129 
 
 IN I on ey -lenders or partners ........................................................... 284 
 
 Money, metallic, without credit, is alow stage of barbaric barter ....... 135 
 
 Money measured by its exchange equivalence ................................. 91 
 
 Money, mystery of ..................................................................... 15(5 
 
 Money, not a standard of value, but of payment .............................. 112 
 
 Money is not dead capital ........................................................... 122 
 
 Money, not the eqrmr^alent of total exchanges ................................. 123 
 
 Money of account, dispenisetPwith the money medium ....................... 118 
 
 Money of account, its equivalence to values in exchange ................... 129 
 
 Money of all kinds, of East Indies, American Indians ...................... 109 
 
 Money, substantial, subject to the same law as other commodities ....... 137 
 
 Money, supply of, not limited as in the case of food ......................... 117 
 
 Money, there never has been enough of it ...................................... ]30 
 
 Money, use of, diminishing relatively in England ............................. 118 
 
 Money values, not the directory in international trade ....................... 172 
 
 Monopolies, how fostered, and their overthrow ................................ 290 
 
 Moors superior to the Caucasian Spaniards in the thirteenth and four 
 
 teen th cent uries .................................................................... 30 
 
 Moral improvement in restraint of fecundity .................................. 81 
 
 Morals, dependence of, upon industrial freedom .............................. 12 
 
 Mortality of the race in disordered conditions, extremely great ......... 78 
 
 Napoleon, on political economy .................................................... 191 
 
 Napoleon s popular loan .............................................................. 326 
 
 National banks, amount of deposits ............................................... 259 
 
 National bank notes, amount in circulation .................................... 145 
 
 National banking system, requires amendment ................................ 153 
 
 National debt, how paid off ......................................................... 200 
 
 Nativities of people of the United States ......................................... 35 
 
 Natural laws, adjustment of, to vai ied conditions ............................. 43 
 
358 INDEX. 
 
 Nature has not the compound pulley, the screw, or the wheel and axle 54 
 
 Nature in rebellion against human authority 1G 
 
 Nature s resistance to man s control 54 
 
 Negroes in the childhood of the race 28 
 
 Negroes not to be judged by the present standard of rank 28 
 
 Negroes, the ballot their defense 219 
 
 only skilled labor can really emancipate them 220 
 
 Negroes, women and foreigners, excluded from 0. U. A. M 278 
 
 Nervous, and reproductive systems, antagonists 79 
 
 Nervous system, relations of, to viability 78 
 
 Net profits, per centage of, defect in principle and policy 320 
 
 New England and Canada, the northern zone 38 
 
 Newspapers and books published in I860 255 
 
 Nineteenth century, prospects and promise of 31 
 
 Notes, in the rebellion, the only American money 147 
 
 Notes issued by government 145 
 
 amount issued 145 
 
 Notes of the Federal Government, the work done by 140 
 
 O 
 
 Occupancy of unlike climates merely military and commercial 31 
 
 Odd Fellows, geographic distribution of, law of climate 208 
 
 Odd Fellows, proportion of, to the voters of the Union 209 
 
 Odd Fellows, political importance of, amount of funds 270 
 
 Odd Fellows, origin, success negroes and women excluded ; Rebekah 
 
 degree, a female collateral branch 265 
 
 Odd Fellows, statistics of the Order 267 
 
 expense of membership ; rate of growth ; death rate of 267 
 
 suspensions and expulsions ; otfenses of expelled members 208 
 
 Offences, capital, number in England, diminution of 256 
 
 Opinion, force of, in fixing wages 96 
 
 Order, laws of, work through disorder 293 
 
 Order of life, a true, will secure abundance 84 
 
 Order of society, the true, delivers from evil 12 
 
 Orders, the order of the day 280 
 
 Organization, implies diversity in agreement 28 
 
 Organization of differences 217 
 
 Overtrading in foreign imports, only, injures the national finances 201 
 
 Over-population theory, protest of philosophy and philanthrophy 73 
 
 P 
 
 Paper money 133 
 
 Taper money, depreciation of 115 
 
 Participation in profits as extra wages 320, 321 
 
 Palriarchism, an unchecked despotism, and the type of all known 
 despotisms 19 
 
INDEX. 359 
 
 Patriarchism, the family rule viciously extended 249 
 
 productive industry begins ; property in the soil; money; com 
 merce initiated; slavery of men and women, worse than 
 the chattel slavery of modern times, and less favorable than 
 
 barbaric bondage 23 
 
 Pauperism, provision for 255 
 
 People, the, safe against their oppressors 292 
 
 Periodical literature, growth of in ten years 255 
 
 Perry, professor, his labor market 328 
 
 Pennsylvania s political economists 5 
 
 Pennsylvania, represeutative State of the Union 4 
 
 Petroleum replaces turpentine 63 
 
 Philosophy, the inductive, compelled to assume provision of means for 
 
 expectant ends 7-5 
 
 Political Economy, answers none of the demands of business 174 
 
 Political Economy, Daniel Webster and Napoleon, on 191 
 
 Political Economy, definition of 9 
 
 subj ects of 9 
 
 Political Economy has not yet cut its wisdom teeth G2 
 
 Political Economy lacks the characteristics of a science 2 { J7 
 
 Political Economy, limits of its province; moral, political, and religious 
 
 relat ions of : 11 
 
 Political Economy, national as opposed to cosmopolitan 174, 177 
 
 Political Economy, its doctrines must vary with conditions 177 
 
 Political Economy, vicious generalizations of 32 
 
 Political Economy, Whately s, definition of Carey s 103 
 
 Political unions, accommodate specialties of the various races 37 
 
 Population and products of France 47 
 
 Population, annual products and distributive average shares in United 
 
 States, France, and Great Britain 52 
 
 Population, density of, in Europe and America 67 
 
 Population, density of, in Great Britain 49 
 
 Population, density of, in Middle States compared with that of France 48 
 
 Populations, enormous, of antiquity 78 
 
 Population, law of increase , 71 
 
 rate of increase in the United States ; in Great Britain, Prussia, 
 
 and France 71 
 
 Popular loan in United States 325 
 
 Population of British West Indies 34 
 
 Population of Europe, but sixty-five to the square mile G2 
 
 Population of the United States, doubles in twenty-three and one-half 
 
 years; wealth in eight and one-half years 49 
 
 Population, room enough in Europe and America for nineteen times 
 
 their present number ... 62 
 
 Population, self-regulative 83 
 
360 INDEX. 
 
 Population, \aried rate of increase of, in nationalities nearly alike 71 
 
 Portugal, free trade in, and results 245 
 
 Potatoes, in France 48 
 
 Poverty, not commended by the Great Teacher 12 
 
 Precious metals, value of, is the cost of their production 114 
 
 Price, selling, of no consequence in cooperative stores 303 
 
 Prices at New York, not raised by influx of money 115 
 
 Prices, causes affecting 101 
 
 Prices, decline of, since 1817 ; and from 1855 to 1860 125 
 
 Prices, fall of, sixty per cent in English exports in thirty-five years 92 
 
 Prices, fluctuations of 100 
 
 Prices, how reduced by protective duties 226 
 
 Prices in England, reflected effect of on our crops 188 
 
 Prices of foreign goods regulated by domestic competition 225 
 
 Prices of laud and labor rise ; of products, decline 126 
 
 Produce, annual, the measure of provision for men 40 
 
 Production, definition of 107 
 
 Production in geometrical ratio to the money impulse 122 
 
 Production of food in the oldest countries increases GO 
 
 Products, domestic, proportion to foreign imports 160 
 
 Products, of 1860 over 1850, in detail 51 
 
 Products of manufactures, value of, in 1850 and 1860 in United States 93 
 
 Productive industry, its conditions 292 
 
 Productive industry, necessary to growth of man and of societies 17 
 
 Profits, larger, depend upon higher wages 89 
 
 Profits, net, in the ratio of sales 302 
 
 Progress in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.... .- 31 
 
 Progress of the last five centuries, character and aim of 250 
 
 Property in United States, pro rata share in 1850 and 1860 49 
 
 Protective doctrine of our statesmen forty years ago ; errors of. 207 
 
 Protective duties hold prices down 226 
 
 Protection and free trade 190 
 
 Protection, distributes and adapts the industries to all capacities 223, 227 
 
 Protection, doctrine and policy of 204 
 
 Protectipn does not regard market values 211 
 
 Protection favors growth of trade in money value 215 
 
 Protection in Prussia, Belgium, France, llussia 239, 240, 241, 242 
 
 Protection in the historic nations 235 
 
 Protection is not arrayed against foreign trade, but promotes it 215 
 
 Protection, its influence in economic value of trade 215 
 
 Protection, means free domestic trade ; its guiding rules 208 
 
 Protection, objections to 221 
 
 Protective policy in national history and destiny 246 
 
 Protection the reciprocal of allegiance 223 
 
 Protection unjustly classed with obsolete abuses 222 
 
INDEX. 361 
 
 Protection, what it is 205 
 
 Protection aims at diversification of domestic industries 215 
 
 Protection secures and defends the opportunity of free labor 224 
 
 Proverbs concerning wealth and power, not true 2 JO 
 
 Provisions, exports of, prices governed by quantities 188 
 
 Provision for human needs, moves faster than population 52 
 
 Pyramids and poor-houses 2G1 
 
 Q 
 
 Quantity of action of any of the functions not fixed 80 
 
 R 
 
 Races, laws of, regulating German, Italian and Austrian nationalities 37 
 
 Races, none of them cosmopolitan.... 32 
 
 Ramsay and Belknap !)<> 
 
 Rank and right of rule, determined 30 
 
 Railroads monopolize their traffic 288 
 
 Railroads of England, burdens aud rapidity of transportation 50 
 
 Rails, steel, imported, price falls under increased duties 220 
 
 Rate of increase of production in United States, in decade 1850-60 50 
 
 Raw material, in manufactures, average value of Ki .t 
 
 Raw materials, proportion of value of, to products ->3 
 
 Reformed drunkards, proselytism 272 
 
 Reformers, knowledge necessary to 12 
 
 Religion and race will not account for the ruin of the nations that have 
 
 adopted free trade 246 
 
 Remedies in history for monopoly of [tower 289 
 
 Republic, the great, its influences 253 
 
 Reproductive function, not a constant quantity 72 
 
 Reserved rights, the ruling aim of modern progress 250 
 
 Residents of United States, only seven per cent of, out of their natal 
 
 climate 35 
 
 Retail stores, their cost and burden to the poor 2t8 
 
 Revenue from customs under our protective and uriprotective tariffs 213 
 
 Revenue, only an incident to protection, but invariably follows it; 
 
 proof, in the tables of customs duties 213 
 
 Revenue reformers reduce themselves to $25,000,000 of revenue from 
 
 customs 232 
 
 Revolution in political government, returning to order 251 
 
 Revolutions, intellectual and religious in the fifteenth century 31 
 
 Revulsions neither inevitable nor inexplicable 201 
 
 Revulsion, imminent in 1800, postponed and averted by the Rebellion 
 
 and the Morrill tariff 203 
 
 Ricardo, on increasing sterility of the earth 44 
 
 Rights, not duties, the drift of modern democracy 250 
 
362 INDEX. 
 
 Rochdale Pioneers ; origin ; capital ; results in twenty-two years of trial ; 
 
 financial history; details of a grand success; self-help 300, 301 
 
 Roman money, comparative value of 113 
 
 Romans, resided only in Italy 34 
 
 Rudiments of all the higher forms, in savage society 18 
 
 Russia, communes described 311 
 
 government of... 312 
 
 Russian merchants, small proportion to the population 312 
 
 Russian population, ninety per cent rural 312 
 
 Russia, protective system, its results 242 
 
 S 
 
 Saturn, reign of, on earth 15 
 
 Sauagism, the earliest stage of society known to philosophy 1G 
 
 Savage life, badly provided for 04 
 
 Savage society, analogous to individual infancy 18 
 
 Savage state, no capital, no wages, no division of labor 86 
 
 Savage tribes, limited industry of 10 
 
 Savages, the rule of the strongest 17 
 
 Savings banks, in New England 259 
 
 Savings banks in United States, history of 250 
 
 Savings banks, origin and extent of 257 
 
 amount of deposits held in England; depositors in 257 
 
 parliamentary regulation of 258 
 
 their excellent service 258 
 
 Schools, common, in the United States 254 
 
 in Prussia 254 
 
 Schools, common, resistance of the House of Lords in 1839 254 
 
 Schultze, Herman 300, 308 
 
 Sciences, the natural, built upon the harmonies of nature 75 
 
 Scotland, banks of, excellence of the system 151 
 
 principles upon which they are conducted 152 
 
 popularity of 152 
 
 Secret orders, almost innumerable; list, of those in the City of 
 
 Philadelphia 270 
 
 Secret orders, differ from the religious sects in their relations !o each 
 
 other 278 
 
 membership in them multiplied with proportionate benefits se 
 cured 278 
 
 Secret orders, immense extension of 2(55 
 
 Secret orders of colored people 279 
 
 Secret orders, universal membership in, of the provident poor 279 
 
 Selfhood the basis of the Political Economy in vogue 250 
 
 Service value, Frederick Bastiat 87 
 
 Secret societies... .. 204 
 
INDEX. 363 
 
 Slave trade, a hundred years ago, its abolition 253 
 
 Smith, Adam, on efl ect of influx of money 117 
 
 Smith, Adam, on service of paper representatives of money 135 
 
 Smith, Say, and Mill, their dogma of competition 327 
 
 Societary forces, three classes of 252 
 
 Societary growth, stages of 250 
 
 Societary movements, their characteristics 24 .) 
 
 Sons of Temperance, beneficial provisions 273 
 
 Sons of Temperance, progress and decline of 274 
 
 Sophism of free traders, in respect to natural advantages of climate 
 
 and soil 210 
 
 SOURCES OF ADVANCEMENT IN WEALTH 54 
 
 Space not conquered as time is by the telegraph 105 
 
 Spain, cooperation in , 311 
 
 Spencer Herbert 84 
 
 Spiritualism in science 251 
 
 Springs, material and moral, in society 200, 282 
 
 Standard of value impossible 113 
 
 Statistical calculations and estimates 104 
 
 Statistics of trade and production, diU ercnccs of the authorities 107 
 
 Steam and machinery, increase wages 00 
 
 Strike of vvorkingmen in Lower Silesia 314 
 
 Substitution, instances of, vegetable for animal, and mineral for both... G4 
 
 Substitution of the abundant and cheap, for the scarce and dear 63 
 
 Substitutions of cheaper and more abundant commodities, table of. 07 
 
 Suffrage and idleness ,. 210 
 
 Suffering not greater than sin, and orderly and necessary 00 
 
 Sugur, beet-root, in France 48 
 
 Super-n&tur&l, in the mechanical powers 54 
 
 "Supply and demand," abuse of the maxim 327 
 
 T 
 
 Tariff act, the first, preamble of 100 
 
 Tariff acts from 1780 to 1812 107 
 
 Tariff of 1824, compelled by universal distress 108 
 
 Tariffs of 1824 and 1828, errors of 108 
 
 Tariff of 1828, gave abundant revenue along with adequate protection 109 
 
 Tariff of 1842, imports under per capita 202 
 
 Tariff of 1842, modified in 1840 201 
 
 Tariff of 1840, its general character 201 
 
 Tariff of 1857, imports under per capita 202 
 
 Tariffs for revenue always fail of their intention 213 
 
 Tariff for revenue with incidental protection, absurdity of 210 
 
 Temperance pledge, in numerous secret orders 276 
 
 Temperance reform, origin and progress of 272 
 
364 INDEX. 
 
 Temperance reform, origin and spread 253 
 
 Textile fabrics and metallic products unlimited 58 
 
 Theories, erroneous, of Political Economy, based upon facia in disorder 41 
 
 Thompson, George, picture of British Vule in India 245 
 
 Tobacco, exports, value of . 187 
 
 Trade between nations diversely situated 176 
 
 Trade disintegrates the man and the community 161, 102 
 
 Trade in natural products, should be across climates 173 
 
 Trade in artificial products 175 
 
 Trade, international, contributions to support of old countries 01 
 
 Trade legitimate, indicating its course 187 
 
 Trade maritime, not a peace-maker 103 
 
 Trade, must be complementary, not competitive 173 
 
 Trade of England, which imports no manufactures 215 
 
 Trade of France, which excludes manufactures 215 
 
 Trade reports, uncertainty and inaccuracy of 107 
 
 Trade unions, the insurrections that make revolutions 2 .3 
 
 Trader s philosophy, a justification of the disorders of business 328 
 
 Transportation, consuming cost of 107 
 
 merchants of old 1<>8 
 
 Transportation, defies and defeats competition 288 
 
 Transportation, exhaustive cos-t of 183 
 
 Transportation, rapidly growing into masterdom 2S .) 
 
 Transportation, relative value of foreign and domestic goods 109 
 
 Treason, only a misdemeanor in the United States 256 
 
 Tropical products, duties on, enhance price to consumers 225 
 
 Turkey, debasement of the coin 244 
 
 . history of her manufactures 243 
 
 Turkey, her free trade, audits results 243 
 
 Turkey, internal trade of, in the hands of foreign peddlers 243 
 
 U 
 
 Union of interests and efforts, force of 302 
 
 United American Mechanics, constitution and objects, members, growth, 
 
 cost of reliefs . 277 
 
 United States, capabilities and growth of; their work; their people, 
 
 and their destiny 193 
 
 rapid and frequent changes in their commercial policy 194 
 
 repression of their manufactures when they were Colonies 19-1 
 
 United States, capital, wealth, and rate of increase of. 49 
 
 United States, favorable conditions of , 316, 317 
 
 V 
 
 Value, definition of 87,89 
 
 Value, exchange standard of, impossible 113 
 
INDEX. 3G5 
 
 Value, economic, of imports, distinguished from money value ICO 
 
 Value of exports and imports, per cttpitn 165 
 
 Value of products declines as land and labor rise 89 
 
 Velocity gained by steam-power and machinery 50 
 
 Viability and fecundity adjusted to each other 78 
 
 w 
 
 Wages 80 
 
 Wages, accumulations of, in United States, afford a. sufficient capital to 
 
 make the laborers self-employing 324 
 
 Wages and capital, proportions of, in the products 97 
 
 Wages and capital, proportion of profits on manufacture 93 
 
 Wages and food , 102 
 
 Wages, comparative value, in 1814 and. in 1800 103 
 
 Wages doubled in England in 112 years 92 
 
 Wages, English, in the 17th century 91 
 
 Wages, equitable increase in, under the law of distribution 88 
 
 Wages, growth of, governed by a general law 94 
 
 Wagos, how affected by protection and free trade 227 
 
 Wages in the United States, increase fifteen per cent in ten years, 
 
 double in forty-seven years 94 
 
 Wages, increase of, due to cooperating capital, but, not at, its loss 96 
 
 Wages keep pace with growth of general wealth 94 
 
 Wages, leveling tendency in rise of 99 
 
 Wages, nominal and real 00 
 
 Wages of men doubled in money, increased fourfold in purchasing power 
 
 over their own products 102 
 
 Wages of skilled labor in 17th century, and rise of in 18th and 19ih 
 
 centuries 90 
 
 Wages of women have tripled, while those of men doubled 98 
 
 Wages outgrow the profits of cooperating capital . 94 
 
 Wages, provision for increase of, traced to its source 95 
 
 Wages, proportion of, to value of products 93 
 
 Wages rise in proportion to productiveness of capital and labor 93 
 
 Wages rise in the inverse ratio of the cost of products 93 
 
 Wages rise with increase of money, why 125 
 
 Wages rise with profits 89 
 
 Wages, rise of, with decline of price in commodities 92 
 
 Wages system, its character 284 
 
 Wages, the index of productiveness 103 
 
 War, origin of, among savages 10 
 
 Washington s domestic coat 190 
 
 Washington on the happy results of the first tariff act 190 
 
 Waste of life not required to correct its excess 42 
 
 Water gas, an equali/er of national industries 08 
 
366 INDEX. 
 
 Water gas, will replace England s exhausted coal G8 
 
 Wealth and population, relative growth of, in Great Britain v 47 
 
 Wealth, answers to culture under natural laws 41 
 
 Wealth, British, how estimated 40 
 
 Weight carried on English railroads 5(5 
 
 Wealth, distribution of 80 
 
 Wealth, distribution of, in barbarism in civilization 80 
 
 Wealth, distributive shares, double in England in twenty-five years 47 
 
 Wealth, growth of, accelerating in Great Britain 45 
 
 Wealth, growth of, according to Gladstone 40 
 
 Wealth, growth of English, since she used American cotton 02 
 
 Wealth, growth of, in Great Britain, according to Joseph Lowe 45 
 
 Wealth, growth of, in Great Britain, according to Leone Levi 45 
 
 Wealth, growth of, its indications 57 
 
 Wealth, growth of the general; power of capital over labor 290 
 
 Wealth, increases in England three and one-half per cent per annum, 
 doubling once in twenty years, or two and a half times faster than 
 
 population 40 
 
 Wealth, in United States, average share of inhabitants 49 
 
 Wealth is power at compound interest 41 
 
 Wealth of England, mode of estimating it 107 
 
 Wealth of the masses 325 
 
 Wealth of the people in contrast with that of the rich 291 
 
 WEALTH, THE LAWS AND CONDITIONS OP ITS GBOWTII ." 40 
 
 Wealth, the measure of man s power over nature 41 
 
 Webster, Daniel, on Political Economy 191 
 
 Whale fisheries, conducted by cooperation 324 
 
 Wheat, grown in France 48 
 
 Wheat, home consumption of 185 
 
 Wheat, in England, quantity to the acre 01 
 
 Wheat in the United States, average crop of , 01 
 
 Wheat, Mediterranean, grown on the oldest soil in Europe 01 
 
 Wheat, potatoes, and animal food, equivalents of 05 
 
 Wheat, price of in 1661, 1840, and 1865, in England 91 
 
 Wheat, unchanged in price in 170 years 92 
 
 Williamson and Marshall, on the distresses of the period preceding the 
 
 Federal Union 195 
 
 Women arid negroes, excluded by K. of P 272 
 
 Women and negroes excluded from Order of Odd Fellows 200 
 
 Women, being more and more admitted into secret orders 279 
 
 Women employed in manufactures, number and wages 218 
 
 Women excluded by S. of T., till lately 275 
 
 causes of decline of the Order 275 
 
 Women, improved condition of 101 
 
 wages, real, increased six times in 50 years... 102 
 
INDEX. 367 
 
 Women, statistics of their employments in I860 211) 
 
 Women, their dependence upon diversified industry 217 
 
 Women, their interest in protection; must work if they would rule 218 
 
 Women, wages of, have tripled while those of men doubled 98 
 
 Women, wages of, proportion to those of men* U:> 
 
 Women s wages, rise in purchasing power 101 
 
 Workingmen s union in Prussia, principles of 313 
 
 Y 
 
 Young, Arthur, estimate of relative increase of money and prices 124 
 
 Z 
 
 Zollverein, its happy adaptation to German industry 211 
 
 Zollverein, principle of protection discarded valuations 211 
 
 Zollverein, results of, in Germany . 212 
 
CATALOGUE 
 
 OP 
 
 PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BOOKS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 HENRY CAREY BAIRD, 
 
 INDUSTRIAL PUBLISHER, 
 
 UXTo- 4O6 "W.A. 31, HXT TJ T STIREET, 
 PHILADKLPHIA. 
 
 1 Any of the Books comprised in this Catalogue will be se nt by mail, 
 
 free of postage, at the publication price. 
 3*" MY NEW AND ENLARGED CATALOGUE, 95 pages Svo., with full descriptions 
 of Books, will be sent, free of postage, to any one who will favor me 
 with his address. 
 
 A RMENGAUD, AMOUROUX, AND JOHNSON. THE PRACTICAL 
 " DRAUGHTSMAN S BOOK OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, AND 
 MACHINIST S AND ENGINEER S DRAWING COMPANION: 
 Forming a complete course of Mechanical Engineering and 
 Architectural Drawing. From the French of M. Armengaud 
 the elder, Prof, of Design in the Conservatoire of Arts and 
 Industry, Paris, and MM. Armengaud the younger and Amou- 
 roux, Civil Engineers. Rewritten and arranged, with addi 
 tional matter and plates, selections from and examples of the 
 most useful and generally employed mechanism of the day. 
 By WILLIAM JOHNSON, Assoc. Inst. C. E., Editor of "The 
 Practical Mechanic s Journal." Illustrated by 50 folio steel 
 plates and 50 wood-cuts. A new edition, 4to. . $10 00 
 
 ARLOT. A COMPLETE GUIDE FOR COACH PAINTERS. 
 
 Translated from the French of M. ARLOT, Coach Painter; late 
 Master Painter for eleven years with M. Ehrler, Coach Manufac 
 turer, Paris. With important American additions . . $1 25 
 
 A RROWSMITH. PAPER-HANGER S COMPANION : 
 
 A Treatise in which the Practical Operations of the Trade are 
 Systematically laid down: with Copious Directions Prepara 
 tory to Papering; Preventives against the Effect of Damp on 
 Walls; the Various Cements and Pastes adapted to the Seve 
 ral Purposes of the Trade; Observations and Directions for 
 the Panelling and Ornamenting of Rooms, &c. By JAMES 
 ARROWSMITH. 12mo., cloth . . . . . 1 25 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 T>AIRD. THE AMERICAN COTTON SPINNER, AND MANA- 
 - GER S AND CARDER S GUIDE : 
 
 A Practical Treatise on Cotton Spinning; giving the Dimen 
 sions and Speed of Machinery, Draught and Twist Calcula 
 tions, etc.; with notices of recent Improvements: together 
 with Rules and Examples for making changes in the sizes and 
 numbers of Roving and Yarn. Compiled from the papers of 
 the late ROBERT H. BAIRD. 12mo. . . . $1 50 
 
 DAKER. LONG-SPAN RAILWAY BRIDGES : 
 
 Comprising Investigations of the Comparative Theoretical and 
 Practical Advantages of the various Adopted or Proposed Type 
 Systems of Construction; with numerous Formulae and Ta 
 bles. By B. Baker. 12mo $2 00 
 
 T) AKEWELL. A MANUAL OF ELECTRICITY PRACTICAL AND 
 
 D THEORETICAL : 
 
 By F. C. BAKEWELL, Inventor of the Copying Telegraph. Se 
 cond Edition. Revised and enlarged. Illustrated by nume 
 rous engravings. 12mo. Cloth .... 
 
 "DEANS A TREATISE ON RAILROAD CURVES AND THE LO- 
 D CATION OF RAILROADS : 
 
 By E. W. BEAKS, C. E. 12mo. ... $200 
 
 TYLENKARN. PRACTICAL SPECIFICATIONS OF WORKS EXE- 
 " CUTED IN ARCHITECTURE, CIVIL AND MECHANICAL 
 ENGINEERING, AND IN ROAD MAKING AND SEWER 
 ING: 
 
 To which are added a series of practically useful Agreements 
 and Reports. By JOHN BLENKARN. Illustrated by fifteen 
 large folding plates. Svo. . . . . . 9 00 
 
 DLINN. A PRACTICAL WORKSHOP COMPANION FOR TIN, 
 SHEET-IRON, AND COPPER-PLATE WORKERS : 
 
 Containing Rules for Describing various kinds of Patterns 
 used by Tin, Sheet-iron, and Copper-plate Workers ; Practical 
 Geometry; Mensuration of Surfaces and Solids; Tables of the 
 Weight of Metals, Lead Pipe, etc.; Tables of Areas and Cir 
 cumferences of Circles ; Japans, Varnishes, Lackers, Cements, 
 Compositions, etc. etc. By LEROY J. BLINN, Master Me 
 chanic. With over One Hundred Illustrations, 12mo. 260 
 
HEMRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 B 
 
 OOTH.-MARELE WORKER S MANUAL: 
 
 Containing Practical Information respecting Marbles in gene 
 ral, their Cutting, Working, and Polishing ; Veneering of 
 Marble ; Mosaics ; Composition and Use of Artificial Marble, 
 Stuccos, Cements, Receipts, Secrets, etc. etc. Translated 
 from the French by M. L. BOOTH. With an Appendix con 
 cerning American Marbles. 12mo., cloth . . $1 50 
 
 DOOTH AND MORFIT. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHEMISTRY, 
 
 PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL : 
 
 Embracing its application to the Arts, Metallurgy, Mineralogy, 
 Geology, Medicine, and Pharmacy. By JAMES C. BOOTH, 
 Melter and Refiner in the United States Mint, Professor of 
 Applied Chemistry in the Franklin Institute, etc., assisted by 
 CAMPBELL MORFIT, author of "Chemical Manipulations," etc. 
 Seventh edition. Complete in one volume, royal 8vo., 978 
 pages, with numerous wood-cuts and other illustrations. 5 00 
 
 pOWDITCH, ANALYSIS, TECHNICAL VALUATION, PURIFI- 
 
 CATION, AND USE OF COAL GAS : 
 
 By Rev. W. R. BOWBITCII. Illustrated with wood engrav 
 ings. 8vo $6 50 
 
 pOX. PRACTICAL HYDRAULICS : 
 
 A Series of Rules and Tables for the use of Engineers, etc. 
 By THOMAS Box. 12mo. $2 50 
 
 nUCKMASTER. THE ELEMENTS OF MECHANICAL PHYSICS : 
 By J. C. BUCKMASTER, late Student in the Government School 
 of Mines ; Certified Teacher of Science by the Department of 
 Science and Art; Examiner in Chemistry and Physics in tho 
 Royal College of Preceptors; and late Lecturer in Chemistry 
 and Physics of the Royal Polytechnic Institute. Illustrated 
 with numerous engravings. In one vol. 12mo. . $1 50 
 
 B 
 
 ULLOCK. THE AMERICAN COTTAGE BUILDER : 
 
 A Series of Designs, Plans, and Specifications, from $200 to 
 to $20,000 for Homes for the People; together with Warm 
 ing, Ventilation, Drainage, Painting, .and Landscape Garden 
 ing. By JOHN BULLOCK, Architect, Civil Engineer, Mechani 
 cian, and Editor of "The Rudiments of Architecture and 
 Building," etc. Illustrated by 75 engravings. In one vol. 
 8vo. . . $3 50 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 mLLOCK. THE RUDIMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE AND 
 
 D BUILDING: 
 
 For the use of Architects, Builders, Draughtsmen, Machin 
 ists, Engineers, and Mechanics. Edited by JOHN BULLOCK, 
 author of "The American Cottage Builder." Illustrated by 
 250 engravings. In one volume 8vo. . . . $3 50 
 
 DURGH. PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF LAND AND MA- 
 
 - RINE ENGINES : 
 
 Showing in detail the Modern Improvements of High and Low 
 Pressure, Surface Condensation, and Super-heating, together 
 with Land and Marine Boilers. By N. P. BURGH, Engineer. 
 Illustrated by twenty plates, double elephant folio, with text. 
 
 $21 00 
 
 TjTJRGH. PRACTICAL RULES FOR THE PROPORTIONS OF 
 
 D MODERN ENGINES AND BOILERS FOR LAND AND MA 
 RINE PURPOSES. 
 By N. P. BURG u, Engineer. 12mo. . . . $2 00 
 
 DTJRGH. THE SLIDE-VALVE PRACTICALLY CONSIDERED : 
 By N. P. BURGH, author of " A Treatise on Sugar Machinery," 
 "Practical Illustrations of Land and Marine Engines," "A 
 Pocket-Book of Practical Rules for Designing Land and Ma 
 rine Engines, Boilers," etc. etc. etc. Completely illustrated. 
 12mo. . . $2 00 
 
 pYRN. THE COMPLETE PRACTICAL BREWER : 
 
 Or, Plain, Accurate, and Thorough Instructions in the Art of 
 Brewing Beer, Ale, Porter, including the Process of making 
 Bavarian Beer, all the Small Beers, such as Root-beer, Ginger- 
 pop, Sarsaparilla-beer, Mead, Spruce beer, etc. etc. Adapted 
 to the use of Public Brewers and Private Families. By M. LA 
 FAYETTE BYRN, M. D. With illustrations. 12mo. $125 
 
 TDYR2T. THE COMPLETE PRACTICAL DISTILLER : 
 
 Comprising the most perfect and exact Theoretical and Prac 
 tical Description of the Art of Distillation and Rectification ; 
 including all of the most recent improvements in distilling 
 apparatus; instructions for preparing spirits from the nume 
 rous vegetables, fruits, etc. ; directions for the distillation and 
 preparation of all kinds of brandies and other spirits, spiritu 
 ous and other compounds, etc. etc. ; all of which is so simpli 
 fied that it is adapted not only to the use of extensive distil 
 lers, but for every farmer, or others who may wish to engage 
 in the art of distilling By M. LA FAYETTE BYRN, M. D, 
 
 .- With numerous engravings. In one jpume, 12mo. $1 5,0 
 ?x 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE 
 
 pYRNE. POCKET BOOK FOR RAILROAD AND CIVIL 
 
 NEERS : 
 
 Containing New, Exact, and Concise Methods for Laying out 
 Railroad Curves, Switches, Frog Angles and Crossings; the 
 Staking out of work; Levelling; the Calculation of Cut 
 tings; Embankments; Earth-work, etc. By OLIVER BYRNE. 
 Illustrated, 18mo., full bound . . . . $1 75 
 
 pYRNE.THE HANDBOOK FOR THE ARTISAN, MECHANIC, 
 AND ENGINEER : 
 
 By OLIVEK BYRNE. Illustrated by 185 Wood Engravings. Svo. 
 
 $5 00 
 
 TDYRNE. THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF PRACTICAL ME- 
 CHANICS : 
 
 For Engineering Students, based on the Principle of Work. 
 By OLIVER BYRNE. Illustrated by Numerous Wood Engrav 
 ings, 12mo $3 63 
 
 T5YRNE. THE PRACTICAL METAL-WORKER S ASSISTANT; 
 Comprising Metallurgic Chemistry; the Arts of Working all 
 Metals and Alloys ; Forging of Iron and Steel ; Hardening and 
 Tempering; Melting and Mixing; Casting and Founding; 
 Works in Sheet Metal ; the Processes Dependent on the 
 Ductility of the Metals ; Soldering ; and the most Improved 
 Processes and Tools employed by Metal-Workers. With the 
 Application of the Art of Electro-Metallurgy to Manufactu 
 ring Processes ; collected from Original Sources, and from the 
 Works of Holtzapffel, Bergeron, Leupold, Plumier, Napier, and 
 others. By OLIVER BYRNE. A New, Revised, and improved 
 Edition, with Additions by John Scoflfern, M. B , William Clay, 
 Win. Fairbairn, F. R. S., and James Napier. With Five Hun 
 dred and Ninety-two Engravings ; Illustrating every Branch 
 of the Subject. In one volume, Svo. 652 pages . $7 00 
 
 "pYRNE. THE PRACTICAL MODEL CALCULATOR: 
 
 For the Engineer, Mechanic, Manufacturer of Engine Work, 
 Naval Architect, Miner, and Millwright. By OLIVER BYRNE. 
 1 volume, 8vo., nearly GOO pages . . . . $4 50 
 
 DEMROSE. MANUAL OF WOOD CARVIN3 : With Practical II- 
 
 lustuations for Learners of the Art, and Original and Selected de 
 signs. By WILLIAM BEMUOSE, Jr. With an Introduction by 
 LLEWELLYN JEWITT, F. S. A., etc. With 128 Illustrations. 4to., 
 cloth $3 00 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 DAIRD. PROTECTION OF HOME LABOR AND HOME PRO- 
 - DUCTIONS NECESSARY TO THE PROSPERITY OF THE 
 
 AMERICAN FARMER: 
 
 By HENRY CAREY BAIRD. 8vo., paper . 10 
 
 DAIRD. THE RIGHTS OF AMERICAN FR6DUCERS, AND THE 
 
 WRONGS OF BRITISH FREE TRADE REVENUE REFORM. 
 
 By HISNRY CAREY BAIRD. (1870) .... 5 
 
 TDAIRD. SOME OF THE FALLACIES OF BRITISH-FREE-TRADE 
 D REVENUE-REFORM. 
 
 Two Letters to Prof. A. L. Perry, of Williams College, Mass. By 
 HENRY CAREY BAIRD. (1871.) Paper .... 5 
 
 AIRD. STANDARD WAGES COMPUTING TABLES: 
 
 An Improvement in all former Methods of Computation, so ar 
 ranged that wages for days, hours, or fractions of hours, at a spe 
 cified rate per day or hour, may be ascertained at a glance. By 
 T. SPANGLER BAIRD. Oblong folio $5 00 
 
 DAUERMAN. TREATISE ON THE METALLURGY OF IRON. 
 Illustrated. 12mo. . $2 50 
 
 B 
 
 B 
 
 ICKNELL ,8 VILLAGE BUILDER. 
 
 55 large plates. 4to $10 00 
 
 BISHOP. A HISTORY OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURES: 
 
 From 1608 to 1866 ; exhibiting the Origin and Growth of the Prin 
 cipal Mechanic Arts and Manufactures, from the Earliest Colonial 
 Period to the Present Time ; By J. LEAXDER BISHOP, M. D., ED 
 WARD YOUNG, and EDWIN T. FREEDLEY. Three vols. 8vo., 
 
 $10 00 
 
 nOX. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON HEAT AS APPLIED TO 
 
 D THE USEFUL ARTS: 
 
 For the use of Engineers, Architects, etc. By THOMAS Box, au 
 thor of "Practical Hydraulics." Illustrated by 14 plates, con 
 taining 114 figures. 12mo $4 25 
 
 QABINET MAKER S ALBUM OF FURNITURE : 
 
 Comprising a Collection of Designs for the Newest and Most 
 Elegant Styles of Furniture. Illustrated by Forty-eight Large 
 and Beautifully Engraved Plates. In one volume, oblong 
 
 $5 OC 
 
 QHAPMAN. A TREATISE ON ROPE-MAKING : 
 
 As practised in private and public Rope-yards, with a Description 
 of the Manufacture, Rules, Tables of Weights, etc., adapted to the 
 Trade ; Shipping, Mining, Railways, Builders, etc. By ROBERT 
 CHAPMAN. 24mo . . . $1 50 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 7 
 
 pRAIK. THE PRACTICAL AMERICAN MILLWRIGHT AND 
 
 W MILLER. 
 
 Comprising the Elementary Principles of Mechanics, Me 
 chanism, and Motive Power, Hydraulics and Hydraulic 
 Motors, Mill-dams, Saw Mills, Grist Mills, the Oat Meal Mill, 
 the Barley Mill, Wool Carding, and Cloth Fulling and Dress 
 ing, Wind Mills, Steam Power, &c. By DAVID CKAIK, Mill 
 wright. Illustrated hy numerous wood engravings, and five 
 folding plates. 1 vol. 8vo. . . . . $5 00 
 
 riAMPIN. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MECHANICAL EN 
 GINEERING: 
 
 Comprising Metallurgy, Moulding, Casting, Forging, Tools, 
 Workshop Machinery, Mechanical Manipulation, Manufacture 
 of Stearn-engines, etc. etc. With an Appendix on the Ana 
 lysis of Iron and Iron Ores. By FRANCIS CAM PIN, C. E. To 
 which are added, Observations on the Construction of Steam 
 Boilers, and Remarks upon Furnaces used for Smoke Preven 
 tion ; with a Chapter on Explosions. By R. Armstrong, C. E., 
 and John Bourne. Rules for Calculating the Change Wheels 
 for Screws on a Turning Lathe, and for a Wheel-cutting 
 Machine. By J. LA NICCA. Management of Steel, including 
 Forging, Hardening, Tempering, Annealing, Shrinking, and 
 Expansion. And the Case-hardening of Iron. By G. EDE. 
 8vo. Illustrated with 29 plates and 100 wood engravings. 
 
 $6 00 
 
 pAMPIN. THE PRACTICE OF HAND-TURNING IN WOOD, 
 U IVORY, SHELL, ETC. ? 
 
 With Instructions for Turning such works in Metal as may be 
 required in the Practice of Turning Wood, Ivory, etc. Also 
 an Appendix on Ornamental Turning. By FUANCIS CAMPIN , 
 with Numerous Illustrations, ]2mo., cloth . . $3 00 
 
 p APRON DE DOLE DUSSAUCE. BLUES AND CARMINES OF 
 U INDIGO. 
 
 A Practical Treatise on the Fabrication of every Commercial 
 Product derived from Indigo. By FELICIEN CAPRON DE DOLE 
 Translated, with important additions, by Professor II. DUS 
 SAUCE. 12mo. 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 . THE WORKS OF HENRY c. CAREY : 
 
 CONTRACTION OR EXPANSION? REPUDIATION OR RE 
 SUMPTION? Letters to Hon. Hugh McCulloch. 8vo. 38 
 
 FINANCIAL CRISES, their Causes and Effects. 8vo. paper 
 
 25 
 
 HARMONY OF INTERESTS; Agricultural, Manufacturimg, 
 
 and Commercial. 8vo., paper . . . . . $1 00 
 
 Do. do. cloth . . . $1 50 
 
 LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 Paper $1 00 
 
 MANUAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. Condensed from Carey s 
 " Principles of Social Science." By KATE McKEAN. 1 vol. 
 12mo $2 25 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WORKS: comprising Harmony of Inter 
 ests," "Money," "Letters to the President," "French and 
 American Tariffs," "Financial Crises," "The Way to Outdo 
 England without Fighting Her," "Resources of the Union," 
 "The Public Debt," "Contraction or Expansion," "Review 
 of the Decade 1857 07," "Reconstruction," etc. etc. 1 vol. 
 8vo., cloth $4 50 
 
 MONEY: A LECTURE before the N. Y. Geographical and Sta 
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HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
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HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 71 
 
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HENHY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 13 
 
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14 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
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 TTUEST. A HAND-BOOK FOE AECHITECTUEAL SUEVEYOES : 
 
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HENRY CAHEY BATRD S CATALOGUE, 15 
 
 1ENTISH. A TKEATISE ON A BOX OF INSTRUMENTS, 
 
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16 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
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 TEROUX, A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE MANUFAC- 
 
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HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 17 
 
 MAIN AND BROWN. QUESTIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 
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 one volume, Svo $2 00 
 
 M 
 
 N 
 
18 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 . A SYSTEM OF CHEMISTRY APPLIED TO DYEING : 
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 VTEWBERY. GLEANINGS FROM ORNAMENTAL ART OF 
 1N EVERY STYLE; 
 
 Drawn from Examples in the British, South Kensington, Indian, 
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 1862, and the best English and Foreign works. In a series of one 
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 JJICHOLSON. A MANUAL OF THE ART OF BOOK-BINDING: 
 
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 edges and Paper. By JAMES B. NICHOLSON. Illustrated. 12mo. 
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 fJORRIS. A HAND-BOOK FOR LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS AND 
 
 1)1 MACHINISTS: 
 
 Comprising the Proportions and Calculations for Constructing 
 Locomotives ; Manner of Setting Valves ; Tables of Squares, 
 Cubes, Areas, etc. etc. By SEPTIMUS NORRIS, Civil and Me 
 chanical Engineer. New edition. Illustrated, 12mo., cloth 
 
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 STROM. ON TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND THE 
 CONSTRUCTION OF SHIPS AND SCREW PROPELLERS : 
 
 For Naval and Marine Engineers. By JOHN W. NYSTROM, late 
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 Q NEILL. A DICTIONARY OF DYEING AND CALICO PRINT- 
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 Containing a brief account of all the Substances and Processes in 
 use in the Art of Dyeing and Printing Textile Fabrics : with Prac 
 tical Receipts and Scientific Information. By CHARLES O NEILL, 
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 Member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester ; 
 Author of Chemistry of Calico Printing and Dyeing. " To which 
 is added An Essay on Coal Tar Colors and their Application to 
 
 N Y 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 19 
 
 Dyeing and Calico Printing. By A. A. FESQUET, Chemist and 
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 Easton, Pa. Illustrated by 230 Engravings on Wood, and 6 
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 pAINTER, GILDER, AND VARNISHER S COMPANION : 
 
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 Arts of Painting, Gilding, Varnishing, and Glass Staining, with 
 numerous useful and valuable Receipts; Tests for the Detection 
 of Adulterations in Oils and Colors, and a statement of the Dis 
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 are particularly liable, with the simplest methods of Prevention 
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 pALLETT. THE MILLER S, MILLWRIGHT S, AND ENGI- 
 
 * NEER S GUIDE. 
 
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 pZRKINS. GAS AND VENTILATION. 
 
 Practical Treatise on Gas and Ventilation. With Special Relation 
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 pEEKINS AND STOWE. A NEW GUIDE TO THE SHEET-IRON 
 
 X AND BOILER PLATE ROLLER: 
 
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 the Bar or Wire Gauge of the fractional parts of an inch ; the 
 Weight per sheet, and the Thickness on the Wire Gauge of Sheet- 
 iron of various dimensions to weigh 112 Ibs. per bundle ; and the 
 conversion of Short Weight into Long Weight, and Long Weight 
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 $2 50 
 
20 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
 PHILLIPS AND DARLINGTON. RECORDS OF MINING AND 
 
 * METALLURGY : 
 
 Or, Facts and Memoranda for the use of the Mine Agent and 
 Smelter. By J. ARTHUR PHILLIPS, Mining Engineer, Graduate of 
 the Imperial School of Mines, France, etc., and JOHN DARLINGTON. 
 Illustrated hy numerous engravings. In one vol. 12mo. . $2 00 
 
 pRADAL, MALEPEYRE, AND DUSSATJCE. A COMPLETE 
 
 X TREATISE ON PERFUMERY: 
 
 Containing notices of the Raw Material used in the Ait, and the 
 Best Formula;. According to the most approved Methods followed 
 in France, England, and the United States. By M. P. PRADAL, 
 Perfumer-Chemist, and M. F. MALEPEYRE. Translated from the 
 French, with extensive additions, by Prof. H. DUSSATJCE. 8vo. $10 
 
 pROTEAUX. PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR THE MANUFACTURE 
 
 - 1 - OF PAPER AND BOARDS. 
 
 By A. PROTEATJX, Civil Engineer, and Graduate of the School of 
 Arts and Manufactures, Director of Thiers s Paper Mill, Puy-de- 
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HENRY CAREY BATRD S CATALOGUE. 21 
 
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22 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
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 rpE 
 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 23 
 
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24 HENRY CAREY BAIRD S CATALOGUE. 
 
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