Whig Partisan Describes Party’s Political Economy

HENRY CAREY, The Harmony of Interests (1851)

Henry C. Carey (1793–1879) was a leading Whig intellectual and political economist. It was largely through his efforts that the Whigs transformed from merely an anti-Jackson party into a party with a coherent political philosophy. Carey’s 1851 book, The Harmony of Interests, conveys the Whig view of government as a legitimate and necessary spur to economic development. Whereas Jackson saw such efforts as enriching the wealthy at the expense of the poor, Carey argued that the interests of rich and poor harmonized in a robust economy. In this section, Carey defends protectionism by countering the arguments from “free trade” Democrats.

If protection be a “war upon labour and capital,” it must tend to prevent the growth of wealth, and thus to deteriorate the political condition of man.

The farmer who exchanges his food with the man who produces iron by means of horses, wagons, canal-boats, merchants, ships, and sailors, gives much food for little iron. The iron man, who exchanges his products for food through the instrumentality of the same machinery, gives much iron for little food. The chief part of the product is swallowed up by the men who stand between, and grow rich while the producers remain poor. The growth of wealth is thus prevented, and inequality of political condition is maintained.

The farmer who exchanges directly with the producer of iron gives labour for labour. Both thus grow rich, because the class that desires to stand between has no opportunity of enriching themselves at their expense. Equality of condition is thus promoted.

The object of protection is that of bringing the consumer of food to take his place by the side of the producer of food, and thus promoting the growth of wealth and the improvement of political condition. That it does produce that effect, is obvious from the fact that, in periods of protection, such vast numbers seek our shores, and that immigration becomes stationary, or diminishes, with every approach towards that system which is usually denominated free trade.

The colonial system is based upon cheap labour. Protection seeks to increase the reward of labour. The one fills factories with children of tender years, and expels men to Canada and Australia; the other unites the men and sends the children to school.

The Irishman at home is a slave. He prays for permission to remain and pay in pounds sterling for quarters of acres, and his request is refused. Transfer him here and he becomes a freeman, choosing his employer and fixing the price of his labour. The Highlander is a slave that would gladly remain at home; but he is expelled to make room for sheep. One-ninth of the population of England are slaves to the parish beadle, eating the bread of enforced charity, and a large portion of the remaining eight-ninths are slaves to the policy which produces a constant recurrence of chills and fevers — overwork at small wages at one time, and no work at any wages at another. Transfer them here and they become freemen, selecting their employers and fixing the hours and the reward of labour. The Hindoo is a slave. His landlord’s officers fix the quantity of land that he must cultivate, and the rent he must pay. He is not allowed, on payment even of the high survey assessment fixed on each field, to cultivate only those fields to which he gives the preference; his task is assigned to him, and he is constrained to occupy all such fields as are allotted to him by the revenue officers, and whether he cultivates them or not, he is saddled with the rent of all. If driven by these oppressions to fly and seek a subsistence elsewhere, he is followed wherever he goes and oppressed at discretion, or deprived of the advantages he might expect from a change of residence. If he work for wages, he is paid in money when grain is high, and in grain when it is low. He, therefore, has no power to determine the price of his labour. Could he be transferred here, he would be found an efficient labourer, and would consume more cotton in a week than he now does in a year, and by the change his political condition would be greatly improved.

Protection looks to the improvement of the political condition of the human race. To accomplish that object, it is needed that the value of man be raised, and that men should everywhere be placed in a condition to sell their labour to the highest bidder — to the man who will give in return the largest quantity of food, clothing, shelter, and other of the comforts of life. To enable the Hindoo to sell his labour and to fix its price, it is necessary to raise the price of his chief product, cotton. That is to be done by increasing the consumption, and that object is to be attained by diminishing the waste of labour attendant upon its transit between the producer and the consumer. Fill this country with furnaces and mills, and railroads will be made in every direction, and the consumption of cotton will speedily rise to twenty pounds per head, while millions of European labourers, mechanics, farmers, and capitalists will cross the Atlantic, and every million will be a customer for one-fourth as much as was consumed by the people of Great Britain and Ireland in 1847. The harmony of the interests of the cotton-growers throughout the world is perfect, and all the discord comes from the power of the exchangers to produce apparent discord.

It is asserted, however, that protection tends to build up a body of capitalists at the expense of the consumer, and thus produce inequality of condition. That such is the effect of inadequate protection is not to be doubted. So long as we continue under a necessity for seeking in England a market for our surplus products, her markets will fix the price for the world, and so long as we shall continue to be under a necessity for seeking there a small supply of cloth or iron, so long will the prices in her markets fix the price of all, and the domestic producer of cloth and iron will profit by the difference of freight both out and home. With this profit he takes the risk of ruin, which is of perpetual occurrence among the men of small capitals. Those who are already wealthy have but to stop their furnaces or mills until prices rise, and then they have the markets to themselves, for their poorer competitors have been ruined. Such is the history of many of the large fortunes accumulated by the manufacture of cloth and iron in this country, and such the almost universal history of every effort to establish manufactures south and west of New England.

Inadequate and uncertain protection benefits the farmer and planter little, while the uncertainty attending it tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, thus producing social and political inequality.

Adequate and certain protection, on the contrary, tends to the production of equality — first, because by its aid the necessity for depending on foreign markets for the sale of our products, or the supply of our wants, will be brought to an end, and thenceforth the prices, being fixed at home, will be steady, and then the smaller capitalist will be enabled to maintain competition with the larger one, with great advantage to the consumers — farmers, planters, and labourers; and, second, because its benefits will be, as they always have been, felt chiefly by the many with whom the price of labour constitutes the sole fund out of which they are to be maintained.

Henry C. Carey, The Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial (Philadelphia: J. S. Skinner, 1851), 214–215.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS