Henry Charles Carey: Nineteenth-Century Sociologist 9781512816402

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Henry

Charles

Carey

HENRY CHARLES CAREY NINETEENTH-CENTURY

SOCIOLOGIST

By

ARNOLD W. GREEN

PHILADELPHIA

U N I V E R S I T Y OF P E N N S Y L V A N I A PRESS

1951

Copyright 1951

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS Manufactured

in the United States of America

LONDON: GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

To Ellen

Contents 1.

F A T H E R AND SON

1

2.

SOCIOLOGICAL T H E O R Y

50

3.

E M P I R I C A L SOCIOLOGY

105

4.

T H E ORIGINS OF CAREY'S SOCIAL SCIENCE

144

5.

INFLUENCE

172

6.

PLACE IN INTELLECTUAL H I S T O R Y

193

BIBLIOGRAPHY

205

INDEX

215

1

F a t h e r and S on

of modern social science is a quest, centuries long, after a solution to social problems. Modern social science, in its insistence upon analysis rather than evaluation, has yet not altogether forsaken the zeal of social reform. The original prophet who left the hills to denounce the fleshpots of the town has many living intellectual descendants. Henry C. Carey was a transitional figure in American social science, not so much because his system was based upon an avowed reform intent, but because his proselytizing zeal was unqualified by any concern over the expression of value judgments, such a concern having become intellectually fashionable only within the past few decades. Mathew Carey, his father, bequeathed to his son this reform purpose, with its attendant set of values. Henry Carey's career may be interpreted as the fulfillment of this intellectual legacy from his father. T H E TAPROOT

Mathew Carey was born to Christopher and Mary Sheridan Carey in Dublin, Ireland, on January 28, 1760. His father, a baker of considerable means, gave each of his five sons an excellent education for those times, although Mathew later freely admitted he had been a dull boy in school. A nurse once dropped the infant Mathew, and disciples of Adler may leap at the opportunity to explain his early litigiousness as overcompensation for the limp which plagued him all his life.1 1 Kenneth H. Rowe, Mathew Carey, A Study in American Economic Development, p. 10. The two other main biographical sources used are: Earl L. Bradsher, Mathew Carey—Editor, Author and Publisher and the Mathew Carey Autobiography, which

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Against his father's wishes, at the age of fifteen, Mathew succeeded in getting himself apprenticed to a printer, one McDonnel. But the book trade did not afford him the opportunity he was seeking to attack the British persecution of his fellow Irish Catholics. In 1799 he wrote a pamphlet urging a revision of the entire penal code. The Catholic Party in Dublin, being more fearful of authority than he, posted a reward of forty pounds for his apprehension. He hastily left for Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin, the latter engaging him to reprint his dispatches from America. When affairs at home were no longer focused on him, he returned and proceeded to edit a paper, The Freeman's Journal. Not feeling free to print what he wished, he persuaded his father to aid him in acquiring and editing the Volunteers Journal on October 13, 1783—devoted to a recurrent denunciation of British interference with Irish liberties. On April 7 the House of Commons ordered his arrest. Imprisoned in Newgate, he secured his release on May 14. Since the Premier was then instituting libel proceedings against him, Mathew decided to sell his paper to his brother and emigrate to America, September 7, 1784. Boarding the America in female dress, he soon lost half of the twenty-five guineas he had brought with him to a gang of shipboard sharpers. What was left intact was his hatred for England, a consistently dominant note in his later writings, which was carried over into the work of his son. Lafayette, his good friend, gave him four hundred pounds (which he later returned with interest) to start the paper first appeared as a series of letters in the New England Magazine. There is also a long biographical sketch by Michael Hennessy, clipped and mounted from the Irish American, n.d., to be found in the Mathew Carey Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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Pennsylvania Herald, in January of 1785. He soon became involved in a personal-political quarrel with Colonel Eleazer Oswald, publisher of the anti-foreign organ of the AntiConstitutionalist Party of Pennsylvania, later to become the Federalist Party. Carey's paper supported the newly organized Society for the Lately Adopted Sons of Pennsylvania. This matter of principle was complicated by Oswald's earlier attempt to prevent Carey from establishing a rival paper by bidding up at public auction the only press available to Carey in Philadelphia. The spiraling quarrel finally led to a duel. Carey had no devotion to honor in this context: he had written a pamphlet against dueling in Ireland, he did not relish being shot at "like a crow," and as his pistol leveled at Oswald, he could not rid his mind of the image of his enemy's five children. Oswald was unscathed, but Carey was hit in his lame leg. At about this same time he was attracted by a Miss Boys, whose charms were "more personal than intellectual: but it is well-known that at 24 or 25, the biped, man, more generally chooses a partner of the other sex by the eye than by the ear." She failed to reciprocate. Fortunately, "Cupid's arrow had not penetrated very far." It must be remembered that his was an even blunter age than our own, otherwise the following passage might startle the casual reader: "[At 31] I married Miss Bridget Flavahan, the daughter of a highly respectable citizen, ruined by the revolution. He sold his stock in trade for continental money—and, being inactive and indolent, took no means to realize it; and it finally perished nearly altogether in his hands."2 The wedding to Miss Flavahan, also an Irish Catholic, took place February 24, 1791. There were nine children born to the union, two of whom died in infancy: 2

Mathew Carey, Autobiography,

p. 24.

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1. Maria, b. 11,21,1792; d. 5, 11, 1863. Unmarried. 2. Henry C., b. 12, 15, 1793; d. 10, 13, 1879; m. 1, 21, 1819, at St. Augustine's Church, Martha Leslie. N o descendants. 3. Elizabeth Catherine, b. 7,31,1795; d. 9,13,1881; m. 11, 19, 1882, at St. Augustine's Church, Thomas Baird (Lieut., U. S. Artillery). 4. Eleanor, b. 11,25,1797; d. 2,16,1813. 5. Francis Anne, b. 5, 1, 1799; d. 5, 29, 1873; m. 3, 6, 1821, at St. Augustine's Church, Isaac Lea. 6. Edward L., b. 4,7,1805; d. 6, 16,1845. Unmarried. 7. Susan M., b. ( ? ) ; d. 7, 17, 1844. Unmarried. 3

The children were all baptized in St. Joseph's Church. Mathew Carey attended St. Mary's Church, and later was a pew-holder in St. Augustine's Church, where his name appears in the published list of pew-holders there from 1801 to 1808. None of the descendants of Mathew Carey were "members of the Catholic Church [Henry was a Protestant; it is not recorded that his father was converted] except through his daughter Elizabeth Catherine, who married Thomas Baird." The subsequent career of Mathew Carey can be reviewed only with separate treatments of the many activities which claimed his energy, money, and talent. This bizarre combination of Irish romanticism and Yankee shrewdness fully deserves to be placed in the company of other great amateurs of the Revolutionary period, such as Jefferson and Franklin—who, moreover, frequently corresponded with Carey—a group which also included Washington, Lafayette, Hamilton, John Adams, Madison, and Henry Clay. The range of his interests and accomplishments was no less phenomenal than theirs. Mathew Carey's clearest bid for fame comes from his work as book publisher and dealer. It has been said that the history of the Carey firm from the Revolution to the Civil War is the 3 Records of the American 419-20.

Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia,

XV (1904),

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history of the book business in this country. 4 But various Carey enterprises attained indifferent success until he found the medium of book publishing. His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Herald, failed in February, 1788. Carey and several associates started the Columbian Magazine in September of 1786, the last number of which was issued in 1792.® In January 1787 he began the American Museum which, as Washington averred, saved much of the young republic's early documentary material from oblivion. It prospered, but since so many subscribers lived at a distance, when the postal service ruled that periodicals must thenceforth carry as much postage, by weight, as letters, the venture ended in December of 1792. He finally found business success in book publishing. Carey . . . in the course of business, made money. His fortune was built most solidly upon his publication of the Bible. He was a good Roman Catholic, but he did not allow his religion to interfere with business. He published the Douay Bible for the use of co-religionists, but with thorough impartiality printed the King James version.6

His road to success, however, was not made easier by the firm's employment of the famed, and possibly too energetic, Parson Weems as an itinerant book salesman. Weems frequently contracted to deliver books which were not yet in type. His son Henry was admitted to partnership in the firm of Carey & Carey in 1814. On January 1, 1817, Henry assumed major responsibility. A few years later, Isaac Lea, who had married one of Mathew's daughters, joined the firm. In 1824, Mathew Carey retired from active direction of the house, 4

Ellis P. Oberholtzer, Philadelphia, A History of the City and Its People, I, 202. J. T h o m a s Scharf a n d T h o m p s o n Westcott, History of Philadelphia, III, 1,977. 6 "Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia," p. 56. T h i s is a collection of clippings m a d e f r o m a n unidentified newspaper in 1888 which was reprinted f r o m a p a m p h l e t written in 1845 by a n u n k n o w n author. I n the T h o m a s H . Shoemaker Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 5

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which then became known as Carey & Lea. When another son, Edward L. Carey, attained his majority, the firm became Carey, Lea, & Carey. Edward did not remain long with the firm, and in 1829 a division was effected: Henry Carey and Lea took over the publishing business while the retail trade went to Edward, who established a partnership with Abraham Hart. The parent house, upon Henry C. Carey's retirement from it in 1835, became Lea & Blanchard. Thus it remained until 1851, when Isaac Lea's son, Henry Charles Lea, "later so eminent as a historian, took his father's place in the business."7 As Lea & Blanchard, the firm had some of its proudest successes, publishing the works of Cooper, Irving, and Poe. The Careys were the first to publish the fic\wic\ Papers in this country, and many of the Waverley Novels. Of the Careys, Irving wrote from Spain, "I am glad to have such spirited, offhand book-sellers to deal with in America as the Careys."8 In 1879 Henry Carey Baird was head of the house—his grandfathers were Mathew Carey and, on the paternal side, Henry Baird, a United Irishman.9 By 1912 the descendant firm of Lea & Febiger was devoted exclusively to publishing medical books; two members of the firm were Mathew Carey's greatgrandchildren.10 Notwithstanding the long-continued success of Mathew Carey's publishing business, it was as a public citizen that he was most active. There was scarcely a crosscurrent of controversy or a new civic organization that found him uninvolved. He became a member of the early National Republican Party and was thè most ardent publicist in his generation of Clay's Oberholtzer, op. cit., I, 203. Henry Carey Baird, "Memoir to Henry Charles Carey . . . , " p. 102. 9 Irish World, October 25, 1879. This newspaper article also claims Mathew Carey was a Protestant. This is not borne out in any other source. 1 0 Bradsher, op. cit., p. vii, n. 7

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"American System," as Henry Carey later was to become in his own. He promoted whatever and whomever would further his central purpose, as his son later did. But he was far from being as monolithic in his promotion of that purpose as his son became. His zeal for protective duties and internal improvements never equaled his concern with the personal problems and aspirations of the common man. In 1793 he served as a member of a Committee of Health appointed for the relief of Philadelphia yellow fever victims in the epidemic of that year. In 1792 or 1793, he organized the Hibernian Society for the relief of emigrants from Ireland.11 In 1808 he was chosen president of the "Society of St. Joseph's for maintaining and educating Roman Catholic orphan children of both sexes," attached to Holy Trinity Church. And in 1790 he cooperated with two prominent Protestant churchmen in adopting a constitution for the first permanent association for the promotion of Sunday schools in the United States. This was before free schools had been established.12 He promoted the education of infants and a polytechnic college. He attempted to get financial relief for Thomas Jefferson, the descendants of Robert Fulton, and destitute officers who had served in the Revolution. He worked for many years for the relief of the poor, of women in industry, and of manual laborers. He was an active member of the Pennsylvania Temperance Society, and he held the office of president at the time of its first anniversary meeting, but he was opposed to the inclusion of abstinence from wine as one of its aims.13 Yet his public interests were not solely philanthropic. In 1826 he led a meeting of Philadelphia citizens who sent goods 11

354.

12

Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, IX (1898),

Rowe, op. cit., p. 24. " Ibid., pp. 28-29.

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worth in excess of twenty-five thousand dollars to Greece to aid in her war against Turkey for independence. He also found time to invent a system of shorthand, and to become vicepresident of a local horticultural society. Motivated by the same double purpose which ruled his son—to protest against the putative commercial monopoly of England and to insure the economic independence of the young republic—he founded the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry in 1819, and was an active leader of the Pennsylvania Society to Establish Useful Manufactures. It was under the aegis of this latter organization that Friedrich List published his famous Outlines of Political Economy in 1825.14 Mathew Carey's first venture as an author was a history of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. But he soon turned to politico-economic disputes: in 1814 he published his own pamphlet entitled The Olive Branch. The country was split and disunited as a result of the War of 1812. The Federalists were blaming the incumbent Republicans for the ruin which both claimed the country faced. Carey's pamphlet was subtitled "Faults on Both Sides." In it he took both parties to task for failing to unite in a common cause—the Republicans for failing to prosecute the war in favor of attacking their opponents; and the Federalists for sowing the seeds of sedition and civil war by pleading for immediate peace negotiations at any price. It is commonly held that this work did much to quell factionalism at a most critical time. The pamphlet sold over ten thousand copies, "a greater sale than any other book up to that time, except possibly some religious ones."15 E. A. 14 A. D. H . Kaplan, Henry Charles Carey, A Study in American Economic Thought, p. 12. 15 Henry Carey Baird, "Memoir of Mathew Carey," p. 62. (When reference to an author has been cited only once in this book, the details of publication appear in the Bibliography.)

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Poe, in a review in the Southern Literary Messenger, said: " . . . to the more important yet equally Quixotic publication of the Olive Branch, the strictest scrutiny can detect nothing derogatory to the character of the noblest work of God, an honest man." In 1802 Carey was elected a director of the Bank of Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Senate. Soon he was supporting, in pamphlet form, the Bank of the United States. His vitriolic opposition to Jackson stemmed largely from their differences of opinion on this issue. Mathew Carey, a "National Republican," worked hard for Henry Clay in 1831, when Clay was running for president. But it was not until 1819 that he began writing on economic questions; in the next fourteen years he wrote and published at least fifty-nine pamphlets totaling 2,322 pages, thirty to forty newspaper essays, twelve to fifteen circulars to manufacturers, and eight or ten memorials to Congress.16 Like Alexander Hamilton, the man he claimed as his master, Carey was not interested in building a body of economic theory but in stating a set of practical suggestions for the efficient guidance of the new country. His central theme can be stated as a combination of Hamilton's famous Report on Manufactures, and the political position Thomas Jefferson adopted once his radical agrarianism was dropped: protect infant industries with adequate tariff provisions, and establish a balanced national economic order of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, all to be centrally directed by the national government in the interests of the entire country. In a modified sense, it might be said that Mathew Carey was the first "national planner." Like his son, he inveighed against population dispersion and 16

Rowe, op. cit., p. 30.

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attributed this to the return of free trade. He claimed that with the reduction of the tariff in 1809, American factories were forced to close, and owner and worker forced to migrate to the country, only to push the national economy into further agricultural imbalance.17 Throughout his writings, he agreed with one of Adam Smith's central propositions (as did his son), that any policy which tends to diminish the number of manufacturers and craftsmen tends also to diminish the home market, the most important of all markets for farmers, and thereby to discourage agriculture. But unlike both Smith and young Carey, he was more interested in what he could observe actually happening to concrete individuals than in the grand sweep of economic laws. Thus he repudiated Smith's claim that a workman who loses his job can "easily transfer" to another one, since collateral manufactures of a similar nature are always available. Carey countered that the introduction of new machinery creates temporary technological unemployment. The unemployed are not at fault and should receive aid. The following passage is especially noteworthy, since it succinctly adumbrates two keystones to Henry Carey's system: that immigration should be encouraged, it being part of the desirable increase in the rate of "societary circulation," and the essential harmony of all interests—class, domestic, and international: I believed, and still believe, that I was not only labouring for the present and future generations of the United States—but for the operatives of Europe—as, if our manufactures were adequately protected, thousands of those people would remove to this country, and be in a far better situation than at home; and, in addition, their emigration, by diminishing the number of those that remained behind, would improve their prospects.18 17 18

Mathew Carey Autobiography, Ibid., p . 109.

p. 99.

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In The New Olive Branch, which appeared on March 17, 1820,19 Carey more systematically stated the theory of the harmony of class interests. This pamphlet vigorously attacked the nation's tariff policy to that date and extolled protectionism. The ruinous policy followed, he claimed, had been advantageous to the manufacturing nations of Europe. It had made us tributary to them, and had converted too many of our people into hucksters and retailers. And this system "has had the obvious and pernicious effect of narrowing the field for the exercise of native industry and talent." This last is particularly interesting, for Henry Carey's main justification for protection was the fostering of "association"; that is, a diversified division of labor. The point was expanded in his "Addresses to the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry": W h e n all the different kinds of industry obtain in a community, each individual can find his proper element, and call into activity the whole vigour of his nature. A n d the community is benefited by the services of its respective members, in the same manner, in which each can serve it with most effect. 2 0

It is manufacturing establishments which bring the diversity of labor. Men should not go back to cultivate vacant lands, as is so often proposed. And, although an ardent democrat in principle—like his son—he stated that free government is only the means to, not the end of, prosperity. He had much praise for the Russian czar (as did his son), especially for the "paternal and fostering care" bestowed by his protective tariff. One modification of his protective policy was lost on his son, 1 9 The edition examined was the second, printed by M. Carey & Sons, Philadelphia, 1821, pp. 258-382, o£ a collection of his pamphlets gathered under the general title of Appeal to Common Sense and Common Justice. T o be found in the University of Pennsylvania Library. 20 Ibid., p. 108. (Sixth edition of the original pamphlet.)

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and on this point John Stuart Mill later took Henry Carey to task. Mathew Carey proposed that specific duties should take into account that "bulkiness introduced an element of protection to a commodity in a high freight cost on its transportation." But, like his son, he made his peace with slavery. While he stated a personal abhorrence for the system, he attempted to incorporate it in his picture of a nation ruled by reasonableness. Like his son, he attempted to conciliate the Southern planters.21 The troubles of South Carolina did not result from the tariffs of 1824 and 1828, neither of which was unconstitutional. The Southern distress was far greater prior to the enaction of the tariff of 1824 than at present. But in the face of opposition, he was not adamant, as it will later appear his son was: Clay's fear of the growing spirit of nullification led him to suggest that nothing but a compromise on the subject of the tariff would effectually preserve the authority of the central government. Carey gave form to the plan of compromise on March 21, 1832, and his proposal was to reduce all duties of over twenty-five per cent, onetenth annually until they reached that rate, a tariff level which he termed revenue producing rather than protective. He was in full accord with Clay on the advisability of repealing the duties on articles not produced at home. 22

Yet he later voiced alarm at the "tariff" of 1832, passed to pacify the nullifiers. On the tariff issue, it might be added that Carey, like Hamilton and List, viewed it as a temporary expedient for fostering home industry. Henry Carey's stand on this issue was equivocal. One major contrast between Mathew Carey's philosophy and that of his son cannot be sufficiently emphasized. Henry Carey 21 The Crisis. An Appeal to the Good Sense of the Nation, Against the Spirit of Resistance and the Dissolution of the Union. 2 2 Rowe, op. cit., p. 104.

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was in fact, if not in stated principle, a thoroughgoing materialist, who made even man's moral and spiritual betterment utterly dependent upon economic reform. Mathew Carey, on the other hand, at times claimed that material betterment was dependent upon a change in the hearts of men: I am well aware of the superabundance of female labour—of the direful effects of over-driven competition, not only of the comfort and happiness, but on the morals of the labouring classes of society, in every quarter of the globe. But I contend for it, that every principle of honour, justice, and generosity, forbids the employer to take advantage of the distress and wretchedness of those he employs, and cut down their wages below the minimum necessary to procure a sufficiency of plain food and of clothes to guard against the inclemency of the weather. Whoever passes this line of demarcation, is guilty of the heinous offence of "grinding the faces of the poor." 23

Many honorable men give inadequate wages merely because they have not given sufficient thought to the subject, Carey continued. It is an erroneous idea that everyone willing to work may find employment. It is not true that taxes for the support of the poor lead to idleness and improvidence, and that the poor by industry and economy may support themselves at all times without eleemosynary aid. There still remain, however, many striking parallels between the careers of father and son. A rare consummation among reformers, each saw his efforts crowned with success: for Mathew, the tariff of 1828; for Henry, the Morrill Tariff of 1861, Both men explicitly renounced public offices that both could easily have had, on the plea that they wished to secure themselves from the charge of seeking personal gain. They both inveighed against the failure to gain support from those whose 23 Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, Ladies as well as Gentlemen, on the Character, Conduct, Situation, and Prospects of Those Whose Sole Dependence is on the Labour of their Hands.

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interests were most closely allied with protective policies. And both pleaded that they had suffered personal losses as the result of an unselfish answer to the call of public duty: From March 1819 till December 1824, when I retired from trade, I neglected my business as to a most culpable and injurious extent. My son, it is true, is more competent to the management of business than I am: but with all his competence, there was more than he could do justice to, and the injury to the establishment was of the most serious character.24

Most modern scholars assess Mathew Carey's doctrinal contribution as an amendment and qualification of the political and economic opinions of his day. On the other hand, no less an authority than Henry Clay assured Carey that no other single man had done so much to further the protectionist cause. As for what was original in his thought, it is impossible to judge, since the general arguments in any of the protective literature are necessarily limited in range and were frequently repeated with but a slight variation in theme. On the other hand, if Mathew Carey's doctrines cannot be securely attributed to all later protectionists, the debt of his son Henry, and two protectionist grandchildren, Henry Charles Lea and Henry Carey Baird, are more clearly evident. Whatever Mathew Carey's deficiencies as an economic theorist, and however modest may have been his contribution to shaping the larger framework of the new American nation, the character of this energetic Irish immigrant was the stuff out of which that framework was erected. Retiring from business at the age of sixty-four with an income of about eight thousand dollars a year, his active interest in all public affairs continued to the day of his death and he had no lingering illness. He died 24

Biographical

Sketches, I, 47.

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at the age of seventy-nine, on September 17, 1839, an event hastened by the upsetting of his speeding carriage. Henry Charles Carey was born in Philadelphia on December 15, 1793. He was originally named Henry, but following the death of his young brother, Charles, he added that name to his own. He later expressed regret for having made the change, because he had developed an admiration for simplicity in names and an aversion to all titles. There is little record of his childhood beyond the fact that his formal education ended at the age of twelve. He did, however, graduate from the Philadelphia Academy, where classes were conducted for a while at Franklin's home in Franklin Court, and later in one of the University buildings on Fourth Street. The decision to leave school was his own. To his great surprise, his father voiced no opposition when he announced one day that he was tired of school and did not intend to continue. He became, nevertheless, one of the most learned men of his period, being the chief reader for the firm of Carey & Son, devouring not only every tract in political economy and history he could lay his hand to, but popular novels of the day as well. His drive to education remained with him all his life—he began the study of German after reaching the age of sixty. In every sense of the word, his father was his teacher. Mathew Carey, as James Mill with John Stuart Mill, used to take Henry by the hand in long walks through the Philadelphia streets, lecturing him on politics and economics, imbuing him "at once with a love of books, and with a keen practical outlook upon life."25 Mathew Carey also had a conviction that work was a proper measure of education. At the early age of twelve, Henry was sent to Baltimore to superintend a branch store of the business. 25

Robert Ellis Thompson, "Henry Charles Carey," p. 817.

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Two years earlier, in 1802, he was sent to New York City to attend the first Literary Fair in the United States—the forerunner of the Trades Sales which Henry Carey originated in 1824, and which long served as the chief channel of literary interchanges among publishers—where he conducted business with a number of books he had brought with him, thereby earning the nickname of the "Miniature Bookseller." In the summer of 1812, in his nineteenth year, he made a bookselling trip as far south as Raleigh, North Carolina. During this period, father and son apparently alternated between remaining in the main Philadelphia office and traveling. Their correspondence reveals little of their relationship. Father and son were good businessmen and their letters deal almost completely with business matters. 26 Apparently the Carey family was not particularly demonstrative. The only reference to Henry which appears in any of Mathew Carey's diaries is the following wonderfully cryptic item: Aug. 3 (1814) Susan parted for Baltimore. Horse dangerously ill. Despaired of. Aug. 4 (1814) Henry parted for Baltimore. Horse still very ill. 27

In 1812, at the age of nineteen, Henry joined the State Fencibles, under Captain Clement C. Biddle. In 1814, after the British had invaded Maryland and the District of Columbia, it was thought that Philadelphia was imperiled, and Henry marched to Camp Dumont, Delaware, with the militia, under the command of General Thomas Cadwalader. He served out his enlistment until British General Ross was defeated and L e a & Febiger Papers. Mathew Carey, "Diary 1 8 1 0 - 1 8 1 9 , " in Mathew Carey Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 2 6

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killed in Maryland. The camp was then disbanded, and the Philadelphia detachment returned home. In 1819 Henry Carey married Martha Leslie, a sister of Charles R. Leslie, the artist, and of Eliza Leslie, the novelist (whose publication for women, Miss Leslie's Magazine, was known throughout the United States). The Careys, who are described in several sources, in the convention of the day, as a "devoted couple," were childless. On March 2, 1819, Carey wrote to Thomas J. Baird, a good friend (Henry Carey Baird was the son of Captain Thomas J. Baird, and Eliza Carey, Henry's sister): "I have no question that I shall be able after full experience, to recommend matrimony to all my bachelor friends. Poor Devils! They do not know the pleasure of having a home of ones own, or they would not remain so long [unmarried]." 28 But later, August 23, 1819, he wrote to Baird, "Take my advice and keep yourself a bachelor, as I have found out how much a man falls in the opinion of his unmarried female friends, as soon as the fatal knot is tied."29 The context of this quotation is mock-serious, and is not to be taken as revealing anything of significance about Carey's marriage. The two quotations together are of interest, however, on two counts. Here is the only note of levity that can be found in Carey's extensive and determinedly down-to-earth correspondence. Nowhere else in it can any reference to his wife or his marriage be found. The following quotation is much more revelatory. It is introduced as another bit of evidence to support the claim made below that even during Carey's early "free trade" period, his 28

"The Papers of Captain Thomas J. Baird 1813-1828," Vol. I.

29 Ibid.

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position remained consistently protectionist, or at least protoprotectionist: The infernal Missouri Question is at length settled to the satisfaction of the people of the South, and we are now in hopes that Congress will take into consideration the distresses of the nation and provide us with a good manufacturing system. Without it I am afraid we shall go on in the same state of distress . . . 3 0

Mrs. Carey died in 1847. Although the Careys had no children, they had adopted a daughter, Virginia Carey, after some years of married life. This lady was married August 4, 1841, to Albert Haven, a coal merchant. Carey never remarried. Harriet Etheridge, a friend, wrote him June 11, 1855, advising him to remarry in order to relieve Virginia, who evidently found the task of housekeeper to her foster father irksome. Mrs. Etheridge further advised that he was "young enough," and not like most men, who live two years in one. 31 Henry was made a full-fledged partner in his father's business in 1814, and the firm name was changed to Carey & Son. The younger Carey, during this period, acted as reader and critic in the selection of books for publication. In this capacity he exhibited a strong preference for works in the fields of geography, science, natural history, and travel. It was soon after Henry had joined the firm that it was engaged in its peak of business. The fortunes of the company waned after about 1850, when the publishing business in this country passed largely into the hands of New York firms. Yet in its day, the house of 30

Ibid., May 17, 1820.

Edward Carey Gardiner Collection, Historical Society o£ Pennsylvania. This is the collected Henry Carey correspondence which was deposited with the Society in 1939 by a distant relative. The collection is enormous, containing not only most of the extant letters to Carey, along with his business contracts, wine bills, newspaper clippings by and about him, but what are probably the bulk of Carey's replies in copy. Any correspondence referred to below, to which citations are not attached, will be understood to be in this collection. 31

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Carey & Carey established a leadership which extended beyond profits through the adoption of policies which were continued in spite of the various changes in the firm's name. Henry Carey and his father were among the first to set the example of paying English authors for the privilege of reprinting their works in this country. Thomas Carlyle once wrote to Carey & Hart: I cannot conclude without expressing my sincere acknowledgments, my hearty approbation of your honorable conduct; I accept the money as a very gratifying proof that there are men—not very frequent, Alas!—who do not need the admonition of the constable to do what beseems them in matters of business.32

There was no international copyright law then and there was not to be for several decades. One of its most vociferous opponents was Henry Carey. Yet while he publicly assailed the copyright, he insisted on paying royalty to all authors.33 Many have accused Carey, and much evidence can be gathered to support the contention, that his writings were a mere elaboration of, and justification for, his own profit-seeking. This is an issue that will recur many times here. Yet there is, and can be, no definitive answer. Carey, like all human beings, was multi-faceted. The more one learns of one man, with all his particularities, the more do the generalities \sjiich can be applied to man in general crumble. Categories overlap and become fuzzy. Henry Carey Baird, his nephew, said of him that while he was an impulsive man of great force of character who generally liked to have his own way, he was still governed by such a spirit of magnanimity that he always refrained from pressing too hard any man with whom he was connected in affairs of business. "He has been known to say that he had never 32 33

Thompson, op. cit., p. 818. "The 150th Anniversary of Henry Charles Carey."

20

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'shaved' but one note in his life, and that then he had felt that he had robbed the man." While Carey's material fortunes suffered occasional vicissitudes, he was a fairly consistently wealthy man for his day. His estate was assessed at $75,000.34 In 1833 he bought a home in Burlington, New Jersey. It was an imposing residence with a large colonial doorway and spacious parlors—one of the beauty spots of Burlington. Carey resided here until 1855, when he returned to Philadelphia. Many of his works during this period were signed "Citizen of Burlington." Until 1842, he spent the winter in the city and the summer in Burlington. His town house was at 1102 Walnut Street, where he did most of his writing in a large, spacious library, the walls of which were covered with the paintings of Charles Leslie (a collection to which Carey, little interested in art, made no further additions). He lived there until he died. In 1835 Carey retired from the publishing business to devote the rest of his life to study and research in social science. He also became an individual capitalist-promoter. He was for a time a manufacturer of paper, and suffered severe losses during the disastrous years of 1837-42. Several investigators have attributed his avowed shift from free trade to protectionism as stemming from this personal experience.35 William Elder, his official biographer, has another explanation: U p to this time Mr. Carey had been, as he supposed, a Free Trader; but in the closing months of 1842, seeing the wonderful change effected by the protective tariff then in operation, in conference with John C. Calhoun he suggested that there must be some great law that would explain the fact that we always grow rich 34

"Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia," p. 55. Kaplan, op. cit., is a middle-of-the-road critic who avers that Carey's paper mill and coal mine losses " m i g h t " have influenced his shift in doctrine, p. 46. Thompson, on the other hand, claims that it was the return of prosperity after the tariff of 1842 that "finally opened his eyes." 35

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under Protection, whereas we always ended in bankruptcy under Free Trade. A year or two later, as he says, there came to him as with a flash of lightning the conviction that the whole RicardoMalthusian system is in error, and with it must fall the system oí British Free Trade. 8 6

Elder's Memoir is the best single biographical source available. In his lifetime, Carey had committed to Elder, probably his closest friend, a memorandum of the leading incidents of his life, including statements of the circumstances which led to the preparation of his works, on the condition that this material be placed in order and presented to the public after his death. On January 5, 1880, the Memoir was read in Philadelphia before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Among those present were General Robert Patterson, the chairman of the meeting; Provost Stillé, of the University of Pennsylvania; John Welsh, former Minister to the Court of St. James's; George H. Boker, former Minister to Russia; John Scott, former United States Senator from Pennsylvania; William D. Kelley ("Pig Iron" Kelley, of the House of Representatives, one of Carey's most ardent promoters in Washington); Henry Carey Baird; Joseph Wharton (iron manufacturer and founder of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, of the University of Pennsylvania); Thompson Westcott, the historian; Frederick Fraley, president of the National Board of Trade; and many other notables. From 1835 to 1865, Carey became interested in the development of the coal area in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and between 1852 and 1855 took the leading part in sinking the first shaft in that coal basin, the shaft which struck the mammoth vein. His fortune was eventually restored through his coal and real estate interests. He promoted other ventures, such 36

William Elder, A Memoir of Henry C. Carey, p. 26.

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as a hotel and a successful "mechanical bakery." However Carey's motives may be imputed, one fact must constantly be kept in mind: he was an individual capitalist-promoter whose fortune was built through entrepreneur risk-taking. It must further be remembered that the close parallel which can legitimately be drawn between his theories and his personal interests must be placed in the context of the realities and values of his own period, which had hardly begun to drive a real and ideological wedge between public and private economic interest. Carey made three visits to Europe; in 1825, 1857, and 1859. Although he was a learned man and was acquainted with scholars and notables throughout Europe, Carey never forsook his essential nationalism and even localism, nor, it might be added, his determined dislike for everything English. On August 5, 1825, he wrote home to Captain Baird and his sister Eliza, "For my part I would rather be in Paris with all its public officers and they are sufficiently numerous, than in London with all its dull and stupid comfort." He added that he counted it a heavenly blessing to remain at home, uncomfortable. Yet it was during the latter two visits, of about six months each, that he made the personal acquaintance of John Stuart Mill, Count Cavour, Count Scolpis, who was President of the Geneva Congress, President Bergfalk of Sweden, reviser of the laws of that nation; Humboldt, Liebig, Chevalier, and Ferrara. He held frequent correspondence with many of them and, according to Elder, saw them at his Philadelphia residence as often as they visited this country. It was on April 27, 1859 that he was tendered an honor in his city and state by grateful leaders and masses alike, which was the crowning public recognition of his service. Immediately before his last visit to Europe, on April 15, 1859, Carey received a letter of appreciation for his public services and an invitation

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to a public dinner to be held at La Pierre House. The letter was signed by a hundred and twenty-nine persons, including Stephen Colwell, Abraham Hart, H . C. Baird, and Edward C. Biddle, all of w h o m assured him that ". . . prophets are not without honor in their own country." Mayor Henry presided at the banquet: among those present were ex-Senator Bell, of Tennessee; ex-Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota; Simon Cameron; Speaker Lawrence, of Pennsylvania; William Elder, Governor Emerson, J. B. Lippincott, and Charles G. Leland. It was a tribute to Carey or a vulgar evidence of mid-century capitalism, depending upon the personal biases of the observer. At one end of the banquet hall "Protection to American Labor" was inscribed on the wall; on the opposite wall, "Harmony of Interests. The most noteworthy piece was a locomotive drawing a train of cars laden with coal and pig-iron, the whole of which was represented in sugar and chocolate. It was very appropriately placed in front of Mr. Carey, the honored guest of the occasion." 37 Carey, in his speech, said that Jefferson had died a full believer in the necessity of governmental interference for the promotion of industrial independence, and that Madison had demonstrated the constitutionality and the expediency of such interference. But f r o m the time of Van Buren to the present, the ruinous principle of laissez faire had created poverty and sectional strife. Carey was followed by other speakers, on the subjects of "Our Coal Interests," "Our Iron Interests," and similar topics. Prior to the dinner (Carey left for Europe on the thirtieth) he made, with entourage, a grand triumphal sweep through the coal and iron districts of the state: Scranton on the nine37 Testimonials to Henry phia, April 27, 1859, p. 6.

C. Carey, Esq. Dinner at the La Pierre House,

Philadel-

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teenth, Wilkes-Barre and Pittston on the twentieth, Danville and Bloomsburg on the twenty-first, and Mauch Chunk on the twenty-second. In town after town he rode in processions led by brass bands and fire companies, heard eulogies to his efforts to protect the state into prosperity, appeared on hotel balconies to wave to cheering crowds of iron workers and coal miners. He was also given receptions in the counties of Luzerne, Columbia, Montour, and Carbon, all covered verbatim in the Philadelphia North American. Two essential facts emerge from this curious pilgrimage. First, large numbers of Pennsylvania workingmen were as convinced as Carey that he was the spokesman for their interests. Second, that if at times Carey seemed open to the charge of political expediency in his promotion of protectionism, he was only following a trail which many other Pennsylvanians gladly traveled, tortuous though it was. The following extract is a faithful illustration of Pennsylvania's willingness to compromise for the sake of the main chance: By the following correspondence, which we find in the Gazette,

political parties, have invited our distinguished t o w n s m a n to visit that region . . . signed

Pittston

it will be seen that the citizens of L u z e r n e County, of all

as it was

[Carey]

In the spirit that prompted the invitation,

by leading D e m o c r a t s — L e c o m p t o n

and

anti-

L e c o m p t o n — a s well as Republicans and Americans, there is an earnest

that

Pennsylvania

will hereafter,

however

she m a y

be

divided on other questions, be united in regard to her o w n great interests. . . . 3 8

Carey was not alone in offering the rationalization, if indeed it was such, that his policy was activated by the desire to improve the lot of the common man. Joseph H. Scranton, in the formal address made at the dinner in Scranton to Carey's 38 Ibid., p. 57.

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honor, said, "To you, sir, are the laboring classes largely indebted for the correctness of the views they so firmly hold, and are now so honestly advocating, of protection to our great agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests."39 In more than one place in his writings, Robert Ellis Thompson has insisted that Carey, while conversing with him, reiterated again and again that his sympathies had been with the working classes since the very beginning of his career. Carey was more a publicist than a theoretician. Most of his writing appears in pamphlets and newspapers. He contributed to newspapers all over the country, usually unsigned polemics on the tariff question, but he was, by his own admission, virtually the editor of Greeley's New Yor\ Tribune on the question of the tariff between 1849 and 1857. All contemporaries agree that the Tribune exerted more influence than any other paper during this period. At the outbreak of the war, the daily and weekly editions had almost three hundred thousand subscribers, and papers were passed from hand to hand, especially in the rural areas. It had more subscribers in Pennsylvania than in any other state except New York, and its influence was generally regarded as pivotal in the more important political contests. It is likely that Carey reached his largest audience through this medium. He pasted all of his Tribune editorials in a large scrapbook which he left, according to the provisions of his will, to the University of Pennsylvania Library. Carey insisted upon not receiving a penny for this work for the same reason that he refused to run for public office—to protect himself against the charge of self-seeking. His relationship with the Tribune ended in 1857, when Greeley gave his support to the "low" tariff of that year. Greeley totally abandoned the protec39 From a newspaper clipping, source and date not noted, in the Gardiner Collection. Carey had written on the margin, in his own hand, "A Chapter of History."

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tive principle in 1872 when he was a candidate for the presidency. It was about this time that he had privately parted with Carey on another issue—that of Carey's attack on the resumption of specie payments. At first Carey and Greeley were friends, but the rift was not long in growing. Fahrney's volume on Greeley40 affords implications of differences in temperament that might very well have determined the rupture, at least in part. While Carey was a retired gentleman of means, Greeley was an insecure striver, blowing hot and cold on many issues, depending on whether they fostered or hindered his personal political ambitions, as in the case of his alternative courting and attacking of the powerful Seward-Weed combination in New York State. During the war, Greeley became almost hysterically lyrical in print, one day demanding peace, the next calling for an all-out Northern effort, a course of action which reached its climax in the Niagara Peace fiasco. As might be expected, the mentally healthy and single-purposed Carey was profanely disgusted with Greeley's behavior, and dismissed him as "mawkishly sentimental." Carey, in constant correspondence with Charles A. Dana, the managing editor of the Tribune, who could never get along with Greeley either, was receiving a constant stream of criticism of the latter. On April 12, 1862, George H. Boker, then secretary of the Union Club (which became the Union League of Philadelphia), and later Minister to Turkey, wrote Carey: Greeley, as you know, is a weak vessel, and he was unable to stand up against the fierce will of Dana, although he secretly disapproved of Dana's policy, and let the stockholders know his opinion. At length Greeley found, as is supposed, that he could endure this moral slavery no longer, and that, for the sake of peace, he himself 40

Ralph Ray Fahrney, Horace Greeley and the Tribune in the Civil

War.

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would retire. This I know to be so. That Greeley, after the thing was accomplished, backed out, is only in keeping with his character.

Nevertheless, Carey had good reason to feel, as he did, that his brief connection with the Tribune enabled him to sway public opinion on more than the tariff issue. He was a Russophile who insisted that Russian "serfdom" was actually, owing to the Czar's wise economic policies, soon due for abolishment. He took an active part in siding with Russia against England in the Crimean War. Henry Carey Baird goes so far as to claim that Carey's intervention "resulted in Russia siding with the United States Government in the war of the Rebellion," since the Tribune succeeded generally in bringing the Northern press over to the Russian side. The extent to which Carey was personally responsible for this complex chain of events is, of course, open to question. Although Carey abjured public office throughout his life, this was not for lack of abundant opportunity. For many years he was urged by his friends and by several newspapers to run for the governorship of Pennsylvania, but to no avail. While a resident of Burlington in 1853, the Whig State Convention sought to nominate him for the governorship of New Jersey, but he turned it down. His name was even broached for the presidency. William D. Lewis, superintendent of the mechanical bakery in which Carey had invested, in a letter of September 23, 1859, enclosed a clipping from an unidentified newspaper: Henry C. Carey.—The Commercial, a paper published at Sumner, Kansas, nominates for President of the United States, Henry C. Carey, of our city, giving the following reasons therefor:—"First: Because we know him to be a man of unflinching integrity, and not a wire-working politician. Secondly: Because we know he is eminently qualified for the office, probably better qualified than any other man in the Union. W e are aware that honesty and capability are old-fashioned virtues. . . .

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Carey's own explanation for his determination neither to seek nor to accept public office was the protection of his own good name. He feared his advocacy of higher tariff duties would present his political opponents with a weapon which would in all probability be used, since he constantly reaffirmed his judgment that all politicians are scoundrels. But there are two other probable reasons, beyond the one he publicly acknowledged, which maintained his decision. First, Carey was a man of positive convictions, who was incapable of compromising either goal or principle. He knew only one direction—forward—and thus he became an occasional source of irritation to those men already in public office who were attempting to cooperate with him, and also to those who had had to learn the uses of compromise on legislative floors in Harrisburg and Washington. The following extract from a letter of December 27, 1868, written to Carey from Daniel J. Morrell (then a Republican Representative from Pennsylvania in the Fortieth Congress), is typical of many such complaints that Carey received during the long period in which he was actively promoting legislation, "From what has passed, I incline to the belief that no harmonious copartnership could exist between my friends and yourself, owing . . . to your great impatience of delay, and their extreme caution." Second, and of far greater importance, Carey firmly believed he could achieve his ultimate reform purposes more securely by writing publicity than by actively engaging in the political arena, and those purposes motivated him far more than the prize of public acclaim. This is definitively established by the history of his feud with the Camden and Amboy Railroad, of New Jersey. From 1848 to at least 1853, Carey was involved in a series of heated interchanges with the joint board of directors of the

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road. H e was incensed that the N e w Jersey legislature had given the C a m d e n and A m b o y monopoly rights to the transit trade passing through N e w Jersey between Philadelphia and N e w York. All this material in pamphlets and newspaper clippings was assembled as Volumes X I and X I I of his "Collected W o r k s , " to be f o u n d in the University of Pennsylvania Library. Carey claimed that the railroad rates were exorbitant, that a system of free competition was required to put an end to chicanery and authoritarianism. Every m a n who owns land has the right to have a road built through his property. 4 1 A system of free competition in road m a k i n g would have a tonic effect which Carey usually reserved to describe the results of the protective tariff: Were they now to be so administered, you would require no legal restriction on the making of roads, with a view to prevent that competition. Everybody would be satisfied, and branch roads would be made in all directions leading to your two great ones; and with each one of these you would have increase of trade and travel, enabling you still farther to diminish your charges, and thus to lessen the inducements to make competing roads. The value of property throughout the State would increase. Fields would be cleared, and meadows would be drained, and men would stay at home instead of flying to the west, and girls would be married instead of living on in single blessedness to become old maids, and houses would be wanted, and timber would become valuable, and factories would arise, and towns and cities would grow, and the State would become one great garden, and men would become rich, and with the increase of wealth schools would increase in number and improve in quality, and all would become more enlightened and more free. 42 T h e board of directors answered as follows: Open letter addressed to " T h e People of New Jersey," October 17, 1853, by A Citizen of Burlington, probably originally printed in the Burlington Gazette. Volume XII of the "Collected Works." 42 Letters to the People of New Jersey, on the Frauds, Extortions, and Oppressions of the Railroad Monopoly, by A Citizen of Burlington, pp. 53-54. 41

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Pennsylvania had incorporated a company to make a railroad from Philadelphia to Trenton, and the road had been temporarily constructed. That company, though not encumbered with an expensive and unprofitable canal, was allowed to charge more for carrying passengers per mile than the Camden and Amboy Company. They determined to force their way across New Jersey, and bought up, for that purpose, a controlling interest in the stock of the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company, which connected their railroad at Morrisville with the New Jersey Railroad from New Brunswick to Jersey City; and this was done under an express law of the state of Pennsylvania, authorizing them to do so. They applied to the legislature of New Jersey for such amendments to the turnpike charter as would enable them to effect their purpose; eminent counsel from Philadelphia were employed to advocate the grant before the legislature; but it was denied.43 The directors alluded to "speculators" and "agitators" whose misrepresentations were being rebutted. Carey was not specifically named, but the context of the entire report leaves no doubt as to whom they had in mind. Relations were not further improved when Carey demanded to inspect the company's books in order to establish the fraud with which he had charged them. His petition was denied. Dorfman says of this stormy interchange: Interestingly enough, "Citizen of Burlington" ceased his outpourings about the time that New Jersey chartered the Camden and Atlantic Railroad, which passed through Burlington, and among whose leading promoters was Carey's good friend, Stephen Colwell.44 But this is not quite accurate. While Carey's outpourings ceased in 1853, in his later writings he continued to refer to the Camden and Amboy Railroad as an example of monopoly and tyranny. In any event, there was a clear connection between 43 Address of the Joint Board of Directors of the Delaware and Raritan Canal and Camden and Amboy Railroad Companies, to the People of New Jersey, pp. 13-14. 4 4 Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, I, 801.

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the foreseen successful outcome of his efforts and his decision to decline the W h i g nomination for the governorship of New Jersey, alluded to above: W e stated the other day that the declination of Mr. Carey was in the hands of a member of the W h i g State Convention at Trenton. B. B. Edsall, Esq., of the Sussex Register, was the gentleman alluded to, and we find in this week's Register the letter, which we subjoin: LETTER FROM HENRY C. CAREY Dear Sir—When I first saw my name placed before the people in connection with the honorable and responsible station of Governor, the impulse of my mind was to request that it might be withdrawn, as I had no desire for public office, and had other engagements that were inconsistent with the performance of its duties.—On stating my views to yourself, and another of the advocates of resistance to Monopoly tyranny, I was, however, as you know, advised that it would probably benefit the cause to permit the matter to remain in the position in which it had been placed by others; and so it has, until now, remained. It has become, I think, clear that the Convention will adopt a thoroughly anti-monopoly platform, and equally so that it will experience no difficulty in finding a candidate who, if elected, will feel it to be not only his duty but his pleasure to aid in carrying into practical effect the views contained therein—and that therefore there can exist no need of my services. Under these circumstances, I have now to say that the views contained in my first letter to you remain unchanged, and to ask that you will not permit me to be brought before the Convention as a candidate for the nomination. . . . October 7, 185345 Carey was a promoter, but writing persuasive popular tracts and bringing pressure to bear at key points behind the scenes was more to his liking. He had little taste for the political front lines, stemming from a rather ambivalent attitude toward the 4 5 This is taken from a clipping from an undesignated newspaper, mounted in Volume XII of the "Collected Works."

32

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general public. In his writings, he never swerved from supporting popular democracy, a feeling which was fixed as early as 1836, according to indications in a letter to his good friend, Thomas Cooper (1759-1839), a former Pennsylvania State judge and professor of applied chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1815 to 1819. Cooper became an ardent defender of slavery and nullification after taking up his residence in South Carolina and, like Carey, he backed the tariff and supported the Second Bank of the United States against Jackson. To him, Carey wrote: I was much pleased with the account you gave of yourself. It's well to live when gentlemen have the management of affairs, when one is exactly on a footing with them, but I doubt if you would approve of it, were you one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water. I felt very much disposed to be of the conservative order— which is aristocratic—until I examined the results of various governments, and then was carried back to democracy, and remain fully satisfied that the only true government is the government of the people.

On the other hand, he never went so far as did his favorite sister, Maria, who wrote in a letter to him on May 20, 1860, "though his [Lincoln's] rise from obscurity may have some influence with the masses—the unwashed, the effects are quite neutralize [sic!] among the higher classes—men not desiring to elevate a man of ignoble birth over them." He nevertheless frequently despaired of popular government, calling it a failure, largely because both legislators and people failed to heed his warning that only through the imposition of higher tariff duties could America become prosperous and fulfill her historical mission. Carey was also a great admirer of the Czar and of Napoleon III, in the earlier years of his reign. He is quoted as saying that the only wise government is that of a czar. "What

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did this country ever do wisely until Heaven sent us a czar, and what have we done since but live on his memory?" 4 6 But more than anything else, it was Carey's fixed determination to promote his reforms which prevented him from ever becoming a good party man, the prime requisite to seeking and attaining office. It is not unfair to say, since he many times explicitly stated so, that he would support any man and any party which would further those reforms. Carey, then a Whig, wrote to the future Democratic President James Buchanan on January 31, 1850,47 that, ". . . it is now but little more than a dozen years since your political friends adopted as part of their political creed the system which it is hoped Mr. Walker's tariff will carry out." They have twice been defeated in that time. They would be defeated, he said, as often as they insisted upon free trade. They had made a political blunder, and "were I a Whig politician, anxious for office, I would pray them to permit it to remain precisely where it does." On March 7, 1850, he wrote to Buchanan: None but themselves can ever prevent your political friends from being in power. They are now out of power, and they are so because they changed from what was believed to be true democracy, even as lately as the days of Jackson. With a change of system they will be returned to power, because their opponents want quiet, and will have it if permitted—leaving the business of government to others. In settling the slave question—which owes its existence in its present form to the fact that the planters are suffering from a want of protection—they have got also to settle the tariff question, or they will accomplishing nothing . . . they need protection much more than the iron men of this state. 48 4 6 "Carey and Greeley," p. 138. Since this article is unsigned, and it claims to be quoting Carey in the context of conversation, anything taken from it must be viewed with reservation. 4 7 Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Whigs were then in power, with Zachary Taylor as President.

8Ibid.

4

34

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CAREY

The Democrats, however, remained even less protectionist than the Whigs—both were protectionist mainly within Pennsylvania, for the sole purpose of picking up Pennsylvania votes. It was with the rise of the Republican Party, which had something to offer all comers except die-hard Southern planters, that Carey found his reform instrument, and he left the cloister of 1102 Walnut Street to move further into the arena of active politics than he ever had before. Although the Republican Party has no definitive origin, it is commonly attributed to Philadelphia. And on June 15, 1856, the Pennsylvania State Republican Convention met in Philadelphia (the first Republican National Convention was held in Philadelphia the following day). Henry Carey was named temporary president of the state convention, and John Allison was later made permanent president. Both state and national Conventions nominated Frémont and Dayton, but the Democratic nominee, Buchanan, carried the nation and the state (by less than a thousand votes). The only office to which Carey was ever elected, and he allowed his name to be offered only after the extended importuning of his friends, was as delegate to a convention to change the state constitution—in the October, 1872, election. Elected as one of the Republican delegates-at-large from Philadelphia, he served as chairman of the Committee of Labor. This constitution, in its revised form, was later adopted by popular vote. Carey gave unstintedly of time, effort, and money to the new party. He was president of the Philadelphia Republican Club, and during the year 1856 was engaged in collecting contributions from wealthy men for the party's campaign funds. T h e work was discouraging, contributors were few in number, and Carey expressed to his friends his despair for the new party's success. His outlook was clouded by the fact that he had had to take a great deal he did not want in order to get the tariff

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into the new party platform. In a letter to Horace Binney (the acknowledged leader of the Pennsylvania bar) on October 7. 1856, he stated that a "free-soil party has had to be created." And he frequently referred to Fremont as the candidate who "was given to us." In a letter written to an undesignated correspondent on October 19, 1856, he outlined a program for the future which closely parallels the strategy the new party followed: So much for the past, now for the future. W e believe that there is a large body of democrats that would not vote for Whigs & Americans in the local [illegible word], that will vote for Fremont. We know that the Germans generally will not vote for this man, while large bodies of them will vote for the others. Whatever may be the result, it is desirable to pull as large a vote as possible for the Union ticket, & thus divide the Americans [the "Native Americans," antiforeign and anti-Catholic party] into pro and anti slavery parties, the latter to become Republicans. How far all this may be done, we cannot tell. We are penniless.

When the Republicans went into power in 1860 (Carey had been instrumental in inserting the tariff plank in the Chicago platform), Carey found himself frequently consulted by Lincoln and Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury (on matters of revenue and finance). Untiringly, throughout his middle years, he deluged office-holders of all parties with his tariff pleas, offering protection as the sovereign remedy for slavery or any other issue which was holding current attention. An assessment of these activities will be reserved until later. But far more to Carey's liking than politics was his position as host at the "Carey Vespers," one of the few American counterparts of the continental salons of the period. His more immediate and personal friends met punctually at his round table once a week, where, in his own words, "We discuss everything,

HENRY

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and decide nothing." Very probably, these informal conversations decided more public policy than many legislative speeches, "There were able men in that select company, and its free discussions gave effective force, through them, to outside agencies in the formation of the public judgment and resulting action." 49 It was a diverse company. The regular guests included General Patterson, William D. Lewis, Joseph Chandler, Henry Carey Baird, William Elder, and Morton McMichael (editor of the Philadelphia North American); but General Grant, Salmon P. Chase, David Wilmot, Bayard Taylor, Joseph Wharton, and even Simon Cameron, at various times shared Carey's hospitality. His house was practically "Liberty Hall"—plain language forcibly put was the rule and practice. Mr. Carey rarely expressed an opinion on subjects that he was unfamiliar with, but on those subjects that he had carefully considered, he was aggressively forcible in expressing his views, particularly when he knew that his hearers belonged to the great crowd of common place, who know but little but think that they are wise. 50

Cramp also states that he had been informed that every Secretary of the Treasury during the half-century of the Vespers took special pains to visit them frequently, and that Carey was generally consulted as to the appointment of new Secretaries. But the main purpose of these gatherings remained social, rather than political. Like his father, Henry Carey remained an ardent addict of the grape all his life. The outstanding feature of the Vespers, in the opinion of most guests, was the excellent hock wine which Carey imported from Germany. In Elder, op. cit., p. 33. Charles H . Cramp, "Carey's Vespers" (8 pp. typed mss. in the Edward C. Gardiner Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, November 11, 1 9 0 8 ) , p. 3. 4 9

5 0

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fact, he had been a member of The Hock Club, "originally formed in Philadelphia probably 30 years before. . . ."51 It is quite evident that by comparison with his father, Henry Carey was a recluse. His range of interests was narrower and he preferred to meet the world through his printed exhortations and in small groups in the privacy of his own home. He did not grasp his own era entirely, as did his father. In fact, it is not unfair to say that while his father was an American, he was a Pennsylvanian. Whenever he was asked to give aid to some nonpolitical cause, his invariable answer was that he was already giving of his time and money to the overall reform upon which all minor desirable changes must ultimately rest. Nothing better exemplifies the limited range of both his human sympathy and intellectual grasp than the stand he took on abolition and slavery, which in the minds of most of his contemporaries overshadowed all other issues. A succession of Washington politicians pled with him to modify his monolithic insistence on the tariff in the very teeth of the rising wind, not on a humanitarian basis but on realistic political grounds. As will be pointed out later, he refused to regard slavery as a political fact, but insisted that the British system was creating a far worse slavery. He at one and the same time assured his Northern compatriots that the tariff would ultimately end slavery, and addressed Southern planters with the plea that only the tariff could save their institution—that is, at times he phrased his appeal thus, while at other times he assured the Southern planters that the tariff would ultimately end slavery but that the planters' economic and political for61 Henry Carey Baird, "Recollections of General Grant at the 'Carey Vespers' " (24 pp. typed mss. in the Edward C. Gardiner Collection, Historical Society o£ Pennsylvania, 1889), p. 19.

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tunes would thereby improve. That Carey was a man of integrity and sincere purpose does not entirely free him from the charge of using this question to pursue his private interests, which, of course, says nothing more than that he met thousands of Northern politicians and businessmen on common ground. Unlike his father, Carey took little part in any reform movement which did not directly serve economic nationalism, his modicum of participation in this area of controversy serving to highlight one of the man's outstanding character traits. He was, however, the treasurer (Charles B. Penrose was president), of a Philadelphia "Aid for Kansas" committee. Their public circular, dated November 26, 1856, described the hardships of frontier life in the winter and requested contributions of money and goods to sustain the New England settlers there in their struggle with the Missourians. The circular made no political appeal, but since it appeared soon after the sack of Lawrence, Kansas, by pro-Southern sympathizers in May of that year, it indicates some willingness on Carey's part to intercede in a more direct way than making rational appeals to economic interest. Carey's correspondence during this period is most revealing. Two facts emerge: politically he maintained an equivocal position on secession and slavery until the shelling of Sumter; with incredible fanatical zeal he continued to plump for the tariff as a means of healing the breach while armies were already engaged in the field. Until very late, he resisted all attempts to secure his active support in the denunciation of the South. On the other hand, he could hardly be accused of being a Copperhead. On December 5, 1859, Carey was invited by a group of Philadelphia citizens to give his name as an officer of a public meeting, ". . . for the purpose of giving a proper expression of the feelings of

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our citizens toward our Southern brethren, sustaining them in the enforcement of their Laws against all who would endeavor to encroach upon the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution." Carey's answer to Dr. J. W . Bacon on the following day was a refusal: "There is much error on both sides, and those who make the mistake of supposing that it is to be found on ours alone, are little likely to contribute toward the maintenance of our present union." He said he thought Pennsylvania could serve as a meeting ground for delegates from the North and the South to discuss mutual problems, and that he would be glad to lend his name to such a meeting. Yet this is not to be construed as a settled personal policy. On January 4,1861, Carey was one of eleven men who sent out a signed call to one and fifty leading citizens of Philadelphia to seek more rigid enforcement of the fugitive slave law, "to remove all just complaint against the Northern States, and to secure the perpetuity of the Union." This did not arise, however, from any animosity toward the subject race, but rather a conservative distaste for any precipitate action that lay outside the bounds of legality, strictly interpreted. It was, as a matter of fact, the case of a Negro which stirred Carey to the only recorded public protest action of his life that was entirely free from any connection with the tariff. By 1871 race riots were becoming commonplace in Philadelphia; among those Negroes shot down and killed on the night before the election in October was one Professor Octavius V. Catto. A mass meeting, over which the now elderly Carey presided, was held in National Hall in order to denounce the lynching. 52 Yet the fact remains that Carey never allowed issues such as 52

Scharf and Westcott, op. cit., I, 837.

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these to dissuade him from his main purpose. When G. W. Curtis of New York protested to Carey for signing a public letter to Mayor Henry of Philadelphia, censuring Henry for calling out the police to disperse a riot that erupted in protest against Curtis' abolitionist speech ill Philadelphia, Carey replied to Curtis on January 10, 1860: It seems to me that you have forgotten that it was a sort of antislavery carnival . . . I could have begged you on the score of policy, not to lecture here at that moment. A year ago, we had the Kansas murders on our side. Now, our opponents have the Harper's Ferry riots on theirs, & if we do not act with great caution, we shall fail to win the race.

It seems almost inconceivable that Carey could have had the heart, without being totally lacking in insight, to have gratuitously deluged Lincoln as late as 1861 with such advice as that of June 20: "Had the policy advocated by Mr. Clay, as embodied in the tariff of 1842, been maintained, there could have been no secession. . . ." And of September 12: . . . determine for yourself if the very idea of secession would not have been effectively crushed out by a policy that would have tended toward filling the hill country of the South with free white men engaged in mining coal & iron, making [illegible word] and cloth, & building school houses & churches . . .

In fact, the only quarrel Carey ever really had with the South stemmed from its historical intransigeance regarding his pet policy. In a letter to Noah H. Swayne, then in Washington, on January 26, 1865, Carey declared that the "South commenced the game" by throwing away the trumps, "all of which they then held." Had they kept them, "they would have achieved their object without the loss of a drop of blood." One can only have a grudging admiration for Carey's indefatigability. One of his schemes for conciliation, nevertheless,

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was patently futile, addressed when it was to Salmon P. Chase, January 28, 1862: A year ago I urged the construction of a road from N o r t h to South as the one thing that, of all others, was required for so tying the states together as to render separation almost impossible—such a road, however, not fitting the purposes of Western L a n d Jobbers, and no one in Congress having any comprehension of the . . . reasons for its continuance, the idea fell to the ground.

Throughout the entire course of the war, Carey continued to urge Lincoln to start building the North-South road as a means of ending the conflict. When so much of what Carey had long beseeched from his countrymen was incorporated in the Morrill Tariff of 1861, Carey turned to banking and currency reform as sovereign remedies of new ills. It is worth noting, although it proves nothing, that the depression which started in 1873 was accompanied by an unprecedented high tariff. In any event, Carey's ideas on banking and currency, in contradistinction to his tariff stand, were regarded in his day as radical. Many of his followers could not follow him on this new tack; many fellow-Republicans scorned his views. Carey questioned the resumption of specie payments following the war, and the assumption of more federal control of banking, both of which he claimed would centralize our credit system, make us more helpless in the face of English domination, ruin the small producer, and demolish local centers of trade. His lifelong advocacy of "cheap" money prompted him to lend support to the Greenback Party when it was organized. T h e measure of Carey, the man, is fairly taken by Elder, his official biographer. Elder's assessment would appear to be more faithful and less idealized than that of several other of Carey's contemporaries, particularly when both are compared with

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Carey's correspondence. According to Elder, Henry Carey had an "imposing form"; he was about five feet ten inches in height, had an average weight of 160 pounds, and possessed a remarkable resemblance to Alexander Humboldt. His black eyes, for beauty and geniality of expression, had scarcely a parallel. Everything in his face and address indicated the warmth and urgency of his social proclivities. . . . In the conduct of smaller circles and promiscuous pleasure parties he did not shine as a conversationalist. The habit of his severe studies, and the tone of their earnestness, attached even to his common talk, and he usually spoke without any accommodating reserve, or special regard for opposing opinions or lack of opinions, in whatever company he encountered; yet he was too kind and courteous to give offense. In tone he was often dogmatic or at least didactic; but he was not rudely arbitrary in debate. There was in fact an unusual mixture of the positive and the respectful in his manner of discussion; just as his writings, which are so largely controversial in matter, are never arbitrary in assertion, however positive in opinion. He could not think, nor feel, nor speak, nor write with a halfhearted earnestness or hesitation of the things which he most assuredly believed; but he could listen, suppressing his constitutional impatience, to the doubts of others, and give due force to their differences of information and opinion when they had any. His earnestness, however, was so much against conversational tact. He sometimes clinched his deliverances with expletives and epithets something out of fashion in society, but the gleaming cordiality of his black eyes, and the pleasantness of his voice and handsome countenance smoothed to acceptance the harshest form of words that he indulged. He lacked humor of a juicy Irish quality, which he ought to have inherited from some ancestor of the sod earlier than his father. . . . 53 Carey's addiction to profanity, to which Elder makes hint, was elsewhere made more explicit. An English writer who visited him, after favorably describing him on the whole to 53

Elder, op. cit., p. 34.

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the writer of this essay, added: "He is a man of plain speech, and swears like a bargeman whenever Mill's name is mentioned."54 The available evidence would seem to delineate a positive, dogmatic character, a man insistent on having his own way, and possessed of settled animosities. With regard to the cholera epidemic of 1832, Carey wrote to J. F. Cooper: "If it could only carry off Jackson and a few other of our politicians by trade, I would submit to all the inconveniences of it for a month or two."55 He was a man who pursued a given objective with fixed determination, admitting no qualification to his arguments, which were presented with no trace of levity. But the very strength of character this signified attracted firm and lasting friendships. Apparently Carey was little troubled with self-doubts or concern about the value of his opinions and his written work. He sent unsolicited copies of his works and his portrait to the outstanding notables of both Europe and America. He was called an intense egotist who believed himself to be the savior of society, and he frequently said, "Salvation, it is in me, and in my books."56 Time after time, he expressed bewilderment over the failure of his countrymen to rally immediately about the tariff banner. To Charles A. Dana, on November 10, 1856, he wrote that he did not know what to do with those who persisted in saying that protection is for the benefit of the capitalist and do this in defiance of the facts. What is to be done with those who repeat theories and will not look at the facts ? One charge that has been leveled at Carey is not borne out T . E. C. Leslie, "Political Economy in the United States," p. 502, note 2. Carey to J. F. Cooper, July 13, 1832. Cooper, Correspondence, I, 269; Parton, ]ac\son, I, v. Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson, p. 93. 56 "Carey and Greeley" (footnote reference 46), p. 144. As stated previously (footnote 46), this article is of questionable authenticity. 55

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by his life history: that he was a conscious manipulator for capitalist control, a mere front man for reactionary forces. Carey damned manufacturers and bankers—to their faces—for their failure to see his truths. He was never a man to truckle to the powerful, to those who might personally intercede for him. The reason he never achieved public office, in fact never sought it, is in part traceable to the same source: an indulgence in the luxury of calling the cards as they fell. To Simon Cameron, as staunch a promoter of protection as Carey and a personal acquaintance who was persistently cordial to Carey and who happened to be the supreme political power in Pennsylvania, Carey wrote on March 28, 1868: —tells me that you think I have been rather harsh in the expression of my opinions as regards the people in and around the Treasury building. On the contrary, thinking, as I certainly do, that many of them have abundantly earned imprisonment for life, I have, as it seems to me, been very moderate.

Elder's claim of Carey's generosity certainly refers to no unitary trait. His interest in civic organizations and public reforms was limited to those catering to the social and intellectual elites, or those which would foster the society-wide national prosperity which Carey, on principle, insisted must precede any intercession in the interests of any class, even the slaves. In his personal relationships, however, he moved surely. He secured a captaincy for his nephew, Edward Carey Baird, through Senator Henry Wilson, the Massachusetts Whig; he secured commissions for several sons of old friends also. His correspondence indicates that he opened his purse wide to friends and their relatives who had become indigent; he did not, however, distribute largesse indiscriminately. A strain of litigiousness in Carey's character embroiled him several times in exchanges of severe letters with business asso-

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ciates. As an example, Carey had promised Fred W. Grayson a subscription of two hundred and fifty dollars to the capital fund of the new Philadelphia Evening Journal, and when Grayson demanded the first (overdue) payment in no uncertain terms, Carey replied on November 25, 1857, " . . . after the first week, it was in opposition to every idea I had thought— so much so, that I would have preferred to throw the money into the Delaware, rather than give it for the support of the Journal." To L. K. and P. G. Collins, publishers working on a Carey manuscript, he had been sending daily advice on how he wished the format arranged. On March 25, 1856, they replied that his notes of complaint had become very annoying, "especially when we consider ourselves right and you wrong, any arrangement to put a stop to these vexations will be agreeable to us." On October 1, 1855, Carey received notice of six months' arrearage for rent on his pew at the Burlington St. Mary's Episcopal Church. Carey wrote back, October 26, 1855, that he did not intend to pay the requested sum of $52.50, since he had left Burlington, not to return, and his intention was widely known throughout the community. Thriving on contention like his father, intellectually severe though he was, it was in his home that Carey really lived, not in the world outside. There he led a company of genial conversationalists, taking snuff, drinking wine, and eating heartily. And it was in his home that he devoted most of his life to the development of his doctrines, by preparing one manuscript after another with a zealous industry. Notwithstanding the amazing amount of his work, he was not a literary drudge. He wrote under impulse, rapidly, almost furiously; witness his chirography, which is hard to read, though much alleviated by neatness, uniform length of words, correct spelling, and

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careful punctuation. He never took exercise for its own sake. When tired with the posture of his writing-table, he walked the spacious rooms of his study, library, and large collection of paintings, keeping up the current of his head-work and soon returning to his swiftly-flying pen. His mental processes were impetuous, but free from the confusion of hurry, though rather embarrassing to his readers by the profusion of argument and illustration. If he had written his principal works in French, of which he was a master, they would have gained a desirable compactness by relief from the over-opulence of his vernacular in composition. Among the reliefs and luxuries of his leisure hours he read more light literature, novels, and periodicals than any other man, I think, who does anything else. He doubtless enjoyed but he never quoted them in his books or conversation, and it would be hard to find in his multitudinous productions a verse of poetry, other than a few homely adages of practical wisdom, often embodied in rude rhyme. 57 But what streamed from his pen was more than doctrinal disputation. Even detractors among his fellow economists have admitted that he was the first great economist in America. A n attempt will here be made to establish Carey's considerable contribution to American sociology—it must be kept in mind that Carey, in his books, was engaged in writing "social science," a term which to him and his contemporaries subsumed what have become the two distinctive modern fields of economics and sociology. In fact, in final assessment, Carey was more sociologist than economist. A n attempt is made below to substantiate this claim. Although Henry Carey failed to become a citizen of the world like his father, the list of his organizational memberships was extensive, and although he recurrently despaired over what he regarded as his failure to impress truth upon his countrymen, he was the recipient of many public honors. Carey was one of 57

Elder, op. at., p. 35.

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the original fifty members of the Union League of Philadelphia, organized in 1862. He was also a member of the Saturday Club —which he addressed November 3, 1877—an organization which was one of the most socially exclusive in the city. In 1856 he was made president of the board of trustees of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. As for scientific organizations: in 1858 he was made a corresponding member of the Pottsville Scientific Association; the Swedish Royal Academy elected him a member in 1868; in 1863 he was elected a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in the same year, to the Societa Reale di Napoli, Accademia Delle Scienze Morale E Politiche (at least "Enrico Carey" was, and the name of "Giovanni Stuart Mill" also appears on their membership list). In 1865 he was elected an honorary member of the American Social Science Association, in Boston, and also in that year he was unanimously elected president of the Pennsylvania Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society. More closely connected with his writings, he was elected to honorary membership in the American Iron Association in 1855. On December 28, 1865, he addressed the American Geographical and Statistical Society in New York City on the subject of "The Currency, Resources, and Indebtedness of the United States." And in June, 1863, at the commencement program of the University of the City of New York (later, New York University), the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him. Carey, it might be added, who snorted his disgust at all titles, never claimed the distinction of "Doctor." As Carey aged, he saw one old friend after another pass on. By the measuring rod of no age a sentimental man, when he alone was left of an informal club of twelve original members, upon the appointed date of their annual dinner he continued to

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dine at their regular meeting place, alone, until his death. Never afflicted with chronic illness, he continued to enjoy good health until his eightieth year, when he became subject to a number of minor complaints, including failing sight, which did not, however, seriously impair his regular daily stint of reading, nor his correspondence with his friends. Only five days before his death Dr. S. Austin Allibone received from him an article on the use of the word fortnight and its synonyms in several languages and varied uses, which was marked by clearness, pertinacity, and niceness of verbal distinctions worthy of the divertisements of leisure in his best days; and, with his habitual observance of the amenities of social life, he continued to visit and receive his friends to within two weeks of his departure. His death was not premature, nor was it surprising either to himself or to those nearest to him; but at the last it was, in some sense, sudden. He was spared the helplessness of protracted illness. Gently, tranquilly, he passed into his last sleep.58

Carey was buried beside his wife in the churchyard of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Burlington.59 In 1909, an admirer of his authorship had a stonecutter engrave upon his tombstone the simple words, "Philosopher of Statesmanship."80 By the provisions of his will,61 the University of Pennsylvania Library received a complete set of his works. His adopted daughter, Virginia C. Haven, received the bulk of the estate: the Walnut Street home, the interest from thirty thousand dollars in mortgage bonds of the Pennsylvania and Reading Coal 58 Ibid., p. 36. 59 Since, as has been noted, Carey was for a period a pew-holder in that church, it seems strange that his close friend, Robert Ellis Thompson, should state that he was the member of no church ("Henry Charles Carey," p. 834), and that while not a religious man in the ordinary sense, that he had "an evident leaning toward the Catholic Church." 60 Letter from Haines and Russell, Burlington, New Jersey, to E. C. Gardiner, April 24, 1936. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 81 Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, October 29, 1879.

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and Iron Company, two hundred shares of the New Jersey Heat and Light Company, plus the remainder of the estate. His nephew, Henry Carey Baird, received eight thousand dollars in bonds and two hundred shares of stock. Also generously provided for were his literary associates, or their heirs: Eugene Diihring, Mrs. William Elder, and Mrs. E. Peshine Smith. With the news of Carey's death, on October 13, 1879, scarcely a newspaper in the country failed to eulogize the man whose name above all others was linked in the public consciousness with one of the most dominant social policies of the period. Henry Carey Baird was the recipient of letters of commiseration from all over the world, of which the following extracts are typical: from James Buchanan, Indianapolis lawyer, "The world knew him only to love him," Edward Combes, from New South Wales, wrote, "In the future his name will be linked with Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Clay, and Lincoln." And from John L. Hayes, of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, "In losing Mr. Carey I feel the loss of a father." The most stirring tribute to the memory of Henry Carey, however, was written by Robert Ellis Thompson: In h i m A m e r i c a possessed one of her greatest sons, perhaps the greatest of our Irish stock. In h i m the world possessed its greatest and most far-seeing economist. In h i m the w o r k m a n had the truest of champions, and the poor a generous helper. In h i m his friends possessed a m a n whose every fibre was human, noble, generous. It is fourteen years since we gathered around his lifeless f o r m to do the last honors to his name. B u t out of our hearts h e never will die. 6 2 62 The Centenary of the Birth of Henry C. Carey, LL.D. Appropriate His Life and Wor\, p. 5.

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was primarily a social reformer; second, a sociologist; and third, an economist. Why, then, has the common misconception that Carey was an economist been almost universally accepted ? In the first place, with one or two exceptions, all the secondary sources for information about Carey were the works of economists and, undoubtedly, that is the reason why what Carey regarded as his social science has come to be regarded as his economics. The present writer, in so far as this is consciously possible, has attempted to prevent his own background and training from overstating what appears to him to be the contrary case, and to establish it by Carey's writings. In the second place, there was no sociology, in the modern sense of a distinctive field of human culture and group relationships, during Carey's lifetime. Transitional figures like Carey are better regarded as proto-sociologists. They accepted a historically established framework of political economy as a starting point from which they expanded conventional economic categories to include empirical discussions of a range of behavior and group relationships which today would be regarded as sociological in context. Nevertheless, the fact of Carey's transitional status must constantly be kept in mind: nowhere in his writings will such basic concepts of modern sociology as culture, socialization, assimilation, and diffusion be encountered. They were to await a later era of social science specialization. H E N R Y CAREY

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It is quite true that Carey devoted most of the pages of his books to the re-definition of economic categories, and the defense of those re-definitions. On the other hand, those redefinitions were very evidently designed to further his reform purposes and to subserve his conceptions of the development of man and society. The entire context of his refutation of the Ricardian rent theory is the destruction of a pessimistic view of society in favor of an optimistic one, to support a putative harmony of all interests, class, regional, and international, and thus a faith in social progress. And it is MAN, the WHOLE M A N , in his various institutional relationships, who is responsible for social progress or retrogression, and not that "abomination" of the Manchester school, the economic man. Take Carey's definition of value. The existence of value in the human mind is simply "our estimate of the resistance to be overcome, before we can enter upon the possession of the thing desired." Value is also the measure of the resistance to be overcome in obtaining those commodities or things required for our purposes—of the power of nature over man. W h y is Jenny Lind so highly valued ? Because of the obstacles to be overcome before an equal voice can be reproduced. So, too, is it with the fine horses, with the fine specimens of glass, and with the land that yields large returns to labor—To what extent are they valued? T o that of the cost of reproduction, and no more; and that tends to decline with every step in the growth of population and wealth. T h e same laws thus apply to all matter, whatsoever the form in which it exists. 1

Value becomes a dynamic concept, inseparable from the development of society as a whole, and geared to progress. Carey 1 Principles of Social Science, I, 174. This work, in three volumes, published 1858-60 (full reference for this and Carey's other books given in the Bibliography), contains Carey's developed thought in its fullest expression.

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had to shape two more economic categories, however, before the picture was complete. T h e first was utility: The utility of things is the measure of man's power over nature— and this grows with the power of combination among men. Their value, on the other hand, is the measure of nature's power over man —and this declines with the growth of the power of combination. The two thus move in opposite directions, and are always found in the inverse ratio of the other.2 In other words, the balance between value and utility is determined by group relationships, and not by reference to further economic categories. T h e second was wealth—consisting not in possession but in power to use—which is progressively compounded upon the accumulation of all past technological improvements. Carey is insistent that wealth is not solely synonymous with things—it includes intellect and morals, the artist and the preacher having their proper role in its accumulation. A n d wealth, also, is in a dynamic relationship with value: it grows with the decline of values (measure of resistance to be overcome): Wealth consists in the power to command the always gratuitous services of nature—whether rendered by the brain of man, or by the matter by which he is surrounded, and upon which it is required to operate. The greater the power of association—the greater the diversity of the demands upon the human intellect—the greater . . . must be the development of the peculiar faculties—or individuality— of each member of the society; and the greater the capacity for association. With the latter comes increase of power over nature and over himself; and the more perfect his capacity for self-government, the more rapid must be the motion of society—the greater the tendency towards further progress—and the more rapid the growth of wealth.3 2 Ibid., I, 179. 3 Ibid., 1,186.

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All of these categories, nevertheless, must be regarded as mere preparation for his discussion of distribution, in which Carey's Utopian conception of the direction society is taking, especially in the relationship of capital and labor, is most positively enunciated.4 He states that in the early stages of society, profits are large in proportion to capital (the instrument by help of which the work is done—"whether existing in the form of land and its improvements, ships, wagons, roads, houses, churches, steam-engines, ploughs, mental development, books, or corn"), but by the "general law of distribution" the laborer's share of distribution increases in both amount and proportion while the capitalist's share increases in amount but diminishes in proportion. There is thus a constant tendency to produce equality in the condition of man. While Carey's economics was ever subservient to his reform interests and was always geared into the dynamics of total societal change, his conception of society remained, nevertheless, essentially materialistic. He claimed it was not, however, and his most powerfully heaved shafts were aimed at the "materialism" of the Manchester economists. Yet in one context he equated commerce and society, in another stated that civilization was to be measured by the output of the blast furnace. Again, he write: Approximation in the price of raw materials and finished commodities is the one essential characteristic of civilization—it being the manifestation of a diminution of the obstacles standing in the way of association, and impeding the growth of commerce.6

His outstanding failure to transcend the charge he leveled at his opponents was his constantly reiterated theme that the accumulation of wealth is the prime prerequisite to the further4 5

Ibid., Ill, chap. 40, "Of Distribution," 109-30. Ibid., I, 428.

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anee of all moral and spiritual welfare. Carey's devotion to promoting tariff legislation was, if nothing more, crippling to his range of insight. His detestation of Great Britain, and his dogged determination to help wreck her world monopoly likewise restricted his mental horizon. He denied categorically that the poverty of India, Turkey, Portugal, and Ireland had any connection with religion, fatalism, indolence, or any other sociopsychological factors, but was solely the result of the British system. Of science, and the relationship between the social and natural sciences. Carey claimed to have demonstrated the identity of physical and social laws: "natural laws" are universal in application, from the movement of the planets to the actions of man, "the molecule of society." And if science be one and indivisible, then must the method of study be one. In the case of social science, however, laws, or universal truths to which no exceptions can be found, have remained undiscovered. Why? His answer foreshadows Spencer's famous statement, made at a later time: Of all others, social science is the most concrete and special—the most dependent on the earlier and more abstract departments of science—the one in which the facts are most difficult of collection and analysis—and therefore the last that makes its appearance on the stage. Of all, too, it is the only one that affects the interests of men, their feelings, passions, prejudices, and therefore the one in which it is most difficult to find men collecting facts with the sole view of deducing f r o m them the knowledge they are calculated to afford. Treating, as it does, of the relations between man and man, it has everywhere to meet the objection of those w h o seek the enjoyment of power and privilege at the cost of their fellow-men. 6

This stage of scientific development, denominated by August 6

Ibid., 1,38.

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Comte as "the metaphysical one," will cease only when it is realized that ". . . there is but one system of laws for the government of all matter, whether existing in the form of a piece of coal, a tree, a horse, or a man—and but one mode of study for all departments of it." To show that such is the case is Carey's principal stated objective in his main work, The Principles of Social Science. Comte, of course, had insisted that each science has its own laws, although his constant pointing to what "later" sciences owe to "earlier" ones made his position somewhat equivocal; Carey, nevertheless, did draw heavily upon Martineau's translation of the Positive Philosophy to relate the social to the natural sciences. The nearer science approaches man, says Carey, the more difficult it is to apply positive knowledge. He presented a schematic filiation of the sciences very similar to Comte's, except that he would drop mathematics, as not being a separate field of inquiry, but merely a method common to all the sciences. But Carey's filiation of the sciences is presented in the form of a "tree of knowledge" which purports to combine the evolution of thought and matter. The taproot represents matter, with "its essential properties of inertia, impenetrability, divisibility, and attraction." The lateral roots stand, on one side, for mechanical and chemical forces, and on the other, for vegetable and animal ones—"and from these substantive roots of being rises the stem of man, so composed as to his natural constitution." The soul, being the occult life of the structure, "is incapable of representation, though manifested by its proper evidence in the flowers and fruits, the emotions and thoughts of his faculties." Proceeding from the surface of the ground, the first branch on the material side is physics (with chemistry and natural

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philosophy as sub-branches); a little higher, g o i n g ofi on the left or "vital side," is organology (vegetable physiology, phytology, zoology, all capped by b i o l o g y ) ; higher still, social science on the right (the sub-branches being jurisprudence and political e c o n o m y ) ; a little higher, on the left, ethics, and then theology, are sub-branches of psychology; the tree

finally

flowering at the top w i t h intuition as the material branch and inspiration as the vital one. Inconsistent w i t h the tree analogy is the insistence that intuition and inspiration arrive on the scene first. It is only later in man's development, says Carey, that he is capable of the systematic observation that makes a science of agriculture, for example, possible. Carey took C o m t e to task for stating that at the present stage of social science k n o w l e d g e the units cannot be broken d o w n as fine as those studied by the chemist. V e r y like Spencer, Carey insisted that the w h o l e can be understood only by a minute examination of the p a r t s — " T h e geometer tells us that every w h o l e is equal to all its p a r t s . . . . " Also, very similar to Pareto's "ties" for h o l d i n g certain factors constant while attempting to assess w h a t w o u l d have been the course of events h a d they not operated in a given situation, is part of the f o l l o w i n g quotation, combined w i t h a generalization w h i c h is inconsistent w i t h his o w n efforts to trace the rise of "association" historically: If we desire to understand the history of man in past ages, or in distant lands, we must commence by studying him in the present, and having mastered him in the past and present, we may then be enabled to predict the future. T o do this, it is required that we should do with society as the chemist does with the piece of granite, resolve it into its several parts and study each part separately, ascertaining how it would act were it left to itself, and comparing what would be its independent action with what we see to be its action in society; and then by help of the same law of which the mathematician, the physicist, the chemist, and the physiologist, avail them-

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selves—that of the composition of forces—we may arrive at the law of the effect. T o do this would not, however, be to adopt the course of M. Comte, who gives us the distant and unknown—the societies of past ages—as a means of understanding the movements of the men by whom we are surrounded, and of predicting what will be those of future men. 7

Comte had stated an increasing abstraction and generality of the sciences of latest development. Carey further departed from Comte in insisting that the progress of knowledge passes from the compound to the simple, "from that which is abstruse and difficult to that which is plain and easily learned." Carey's central theoretical position with regard to the relationship between the physical and the social sciences, the universality and identity of natural and social laws, was not supported by much data beyond drawing an analogy between the movement of the planets and migration: as larger planets hold smaller ones in their orbits, and satellites in turn hold even smaller ones, so large cities attract men from large distances, a movement counterbalanced by the gravitational force of satellite communities. This did not deter him from regarding his position, however, as one of the great scientific discoveries of all time. On June 16, 1870, he wrote to Thomas Huxley: Galileo and Harvey, as you have said, laboured to the same end, that of demonstrating the universality of natural laws. . . . By none, however, has it ever been attempted to establish any correspondence between the physical laws and those which govern the activities of men. T o do this, I show that they are one and the same . . .

The "discovery" of scientific laws had as fatal a fascination for Carey as it had for many other men of his generation. Unfortunately, their basis shifted radically from one book to another. In his first ambitious and comprehensive work (three 7

Ibid., I, 27.

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volumes) he attempted to establish the laws by which a dynamic economy could progress (first volume). 8 This early attempt had the virtue, at least, of remaining within its o w n defined field. In it he takes the political economists of his day to task for considering man as solely occupied in acquiring and consuming wealth. Instead, man is desirous of maintaining and improving his condition. T h e true political economist thus treats man as a reasonable animal, and traces the laws (means) by which he can improve his physical and moral condition. W h i l e he later adopted the Aristotelian notion that human nature itself creates society, here he states a Platonic, utilitarian origin of society: the desire of improving his condition impels man to desire the aid and cooperation of his fellow man. In this, his proclaimed laissez-faire period, he apparently did not realize h o w far he had already left his acknowledged master, A d a m Smith, behind. T h e latter, while also adopting a utilitarian view, had insisted that the advantages of the division of labor were not originally the effect of human wisdom, but had its basis in the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. In a very real sense, however, here as elsewhere, Carey remained a materialist, because this desire of man to improve his condition finds its object "by [his] applying himself to the production of such things as are either useful or agreeable to him." It would be rather tedious to traverse the journey of the thirty-seven laws of nature which Carey claimed to have established on this basis. In brief, the whole structure rests upon a labor-cost theory of value: man is impelled to produce, which consists in the appropriation, alteration, or transportation, of the gifts of nature; the articles produced having value in his 8

Principles of Political Economy (1837).

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estimation because of the labor that has been given in exchange for them. Looking to the future, man puts aside a portion of his revenue in the f o r m of capital, which embraces all articles possessing exchangeable value. T h e improvement in the quality of labor ensuing tends to diminish the quantity required for the production of any commodity. A s labor is improved in quality, it becomes more productive, and capital is accumulated at less cost to labour, hence its owner can demand a smaller proportion of the product. So, as labor improves, the capitalist and trader get a greater quantity of commodities, but a constantly diminishing proportion of each unit. Since the growth of capital and productive labor are correlated, there is thus a perfect harmony of interests, which can be extended to the entire world. But with the Principles

of Social Science, Carey's search for

laws had become much more ambitious. Using such physical terms as force, motion, friction, and gravitation, he attempted to state the actual identity of social and physical laws. T h e only systematic statement of this relationship appears at the end of the work, and fortunately is more in the nature of philosophic accretion than anything which permeates the body of the work. A f e w statements are quoted below which will illustrate the point: T h a t heat is a cause of m o t i o n a n d f o r c e — m o t i o n being, in its turn, a cause of heat and f o r c e : T h a t the more heat and m o t i o n produced, the greater is the tendency t o w a r d s acceleration in the m o t i o n and the f o r c e : T h a t the m o r e the heat, the greater is the decomposition of masses, and individualization of the particles of w h i c h they are c o m p o s e d — thus fitting t h e m for entering into chemical combination w i t h each other:

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That the greater the tendency towards individualization, the more instant are the combinations, and the greater the force obtained: That the more rapid the motion, the greater the tendency of matter to rise in the scale of form—passing from the rude forms which characterize the inorganic world, through those of the vegetable and animal world, and ending in man: That, at every stage of progress, there is an extension of the range of law to which matter is subjected, accompanied by an increase of the power of self-direction—subordination and freedom keeping steady pace with organization: That last in the progress of development comes man, the being to whom has been given the power to guide and direct himself and nature too—his subjection to all the laws above referred to, being the most complete. 9 Carey's last book 1 0 was written to restate the identity of social and physical science laws in the light of the many investigations in, and applications of, electricity which had been made in the preceding decade. Carey believed the flow of force between positive and negative poles offered a new and better application of physical laws to society. H e stated that the identity and convertibility of these "subtlest of forces" had abundantly justified the analogies which had thus far been assumed between the heat and motion of matter and the forces of societary life, "but the choice of electricity, as the preferable analogue would give us now a greater and happier application of the correspondence." T h e following passage illustrates the rather ingenious way in which his conception of progress, his invocation of hope and optimism, were tied in with the new physical analogy: Throughout nature, the power of combination is in the direct ratio of the individualization of the various parts. T h e more perfect Principles of Social Science, III, 467. 10 The Unity of Law (1872).

9

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it becomes, the more rapid is the circulation and the greater the force exerted. So precisely is it with man. The more societary positives and negatives are brought together, and the more his power of association, the greater is the tendency toward development of his various faculties; the greater becomes his control of the forces of nature, and the more perfect his own power for self-direction; mental force thus more and more obtaining control over the accumulations of the past. The physically weak, and the physically strong, whether male or female, youthful or aged, tend more and more to meet on terms of strict equality . . . n

Yet, the above passage reveals a dilemma which, it will become apparent, was constantly cropping up in Carey's theoretical formulations: the statement of a principle of emergence in the social realm superimposed upon a rigid application to society of mechanical laws. In this volume he constantly reiterates that matter, with progress, gradually yields place and power to mind; with the appearance on the "stage of life" of new forms and more complex structures new laws present themselves, but these cooperate "harmoniously with those previously observed." And, as hardly need be added by this time, where the protective tariff is found, there mind is in process of mastering matter. Of scientific method. Carey devoted very little space to a discussion of scientific method much beyond the mere statement that statistics is a tool which should be used more often in social science; that social science will not fulfill the promise of its name until it incorporates mathematics and a polemical preference for induction over deduction. Carey's "statistics" comprised the preparation of charts and tables, usually in the effort to prove that prosperity and high tariff periods are correlated, and vice versa. While in many cases sources were not cited, his work does enjoy the distinction of being a near" Ibid., pp.

374-75.

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pioneer extensive use of figures to buttress economic arguments. One of his volumes contains a curious implied admission. In a footnote he states, "A person employed in the preparation of government statistics inquired, on being asked to prepare some tables, what was to be the policy to be proved. 'Why,' said the other, 'could you prove both sides?' 'Equally well,' said he."12 But then Carey goes on to prove that prosperity has attended every tariff rise since 1816 and economic doldrums accompanied every advance of free trade by setting up time periods which will allow each to show its economic effects, but these time periods in every case start at an inconstant additive point after the given legislation was passed. It would be going too far afield to quote the number of sources available which take Carey's figures to task; there are many. An editorial in the Washington Union of the period, to refer to one example, cited the tonnage transported by the New York canals, "proving" that it had doubled after the low tariff of 1846 over what it had been following the high tariff of 1842. Carey rebutted that the table should be rearranged since the produce that went to market in 1847 was grown in 1846, under the tariff of 1842. This editorial in the Union also questioned Carey's claim that protection fosters immigration by pointing out that the arrivals from Great Britain alone in 1850 were three times what they were in 1842; Carey replied that these immigrants came only because British free trade had brought famine and pestilence to Britain. Carey also said that social science must turn more to mathematics before it becomes a true science, and he cites his own proposition—that labor constantly tends to derive a greater proportion of production than capital—as a mathematical relation. He singled out John Stuart Mill, Ricardo, and Malthus, 12

The Harmony

of Interests,

p. 4.

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as glaring examples of the misuses of deduction. "In part, social scientists have ever had an unhappy predilection for deduction instead of induction, studying 'in their closets' what men ought to do, instead of what they do do." The extent to which Carey heeded his own warning will become apparent in the context of the further discussion. Of man and society. One of Carey's insights, remarkable for a man of his period and something which was not to be handled so adequately again until Charles H. Cooley and George H. Mead turned their attention to the nature of communication, was the qualitative differences separating man from the rest of the animal species. But unfortunately this was combined with his insistence upon man's being controlled by the same set of laws "as a horse." He averred that MAN, in all his dimensions, is the proper study of social science, and takes John Stuart Mill, among others, to task, for stating that political economy studies man as being occupied solely in producing and consuming wealth (Carey allowed his polemics to carry him too far. Mill had stated that sociology—which is what Carey meant by "political economy" in the present context—must take account of the fact that in certain areas of the earth, men are little motivated in this fashion). Carey quotes Goethe with approval on the necessity of studying the "breath of the spirit" instead of the "individual material parts." And yet, according to Carey, MAN, "the subject of social science," is also "the molecule of society." While he shares with all other animals the requirements of eating, drinking, and sleeping, "his greatest need is that of ASSOCIATION with his fellow-men." In this one statement Carey outlines a dilemma that will become clearer as we continue: an unsuccessful attempt to combine the authority of Newtonian physics and the rising tide of organicist explanations of behavior.

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And yet, in his differentiation between man and the rest of the animal world, Carey strikes a number of modern notes. Man requires extended care in infancy for his physical and social development, and the early-acquired tool of language for thought. To have language, there must be association of men, and only thus can man be man; if a man is isolated from his fellows, he loses the power of reason along with that of speech. While the individual dog, cat, or rabbit possesses all its powers in a state of isolation, man does not and can not. Besides the quality of association, man has other distinguishing features. While all other species possess habits and instincts common to all their race, only man possesses individuality— this quality Carey implies is a biological emergent that is also tied to a concept of social progress—individuality steadily increases as we go from the savage tribe to civilization. Derived from Goethe is the idea that the more imperfect a being is, the more do the individual parts resemble each other, and the more the parts resemble the whole; the obverse occurring with the degree of "perfection." Difference, says Carey, is essential to association. The parallel between this and Spencer's idea of progress is very close. Linking individuality to the diversity of employments, Carey next made a statement that could have been made by Lester F. Ward: It is the occasion that makes the man. In every society there exists a vast amount of latent capacity waiting but the opportunity to show itself, and thus it is that in communities in which there is no diversity of employment, the intellectual power is to so great an extent wasted, producing no result. Life has been defined as being a "mutual exchange of relations," and where difference does not exist, exchanges cannot take place.13 13

Principles

of Social Science, I, 54.

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Man's third distinguishing quality is that of responsibility— before his fellowmen and his Creator, for his actions. The slave, the pauper, and the soldier possess no responsibility: they merely obey. With the growth of individuality, men learn to call military action by its true title, robbery and murder. Consistently, from the time of the publication of his first book,14 Carey reviled militarism and, as did Spencer, saw its scope steadily diminishing as industrial progress grew. This early work, incidentally, was an attempt to prove, with an interesting example of the use of statistics from all over the world— in some cases with sources cited, that wars, heavy taxation, low wages, poverty and wretchedness go together; while free trade, freedom of action, peace, moderate taxation, high wages and abundance are likewise correlated. Finally, as the fourth trait separating man from the rest of the animal world, only he has the capacity for progress. Carey had a sure grasp of the function of culture (although the term was not in use in his day) through which the social present is enabled to compound the effects of the past. "Man alone records what he has seen and learned, and man alone profits by the labors of his predecessors."15 To do this, he requires language, and this in turn requires association. By combining all these valid generalizations with an implicit reform intent, Carey arrived at his definition of social science: Social science treats of man in his efforts for the maintenance and improvement of his condition, and may now be defined to be the science of the laws which govern man in his efforts to secure for himself the highest individuality, and the greatest power of association with his fellow-men.16 14 16 16

Essay on Wages ( 1 8 3 5 ) . Principles oj Social Science, I, 60. Ibid., I, 63.

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The modern critic, standing apart from Carey's intellectual and political drift of attention, can only express regret that he did not further develop the ideas listed above in the direction he had started. Two factors prevented this: the fascination which the laws of mechanics had for him, and his inability to separate theory from reform. With regard to the first, after describing human association as a societal emergent, he goes on to state the "law of molecular gravitation" as applying to man: gravitation (by which Carey meant migration) is here, "as everywhere in the material world, in the direct ratio of the mass, and in the inverse one of the distance." And the following is typical of the way Carey could string terms together, derived from physics, to form a generalization which has no clear meaning: Progress requires motion. Motion comes with heat, and heat results from association. Association brings with it individuality and responsibility, and each aids in the development of the other while profiting by the help received from them. 17

And again, he stated: In the physical world, the less friction the greater is the effect of any given force. So, too, is it in the social world—power there growing with every diminution of friction, and diminishing with its increase. Friction, here, results from the necessity for employing the trader and transporter—men whose profits increase with every stoppage of circulation, while diminishing as it becomes more rapid. 18

Carey's "association," in the present context, is essentially what modern sociologists would term society. Modern students would tend to agree that Carey was on the right track in positing a mutual interdependence of association and individuality, even for survival. But in the first volume of his main 17 Ibid., I, 61. 18 Ibid., Ill, 22-23.

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work he went on to make society a mechanism; in the third, an organism. As a mechanism, subject to the law of "molecular gravitation," society does not permit its population to tend toward a single spot for the same reason that the planetary system remains in fixed force fields: local centers of attraction maintain the form and substance of the entire system, despite the greater attraction of larger bodies. In other words, man is regarded as a passive recipient of physical and mechanical stimuli, and is reduced to the status of an automaton. On the other hand, there was the insistence of man's essential difference from the rest of the sentient world, a further insistence that man makes his own difficulties, and that man can, by intelligent social action, overcome these difficulties. An internal philosophic refutation of the mechanism hypothesis is also contained in what might be called his hypothesis of "emergence," taken over from Goethe: that throughout nature the more perfect the organization and the more absolute the subordination, the more harmonious and beautiful is the interdependence of the parts. And a complete refutation of his own claim of the identity of physical and social laws is contained in the following passage: A rock, or a l u m p of coal being broken, each and every portion remains as perfect as it had been before. Dividing a polypus into a dozen parts, the vital force is found existing in each and all, and to such an extent, that each becomes again a perfect animal. Doing the same by man, he speedily passes into dust.—So, too, is it with societies—the mutuality of interdependence growing with every stage of progress, f r o m that simplest of societary forms presented to view in the history of Crusoe and his Friday, towards that high state of organization in which tens of thousands of persons combine to satisfy the public want for a single newspaper—hundreds of thousands then profiting by its perusal at a cost so small as scarcely to admit of calculation. 19 1» Ibid., Ill, 456.

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The mechanism hypothesis was further compromised by his organism analogy of society. Like the "complex organism of the human body," the entire human species, "in a sense as real and true, philosophically and practically, becomes one man, and may so be treated." Carey's development of this analogy serves to introduce the second intellectual factor which prevented him from following his initial step in the direction of forming an essentially modern sociological system. Carey here, as elsewhere, was incapable of separating analysis from the promotion of specific reform measures. Thus the necessity for a coordinating power (intelligence in the organism; government in society) appears "to exist in the direct ratio of development." But further, the protective tariff finds its inevitable place here: The government—representing, as it does, the intelligence of the body, physical and social—has a duty and a use, and therefore, a right to a place in the natural order. While ministering to the wellbeing of the body, it may not, and, as we see, it does not, intervene in that sphere of life which is nearest its central movements. Laisser faire is there the law—ruling all that has already been appropriated. Elsewhere, we find regulative help in bringing the sustenance of the body within its reach, and guardianship in warding off disturbing and injurious disturbances from without—giving liberty to the internal life, and protection to the social life, that protection, too, embracing both assistance and defense.20

Government is said to represent three classes of "vital agencies": the cerebro-spinal (ruling all others for the general wellbeing); excito-motory (employed in extraordinary, or what might be called social uses); and the sympathetic, or visceral nerves (wholly dedicated to vegetative life). Thus we have a system 6f checks and balances—a harmony secured among spontaneities, liberty and law and a dominion of intelligence, 20 Ibid., Ill, 405.

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"in the individual man, which represents the very type and model of that aggregate man designated as society." Association thus becomes equated, in the organism, with effectively directed biological functioning. Government is needed to remove the obstacles to association, the social body requiring schools, gas, drainage, letter-carrying, roads, tariff, and the care of the physically handicapped. Indeed, following Comte, there is not only a failure to differentiate but also a deliberate attempt to amalgamate theory and reform: Social science here branches into political economy—the former treating of the laws which govern man in his effort to secure for himself the highest individuality and the greatest power of association with his fellow-men, and the latter of the measures required for so co-ordinating the movements of society, as to enable the laws to take effect. T o Galileo, Newton, and others, we have been indebted for a knowledge of the laws of motion, but it was to another and widely-different class of philosophers—to men like Watt, Arkwright, and Fulton, we owe the power to profit of the laws discovered. Careful study of the law is indispensable to success in practice . . . 21

Carey saw the essential role of the social scientist as "indicating what have been the obstacles which, thus far, have prevented progress." And beyond the appeal to reform, was the invocation to Divine Authority. The final sentence of his greatest work reads, "CHRISTIANS . . . the foundation of Christianity and of Social Science is found in the great precept —ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER T H A T MEN SHOULD DO TO YOU, DO YE EVEN SO T O THEM." The irreconcilable elements in Carey's thought on man and society can now be summarized: man and society are biologicalsocial emergents, governed by attributes peculiar to them; man 21 ibid., Ill, 409.

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and society are automata, governed by exactly the same laws holding sway over the rest of the physical universe. The development of society follows a perfectly predictable course, based upon inevitable soil-sequence cultivation, increases in population and wealth accumulation. The development of society in a desirable direction is frequently upset by man's stupidity and cupidity, but man, by taking intelligent action, can correct these deviations from the proper and appointed route. The first of these has already been treated; it is to the second that we now turn. Association. Although making the diversification of employments explanatory of the whole range of social relations within society is at least as old as Plato, Carey was clearly one of the first sociologists to posit the division of labor as the dynamic of social change in society. This basic theme Carey maintained in his earliest to his final major works, and it was ever tied to the sequence of soil cultivation. As early as 1838,22 he stated that in the "infancy" of society men are scattered and limited only to the cultivation of the superior soils, which results in a sort of Hobbesian world where every man's hand is held in readiness against every other's, since each must depend upon himself for protection. With the improvement of the machinery of cultivation, men draw closer together to form protective communities, and with the further development of the division of labor, specialists take over the protective function—in other words, government is born. What gives this movement forward impetus is a "natural" impulse which is also, curiously enough, utilitarian: "The tendency to association is natural to man. It has its origin in the desire of maintaining and improving his condition. Each feels that he may derive benefit from his neigh22

Principles of Political Economy, II.

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bour, and knows that to enable him to do so he must grant aid in his turn." 23 In this stage, where superior soils only are used, fortresses are to be found everywhere, and freedom of action is curtailed. But as cultivation improves and the inferior soils are brought under cultivation, population becomes more dense and more able to protect itself on the spot. Standing armies become unnecessary, and there is a steady diminution of the proportion of the product of labor required for the maintenance of government. The necessity of interfering with the rights of person and property declines as churches and schools are built, and morals improve—but again, note that there is a material base; this movement rests on the extension of cultivation to the "inferior soils," that is, increased production. The year 1848, with the publication of The Past, the Present, and the Future, marks the turning point of Carey's literary career. Although this volume was begun and finished in the short span of ninety days, it contains the first appearance of the two key ideas to which Carey clung tenaciously from that time: a justification of protectionism as the very cornerstone of economic progress; the claim that, historically, man always starts with the cultivation of the "inferior" soils. With this Carey felt he had demolished Ricardo's theory of rent, and with this he also evidently believed his philosophy of optimism was afforded an unshakeable foundation. While previously Carey had made a hypothetical "infancy" of society his starting point, here he posits the first cultivator, the Robinson Crusoe of his day—an isolated cultivator who must turn to thin soil in spots on the hills, free of trees and shrubs, because the best soils are covered with trees he cannot fell or are located in swamps he cannot drain. Gradually, and 23 Ibid., p. 13.

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it is not clear which factor precedes other factors in time, the plow is invented, Crusoe's family grows, wealth increases, a more diversified division of labor arises, and then the better lands yield to cultivation. This is the direct antithesis of Ricardo's theory of rent, which posits the first cultivation of the best soils; and as population increases, land becomes less abundant, diminishing returns set in and man must turn to successively inferior soils. Thus, rent arises with the growth of population, the landlord being able to demand increasing return from the lands of better grade as cultivators are increasingly forced to till those of inferior grades, and the result is, according to Carey, that landowner and laborers "have opposing interests." It will be perceived that the whole system is based upon the assertion of the existence of a single fact, viz., that in the commencement of cultivation, when population is small, and land consequently abundant, the soils capable of yielding the largest return to any quantity of labour alone are cultivated. That fact exists, or it does not. If it has no existence, the system falls to the ground. That it does not exist; that it never has existed in any country whatsoever; and that it is contrary to the nature of things that it should have existed, or can exist, we propose now to show. 24

The United States affords abundant evidence that this is the case. Those who founded the early Plymouth colony, the original settlers of Pennsylvania, the early settlers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, uniformly selected the higher grounds, leaving the more fertile bottom land to their successors. The same thing is true of the South and West today. Nor can any exception to this rule be found in history, whether we turn to Mexico, Roman Britain, Greece, or Egypt, Carey asserted dogmatically, albeit in contradiction of his earlier book. 24

The Past, the Present, and the Future, p. 23.

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Whatever the validity of Carey's proposition as a universal principle, it most certainly was accurately descriptive of the early stages in development of an expanding economy, where population is sparse and land cheap and abundant; and it is also true that man's choices increase instead of decrease along with the return to labor. But Carey did not make this trend solely dependent upon a favorable man-land ratio. With the increase of population, a "habit of union" develops, and through it a more diversified division of labor arises, which in turn aids in the acquisition of machinery and technological skills that constantly increase man's well-being. Carey's final reason for dismissing Ricardo, however, was a blind emotionality which prevented him from seeing that both Ricardo and Malthus might be right if the attendant circumstances which they assumed instead of stated were present (as they were in the England of their day). Instead, Carey thundered that Ricardo's system is one of discords, and that it "tends to the production of hostility among classes and nations." 'v Although Carey sometimes shifted his meaning of the term association, it usually referred to the progressive and Utopian development whereby increasing population, decentralization of power and populations, increasing diversity and specialization in the division of labor and its socio-psychological component, individualization, all took place together. This is not only a progress theory, but also a statement of social evolution, although Carey never used the latter term. From 1848 on, Carey retained the Crusoe legend and used it to project into the future a Utopia of quasi-independent, self-contained local economies with a perfectly balanced division of labor. As for its status as a progress concept, it was more spiral than Spencerian linearity. After the initial population and wealth increases, chiefs arise who covet the wealth of their neighbors.

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The plunder of war masquerades in "glory," and the richer lands are abandoned as population decreases. Kings and nobles come to power, population and wealth recede, and the love of titles grows along with barbarism. This stage is evidently supplanted with another forward movement with further increases of wealth and population. This is nowhere clearly stated, but Carey apparently, when thinking of society as an automatic movement, envisioned a step forward, a regression, and then a continuous onward movement in all the later phases of development. Confusion arises in the fact that Carey never definitively stated his conception of the role of human intervention in social process. He never adopted one idea to the exclusion of the other: that society contains its own dynamism for movement in a predetermined direction; or that the purposes of men at any given moment determine what the next forward (or spiral) movement shall be. But he left no doubt as to his settled belief that men could contravert the purposes of both progress and the Deity. Instead of the automatic movement toward "concentration" (a term he often used synonymously with "association"), the selfish desires of men to establish monopolies could bring about "centralization" of power, wealth, and control in few places and in few hands. This is what the arch enemies of civilization are ever striving to accomplish: England, free trade, the colonial system, the middle man and the trader; all of whom, with the help of Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill, seek to reduce the rest of the world to slavery. The population theory. From the early date of his first publication, Carey interested himself in the theory of population. But it was not until his Principles of Social Science appeared that his thought acquired full systematization. Carey's developed thesis has been either summarily dismissed or ridiculed

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by most critics. Actually, it was a structure of considerable ingenuity, and short of the point of establishing universal laws of population, possessed considerable validity. As a matter of fact, the schema does not require the "law of the perpetuity of matter" which has brought so much obvious, and deserved, criticism. The valid—and central—portions of the theory contain the demonstrations that the Malthusian ratios are not established when a range of empirical fact is examined; and that, in largest measure, population problems are the result of man's activities—they are, then, remediable. In denying that reproduction always outstrips the food supply, Carey insisted that empirical conditions have divergent effects—the following quotation has a modern ring: . . . the reproductive function, having been, in common with every portion of the human organization, placed under the law of circumstances and related conditions. Climate, health, education, occupation, and habits of life, affect it as much as they affect any other organic function. Procreation must not, in contradistinction to every other animal function, be assumed to be a fixed, invariable action, ruled, as inorganic matter is, with mechanical rigor, entirely independent of the various influences by which it is liable to be so greatly modified. 25

Carey roams widely, citing evidence from various primitive tribes that fecundity may be high where the food supply is abundant, and pointing to relatively low birth rates where the food supply is scanty. He cites the history of England as demonstrating that population increases did not occur in a Malthusian expectancy—in fact, in the past, English real wages have advanced as population increased. Most of his examples were drawn from his own country where, with an expanding frontier, it was not at all difficult to establish the correlation 25

Principles of Social Science, III, 267-68.

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between a steadily rising standard of living and a rapid increase of population. Carey was one of the first observers to adequately treat the function of a complex division of labor and an improving technology in increasing both food supply and population. In fact, overpopulation has no meaning, says Carey, in terms of numbers alone, but only in terms of the given technology and division of labor. In an area forced solely into agriculture, overpopulation can continue to mount as population diminishes. H a d Carey heeded his own warning and limited the following statement to a set of given circumstances, there could be no quarrel with it: T h a t m a n m a y increase, there must be increase in the supply of food. T h a t the latter m a y increase, m a n k i n d must g r o w in n u m b e r s — i t b e i n g only by means of the g r o w i n g p o w e r of association a n d combination, that m a n is enabled to control a n d direct the earth's forces, a n d to pass f r o m the condition of nature's slave, to that of nature's master. P o p u l a t i o n m a k e s the f o o d c o m e f r o m the richer soils, w i t h constant increase in the return to labor; whereas, depopulation drives m e n back to poorer ones, w i t h constant decline in the ability to obtain the necessary supplies of f o o d a n d clothing. 2 6

A s for the second proposition—that man could by conscious design solve his problems of population—Carey insisted that it was under man's control to shape his political conditions in order to improve technology, build roads, foster basic industries, improve agriculture with scientific husbandry and the proper allocation of manures: in other words, to increase the food supply. There was also, as in Malthus, an indeterminate reference to the possibility of controlling births by conscious design. Indeterminate because he may have had the possibility of birth control in mind, or have merely been referring again to a constant theme that as man becomes more civilized, sexual 26 Ibid., 111,313.

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activity diminishes. In any event, Carey states that as numbers increase and wealth accumulates, " . . . men and women become more thoughtful and reflective—the matrimonial tie being sought for chiefly because of the desire for enjoying the comforts of home and family." Otherwise, "both become more reckless—sexual intercourse being sought as a means for the indulgence of passion . . . the only mode of gratification in which the poor may legally indulge." It was in what he borrowed to support his main contentions, and his insistence on establishing universal laws of population, however, that Carey laid himself open to exception. The chief borrowed element, attributed to his friend, E. Peshine Smith, whose Manual of Political Economy is extensively referred to, is "the law of the perpetuity of matter." Although not openly stated, it is evident that with this "law" Carey believed the cause of optimism triumphantly vindicated, and the shadow of diminishing returns at last banished. There has been, says Carey, no increase in matter—there cannot be—yet more food than ever is available to feed the increased population. What has happened is that inassimilable forms of matter have been increasingly transformed into assimilable matter. There is a perpetual circulation of mutually convertible waste products of plant and animal life. "Carbonic acid gas," for example, is thrown off by the lungs and skin of animals; it is then absorbed by the leaves of plants, "the carbon separated and incorporated into their substance, and the oxygen again exhaled into the atmosphere, to resume the round of circulation." Carey further borrowed a chart from an article in a foreign journal to illustrate the principle.27 The plant takes in carbonic 27 Johnston, " T h e Circulation of Matter," p. 552. T h e reference to the chart by Carey appears in the Principles of Social Science, I, 79.

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acid by its leaves and water by its roots, produces oxygen from its leaves and starch in its solid substance; the animal completes the cycle by taking starch into the stomach and oxygen into the lungs, and producing carbonic acid gas and water from the skin and the lungs. Why Carey introduced this principle is difficult to assess. The idea that food and increasing numbers are not necessarily disharmonious does not require it; in fact, Carey does not even claim that it does, for he then speaks of the evolution of society (not his term) as the factor increasing the food supply—as the division of labor grows, motion and association increase, and the food supply increases. While man's activity could increase the circulation of the reconversion process, it was still man's activity which formed the base of the increase, and the control over it. The most obvious direct reason Carey had for injecting this essentially extraneous idea was probably to support his contention of the necessity for returning to "the bank of Mother Earth" what had been taken away—or, the use of manure. In any event, he goes on to push matter conversion to a rather ludicrous extreme, and to combine it with another of the universal laws which had a fatal fascination for him: The most complex and highly organized form in which matter exists, is that of man, and here, alone, do we find that capacity for direction required for producing increase of motion and of force. Wherever man most exists we should, therefore, find the greatest tendency to the decentralization of matter—to increase of motion— to further changes of form—and to that higher development which commences in the vegetable world, and ends in the production of further supplies of men. 28

Another borrowed element, and, like the previous, an at28

Principles

of Social Science, I, 89.

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tempt to buttress the population theory rather than to add anything essential to it, was taken from Herbert Spencer.29 The article has been attributed to Spencer, apparently on internal evidence, since it was unsigned. It has been frequently claimed that Carey owed much to Spencer, but there is no evidence that this is the case. The Social Statics (published in 1850) was written in praise of laissez faire, and certainly Carey's ideas on social evolution were developed independent of Spencer, for the Synthetic Philosophy which contained Spencer's first statement of universal evolution, appeared after Carey's first volume of the Principles of Social Science—the only one of the three in which Carey dealt with that subject. In fact, the first direct evidence that Carey was even aware of Spencer appears in a letter from his cousin, Kate McKean, written November 6, 1863, in which she stated that she was returning the book of Spencer's she had borrowed; she claimed that it was "very hard reading, and by no means likely to have many readers, or to widely influence mankind." She concluded that Spencer's work had small chance of survival beside Carey's. And there is definite evidence that Carey had no knowledge at the time he quoted this article that it was Spencer's. E. Peshine Smith wrote to Carey on March 29, 1858, referring to the article in question, adducing that it probably had been written by a Quaker named Dickson, and Smith added that Carey might refer to it because "you will find the article to suggest a very similar idea to yours." Carey replied that he had not seen it, and requested Smith's pamphlet copy. In this article, Spencer was aware of refuting Malthus. He stated that individuation and reproduction are antagonistic, that throughout the vertebrate tribes "the degree of fertility varies inversely with the development of the nervous system." 29

"Theory of Population."

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H e added that intense mental application, involving great waste of the nervous tissues, "and a corresponding consumption of nervous matter for their repair, is accompanied by a cessation in the production of sperm cells. . . ." Spencer further argued that population pressure forces the development of intelligence, which in turn fosters morality, leading to the power of self-regulation. In short, the pressure of population "must gradually bring itself to an end." Carey argued in a similar vein, that the degree of fertility varies inversely as the development of the nervous system f r o m one animal species to another, and that the assumed progress in human intelligence would increasingly "direct the vital energy from the generative to the nervous structure. . . ." A n d so, says Carey, we have a self-regulating law of population, securing a harmony in food supply and an increase in population. T h e article by Spencer, however, was referred to only in a footnote, and for the main purpose of taking issue with it. Spencer had claimed that the pressure of population on the food supply was "the proximate cause of progress." Carey vehemently denied that "poverty and want" could ever be the inseparable companions of progress. H a d they been, "the closing scenes of the journey should . . . exhibit them as more abounding than at any previous period." T o Carey, any concession

to an

even

greatly

modified

Malthusianism

was

unthinkable. In fact, Carey's entire treatment of the subject was placed in a polemical context, and Malthus ever remained his archenemy. Y e t he never reviewed Malthus' arguments in their entirety, but mainly contented himself with attacking the arithmetical and geometrical ratios which had received major emphasis only in the first edition of Malthus' Essay. A n d certainly

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much of the ammunition Carey used was defective, such as his pointing out that some of the organisms upon which man feeds reproduce at an even more rapid rate than man himself— rabbits, carp, turnips—which overlooks the fact that Malthus' argument finally hinges upon the amount of arable land available for cultivation. Carey never came to grips with this basic problem. In an earlier work he had admitted that the time may come when the world will be overpopulated, but that, most certainly, would be far in the future and could be left with confidence "to the benevolent care of the Deity." He shifted ground in the Principles of Social Science, stating that the largest fertile part of the earth is yet uncultivated, and that "the power of the earth to afford subsistence to man is practically unlimited." He insisted that Malthus' position rested upon Ricardo's claim of movement from the rich to the poor soils, and that he (Carey), having "proved" the reverse, then Malthus was also refuted. Carey also made some rather reckless arguments ad hominem. He interpreted the theories of his antagonists as statements in favor of the results they were holding up as a warning. In one attempted refutation of Malthus, for example, Carey insists that war is undesirable! He even accused them of falsely allocating class responsibility: Such is the difference between Social Science, and the doctrines of the Ricardo-Malthusian school—the one holding the rich and strong to a high responsibility, while the other shifts the whole of it to the shoulders of those who, being weak and poor, are unable to defend themselves. 30

Carey's final argument, to which he turned again and again, was that a wise and beneficent Deity would never permit the evil in the world which Ricardo and Malthus had proclaimed. 30

Principles of Social Science, III, 365.

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While Divine Providence could be misconstrued, Carey believed in the power of verbal persuasion to make it both manifest and effective, " T h e harmony of all the permanent interests of man being perfect, it would seem to be required, only, that men should be persuaded of its existence. . . ." Carey's theory of population has been reviewed sufficiently to permit a summary assessment. Next to his statement of the significance of the division of labor, Carey's work in this field comprises perhaps his greatest contribution to sociology; it certainly came closest to meeting his self-imposed canon of inductive method. The two outstanding, and valid, generalizations he reached are: first, that the reproductive function operates in no social vacuum, but is "placed under the law of circumstances and related conditions." This he supported with a creditable range of empirical demonstration. Second, that the concept of overpopulation is relative to man's ingenuity and level of technological achievement—to a large extent, the problem of numbers is amenable to intelligent and rational social action. Unfortunately, Carey contradicted himself by stating several universal "laws" of population and incorporating several borrowed theoretical elements which confused his central purposes and added nothing to them. This resulted from his ill-starred conviction that Malthus and Ricardo were completely in error. He believed he had destroyed Ricardo's theory of rent by "proving" that man universally goes to the "poorer" soils first, thereby overlooking the fact that man will first cultivate the better soils, even in a new area, if the terrain makes that procedure at all tenable. From D. G. McCord, of Lauszare, South Carolina, Carey received a letter on January 17, 1854, which contained the following advice, "Visit Texas in its new state . . . and you will find the very best lands first occupied. They

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are not heavily timbered." The position Carey took in his The Past, the Present, and the Future was the correct one, that circumstances will dictate which type of soil is first cultivated. In his later writings, on the basis of uncertain evidence, he applied the historical soil sequence of the Atlantic seaboard to all areas in all periods of time. Ricardo and Carey were equally at fault, "Ricardo loaded the evidence from the English conditions of 1815; Carey loaded the evidence from the American conditions of 1848."31 Soil sequence has no significance in and of itself. Carey very evidently believed that his statement of the case disposed of the problem of diminishing returns, but subsequent history in Carey's own country has shown that diminishing returns can set in where cultivation was started in either rich or poor soils.32 But Carey, to buttress his position on this issue, had denied that land has any value whatsoever, only man has value in this connection. It is interesting to note that dissident voices were rising, even in optimistic mid-century America, voices which Carey paid no heed and made no effort to refute. Richard Sully, writing before Carey's main work appeared,33 stated that Carey's law of soil sequence was inapplicable in terms of motivation and availability—men in this country had started cultivation on the poorer soils when these had been available. He also denied that food tends to increase more rapidly than population, and that the attendant circumstances under which Carey's proposition might be true had ceased to exist in America, else why had capital accumulated unequally in the hands of a few, and that number rapidly decreasing? What gives capital an increasing 31 John Roscoe Turner, The Ricardian Rent Theory in Early American pp. 115-16. 32 Arthur Latham Perry, Elements of Political Economy, p. 157. 33 "The Study of Political Economy."

Economics,

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power over the wages of the laborer ? If Carey had bothered to answer this, which he did not, he would have made reference to the low W a l k e r Tariff, then in effect. Yet it must not be assumed that Carey's position has been universally discarded. Even today it continues to receive support, as it does, by inference, in the following quotation from a contemporary writer: . . . Malthus, Ricardo, West, and Mill had noticed the existence of two antagonistic tendencies. As population increased, other things being equal, men had resort to poorer land and also cultivated the better land more intensively, so that production costs tended to rise. On the other hand, as population became more concentrated, again other things remaining the same, certain economies arose—savings in transportation and communication, for instance. Furthermore, as the population multiplied, the other things ceased to remain the same, because improvements of various kinds were introduced, lowering the costs of production. Looking into the future, Mill— like Ricardo and West before him—prophesied that the tendency towards diminishing returns would prevail. The present generation, glancing backwards over the period that has passed by since West and Mill ventured their prophecy, must admit that the forecast has proved incorrect, so far at all events.34 However much the present may have vindicated either Carey or Malthus, the latter had in Carey perhaps his most ferocious opponent. Carey pounced with particular gusto upon arithmetic-geometric ratios, demonstrating that they

the

would

not stand up under a series of historical observations, but his vehemence was unjustified. Only in the first, the 1798 edition of the Essay on the Principle

of Population

is the statement that

population constantly outdistahces food supply made with any dogmatism. In the 1803 edition, and later, Malthus speaks only of a tendency 34

in this direction, where

certain restraints fail to

Edmund Whittaker, A History of Economic Ideas, p. 397.

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operate. And like Carey, Malthus came to place more and more reliance in a possible new check for the future—moral restraint. Some modern scholars are even arguing whether or not Malthus made oblique reference to the possibility of modifying the "tendency" with birth-control measures. Malthus did, however, fail to take account of one factor which Carey correctly emphasized—the possibility of augmenting the food supply through improved technology, and the use of manure and soil chemicals. Carey's single-minded attack on the ratios led him into many false channels, such as the insistence that the reproductive rate of certain forms of human food outdistances the reproductive rate of man. Other elements in the population theory had an insecure basis. Whether Ricardo and Malthus represented something contrary to the Will of God is outside the realm of proof or disproof. And Carey had no license for accusing these men of advocating the "gloomy" conditions they were describing as impersonal social and economic forces. A too-generous appraisal of his antagonists was never one of Carey's more glaring personal faults. Likewise, Carey's claim that increase of numbers is always associated with an increase of wealth and with subsequent spiritual and moral gains is of dubious validity. Again, if he had applied his own canon of attendant circumstances, he would have been on surer footing. It must be noted, however, that this was not consistently claimed as a "law." Sometimes it was; at other times he averred that increase of population in combination with high taxes, militarism, too many religious holidays, a general lack of "personal responsibility," and the like, could only lead to disaster. And he never did squarely face the possibility of ultimate overpopulation. Two other elements of the theory have been subjected to unmerciful ridicule, but neither is essential to the whole struc-

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ture and one has many supporters, even today. As for the borrowed "law of perpetuity of matter," the easy demonstration that plants and animals are in some sort of chemico-ecological balance does not prove that increase of one inevitably calls forth increase of the other. As for the second generalization, Carey, like Spencer, believed that fertility and intellectual capacity are in inverse relationship. Many modern social scientists, of whom Frank Hamilton Hankins is an outstanding example, have used a similar argument to explain the differential birth rate among the various socioeconomic classes, although the latter did not, as did Carey and Spencer, append to the inferred relationship a theory of social progress. The essentially sociological phase of Carey's population theory was the insistence that cultural variables—the division of labor, the level of technology, individual habits of industry, and the quality of legislation—all directly affect the man-land ratio, and all affect any real measure of population density. But by denying any dynamic quality whatsoever to "natural" conditions and by failing to take into consideration other cultural factors which were working counter to the ones he enumerated, he was probably guilty of oversimplification. The Bernards are of this opinion: T h e point on which he refused to take Malthus seriously and over which he spilled so much sarcastic ink—Malthus' contention that h u m a n population tends to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence—turned out to be true after all. Carey was correct in asserting that there was no such natural tendency. It is the cultural tendency that tripped up Carey and verified Malthus. Man tends, in the absence of preventive or cultural checks, to reproduce at his natural capacity. T h e food resources, on the other hand, have no chance to increase in competition with uneconomical plants and animals in a man-dominated world, except through the efforts of m a n himself, and these are limited generally by his needs as well as by

SOCIOLOGICAL

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THEORY

adverse conditions of soil, climate, and the like. This fact Carey evidently did not know. 35

The Bernards go on to point out that the new inventions and applications of science appearing in Carey's time combined only temporarily with vast territories and an abundance of natural resources to solve the population problem. In fact, the very industrialization and complex division of labor he advocated, along with a growing recession of land and resources, have done more than anything else "to make imminent and inevitable the conditions which Malthus emphasized. . . ." An assessment of Carey's contribution to sociological theory. With regard to the total range of Carey's theory, the warning must be sounded that the present writer does not consider his balance sheet an exact replica of what all other sociological accountants would draw up. While we will not raise the tedious question of whether sociology is or is not a science, the fact still remains that the social sciences, unlike the physical sciences, have not as yet attained to a stage of development in which major theoretical formulations are either definitively rejected or firmly incorporated into previously established theory. There are recurrent intellectual fashions in social science theory which make dubious any claim to having settled the fate, for the present and the future, of many theories that have come down to us from the past. Thus many modern criminologists, who had with a sigh of relief interred the corpse of Lombroso, were considerably chagrined at Professor Hooton's recent conjuring of the Lombrosian ghost. Likewise, the widespread dismissal in recent decades of all organismic explanations of society has not deterred Professor Leslie White from vigorously reopening the issue. 35

L. L. and Jessie Bernard, The Origins of American

Sociology,

p. 409.

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The above is meant to represent only a relative limitation of theory assessment in sociology. The field has developed a more or less common core of theory which would make any return to the application of the laws of mechanics to society extremely unlikely. In other words, this major insistence of Carey's is likely to remain buried. But the fact remains that future generations of sociologists are likely to find in Carey more or less than the present writer. These qualifications will serve to introduce the major hypothesis of this section: when the wheat is separated from the chaff, Carey's contribution to sociology, in its potentiality for further development, was as noteworthy as it was ignored. The essence of Carey's sociological theory is the division of labor. This key was used to explain past historical epochs and the present; and it was claimed that on the basis of the present balance of the division of labor, the state of future social organization could be inferred. The division of labor at any given moment in time stands as the base of whatever social complexity the given social order is enabled to attain. How men are employed, in relation to other men, is basic to social class alignments, the presence or absence of conflict, the future incidence of technological invention, the course of political action. Carey combined his discussion of the division of labor with a warning against the "tyranny of words." Various political labels tend to obscure the underlying realities of social relationships; particularly is the term "freedom" bandied about in a reckless fashion. Freedom must be measured in the degree to which men are not interfered with in seeking and maintaining the employment of their choice. No one before Carey, and very few since, have devoted so much attention to this area of organization and behavior, which affords as good an instrument for studying organization and

SOCIOLOGICAL

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change as any that has been devised, fimile Durkheim wrote a book on the subject which appeared, originally, in 1893, with organic analogies as dubious as Carey's mechanical ones, and, contra Tonnies, to demonstrate that a sort of "Gemeinschaft" spirit develops, along with individuality, as the division of labor becomes more complex. Carey was also endeavoring to establish this. Long before Durkheim's treatment of the subject, Carey stated the Frenchman's central thesis, but he has received no credit for it. Briefly, as the division of labor becomes more complex, the differences among men also increase, but this movement is accompanied by a more perfect social solidarity, based upon both an integration of individual work function and a respect for individuality. How much Durkheim borrowed from Carey is difficult to assess. He acknowledged his indeterminate debt in a lengthy quotation from the Principles of Social Science,36 It seems highly probable that Durkheim's debt to Carey was considerable since the direct cause attributed to the rise of the division of labor by Durkheim was "the volume and density of societies"—a virtually exact replica of Carey's "concentration of population." Probability is heightened by the fact that everywhere else in Durkheim's writings demographic factors are consistently dismissed as an insufficient causal explanation of sociological phenomena. In some ways, Carey's treatment of the subject was more adequate than Durkheim's. Both claimed that the division of labor causes changes in the social organization, bringing about both developed individuality and social solidarity. Durkheim, 36 George Simpson, tmile Dur\heim on the Division of Labor in Society, p. 394. Except for the introductory chapter, this is a literal translation o£ the original work which appeared in 1893.

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however, in his discussion of "anomic" forms of the division of labor, continued to use biological analogies to explain why progress was not observable in some societies. Carey, instead of following this unprofitable line of thought, examined a series of cultural factors which could prevent the division of labor itself from developing into greater complexity, such as religious systems and class-privilege legislation. Carey also saw clearly, as did Cooley, Durkheim, and Maine, that individuality is a function of increased concentration of population and a complex division of labor: contractual relations supersede primary-group relations based upon blood and neighborhood. While Carey did use this insight as a vehicle for advocating limited corporate liability, he had as sure a grasp as these other men of the socio-psychological effects of the structural changes he saw taking place in American society during his own lifetime. In fact, what Cooley had to say about individuality has the flavor of Carey's pages. Cooley pointed out that there are two kinds of individuality, resulting from either isolation or choice, ". . . modern conditions foster the latter while they efface the former. They tend to make life rational and free instead of local and accidental."37 But what remains questionable, at the central core of both Carey's and Durkheim's thesis, is the evaluation of the new individualism. Carey claimed that "solidarity," "freedom," and "individuality" grow together with a developing division of labor. Durkheim similarly claimed that with the increasing complexity of the division of labor, "mechanical solidarity" based upon likeness waned to be replaced by "organic solidarity" based upon work function, integrated and yet more individualized. Both men have merely stated an inferred relationship; there is little evidence that their case is proven. In 37

Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization,

p. 93.

SOCIOLOGICAL

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fact, Durkheim's later work, Le Suicide, would seem to establish that the suicide rate is correlated with "anomie" (or normlessness), and that not individual freedom, but rather individual disorganization, results where the old mechanical solidarity is most lacking. As far as order in society (and likewise in the individual) is concerned, it would seem more logical to assume that no new basis has arisen for establishing order in modern society, that instead we are merely drawing upon capital stored up in the old society. And individual freedom is not an entity which leads easily to characterizations of "more" and "less." Under the old conditions of rural-familism (mechanical solidarity) on the extending American frontier of Carey's boyhood and early manhood, the individual was subjected to a narrow moral scrutiny, and had a definitive set of mores to implement in his daily actions, a rigid blueprint of behavior which was rigorously exacted by family and neighborhood. But at the same time he owned his own land, tools, and buildings, operated his own enterprise, and had some individual control over local political and economic affairs, affairs which remained local. His career and personal destiny were not frail chips to be sent spinning willynilly in the vast currents of international wars and depressions. And today, in the Buck und lesen Welt as Spengler called it, the individual reads about what they are planning to do—they being the unknown, hidden, burgeoning business, governmental, and military hierarchies which decide his fate—at long distance. He has lost control of his individual political and economic sphere; his individualism finds increasing expression in personal relations, in increasing avoidance of familial and neighborhood obligations, an opportunity for avoidance which was denied his ancestors for the most part. Max Weber saw what was coming far more clearly than either Carey or Durk-

HENRY

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CAREY

heim. He pointed out that the rationalization of the modern economy has, in contradictory fashion, made the individual more free, but that at the same time the steady march toward organization and bureaucratization has increasingly endangered freedom. Perhaps Carey should not be taken too severely to task for failing to foresee that the very industrialization he invoked to set men free would, after a certain point had been reached, begin to develop contradictory trends. He was writing in a time when skilled craftsmanship had not yet been almost totally supplanted by the machine. How increased mechanization of the shoe industry has reduced the stature of the individual workman has been well described by W . Lloyd Warner and J. O. Low: In learning to respect the skill of the master craftsman, the apprentice learned to respect himself. H e had security in his job, but he had even greater personal security because he had learned to respect his job. And because he was a member of an age-graded male fraternity made up of other men like himself who had the knowledge and necessary skills to make shoes, he possessed that feeling of absolute freedom and independence and of being autonomous that comes from being in a discipline. H e spent his life acquiring virtue, prestige, and respect, learning as he aged and climbed upward, and at the same time teaching those who were younger than he and who aspired to be like him. Slowly this way of life degenerated and the machine took the virtue and respect from the worker, at the same time breaking the skill hierarchy which dominated his occupation. There was no longer a period for young men to learn to respect those in the age grade above them and in so doing to become self-respecting workers. T h e "ladder to the stars" was gone and with it much of the structure of the "American Dream." 3 8 38

The Social System of the Modern

Factory, p. 88.

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93

In more general terms, a modern philosopher-historian comes to essentially the same conclusion: W e have already observed that the division of labour is not entirely unknown in primitive societies.. . . But the impact of civilization on the division of labour tends in a general way to accentuate the division to a degree at which it threatens not merely to bring in diminishing social returns but to become actually anti-social in its working; and this effect is produced in the lives of the creative minority and the uncreative majority alike. The creators are pushed into esotericism and the rank and file into lopsidedness.39

However open to criticism Carey's treatment of the division of labor may be, it remains a pioneering effort of considerable stature, perhaps even more adequate than Durkheim's. Yet Durkheim has been hailed as the pioneer, and Carey completely ignored in this connection. In all probability the reason is that Durkheim wrote an entire book focused squarely on the division of labor, while Carey was writing a polemical treatise in which the recurrent theme of the division of labor appears and disappears in the interstices of protective tariff promotion and Ricardo-Malthus jeremiads. Carey made other, almost equally important, contributions to sociological theory. Long before the terms "culture" and "socialization process" became common currency, Carey ably analyzed the contents of these concepts; especially noteworthy was his insight that communication is the medium of distinctive human behavior. And Carey grappled with one central issue which was later to trouble Spencer, Durkheim, and all their followers: the difficulty of making social "science" fulfill the promise of its own name. As for method, Carey was one of the first sociologists to see 39

Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, p. 303.

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that progress in the field awaited the sloughing off of philosophic presuppositions, and arm-chair deductions from predetermined general principles. Although oftentimes guilty of a cavalier use of deduction himself, he went far beyond paying mere lip service to induction in his careful marshaling of facts to prove that at least in a certain stage of capitalist expansion, further increments of population are correlated with the growth of a general material well-being. Carey's exhaustive intellectual travels into the past and throughout the world of his period, to demonstrate that man always starts with the cultivation of inferior soils, was a tour de force of scholarship, however much he may have stacked the cards to insure that his general conclusion would have universal application. In his insistence upon the use of statistical information to buttress every one of his major generalizations, Carey was an early pioneer whose like was not to be seen again in sociology until the twentieth century. Although it was inconsistent with his mechanical analogies, Carey frequently stated an organic conception of society, with particular reference to the function of the state. The latter half of the nineteenth century, of course, saw most of the sociological giants take this position: Spencer, Durkheim, Ward, and even, in some degree, Pareto. But far more important than this was Carey's awareness of, and insistence upon, the emergent character of social behavior. Almost as emphatically as did Durkheim later, Carey gave to the new discipline of sociology a rallying point for the study of collective phenomena on a different level of abstraction than that conventionally used in individual psychology. "Association" is a social constant in all societies, but the type and tone of human relationships will vary with the degree of complexity in the social organization— man's interactional behavior, in other words, is to be under-

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stood in terms of its social setting. At times Carey seems to have clearly seen the danger of explaining present phenomena in terms of their origins (cf. Maclver's famous dictum: " T h e mud hut does not explain the skyscraper"). As W . I. Thomas later asserted, Carey earlier insisted that the history of man in past ages must commence by studying him in the present. With particular incisiveness, Carey pointed out that the later development of social institutions comprises an emergent functional interdependence that makes Darwin's "survival of the fittest" an absurd proposition if applied in exactly the same way to modern civilization as to the primitive tribe living in a state of marginal subsistence.40 And yet, as is shown below, there is no evidence that Carey left any large impress upon the developing field of sociology in America. That was unfortunate. In inchoate form, Carey bequeathed a substantial intellectual estate to his sociological followers and it was unclaimed. In speaking of Carey's intimate disciple, Robert Ellis Thompson, who incorporated Carey's sociological system intact in his own published work, Professor James H. S. Bossard, of the University of Pennsylvania, makes a statement which is equally applicable to Carey: W h a t has been said is not intended to create the impression that T h o m p s o n is one of the great masters in the development of sociological thought. H e was too m u c h a disciple of Carey's to gain any considerable independent recognition. L i k e Carey, he was too m u c h intrigued with the implications of his premises to examine critically their validity. H e did hold, however, m a n y views that time seems in process of proving . . . O n e can only speculate as to the result in terms of sociological theory if a student of T h o m p s o n ' s ability and cultural equipment had devoted himself m o r e to an understanding of society than to its economic s a l v a t i o n . . . . O n this basis, too, must The Unity of Law, p. 370.

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his work and his worth be judged; for, in the first breaking of ground, one must not expect the finished highway. 41

Unfortunately, almost every proposition in Carey's sociological theory that has received the stamp of approval immediately above was controverted by Carey himself in other contexts of his writings. The most important contradiction was not the setting side-by-side of an organismic and a mechanical theory of society with no attempt whatsoever to reconcile them, but rather the bald definition of man and society as mere physical automata, as passive recipients of stresses of force in exactly the same manner as billiard balls and the planets. Virtually all social theorists of his generation embraced either Newton or Schaffle, but Carey espoused both, with no apparent awareness that they represented alien species. He also controverted his distinction between man and not only the rest of the animal world but also the whole range of physical phenomena. In one context man and society are emergents; in another man is the molecule of society which, in turn, is governed by exactly the same laws that govern a lump of coal. In some places, Carey's central proposition of association appears as a mere variety of the law of molecular gravitation— man tending by necessity to gravitate toward his fellow man in the direct ratio of the mass, and in the inverse ratio of the distance. To support this shift, of course, Carey had to drop all consideration of emergent qualities—the whole is the sum of the parts ("The geometer tells us that every whole is equal to all its parts . . ."), and any aggregate differs in degree, but not in kind, from any of the atoms of which it is composed. Association now becomes mere gravitation, governed by motion, heat, and force. These are, however, mere fantastic tags 41 James H. S. Bossard, "Robert Ellis Thompson—Pioneer Professor in Social Science," p. 249.

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that Carey made no attempt to transcribe into social terms: heat is a cause of motion and force; motion being, in turn, a cause of heat and force; but nowhere are we informed exactly what this social heat is. Carey liked to string beads of impressivesounding words. Pitirim Sorokin has paid more attention to Carey than any other modern social theorist, and has high praise for him, placing Carey along with William G. Sumner and Lester F. Ward as one of the three "most conspicuous figures of the earlier generation of American sociologists who ranked at that time among the most prominent sociologists of the world." Yet Sorokin has faint praise for Carey's law of social gravitation: At first glance it appears to be something valuable, but merely a superficial analysis would show its complete fallacy at once. T h e factual study of the growth and decay of cities does not corroborate the statements. Cities do not "attract" the human molecules in direct ratio to the mass or in the inverse ratio of the distance. Any statistician who would predict the rate of growth (or of decrease in the size) of a city on the basis of this law, would be doomed to failure. T h e law does not at all explain why some places, uninhabited before, become the abode of a rapidly growing city, at one period; nor why this city stops growing and declines at another period . . . the law is rather useless for an explanation of the real facts of the concentration and dispersion of population. It is evident also that Carey's other "identifications" of the physical and social laws do not amount to anything beyond curious analogies whose scientific value is nil. They do not, and cannot, explain anything in the real movement of social processes.42

As Sorokin points out, social theory gains nothing from a forced analogy which reduces man and society to a mere physical agglomeration, in which the elusive facts with which the sociologist must come to grips—heroism, crime, love, conflict, 42

Pitirim A. Sorokin, Contemporary

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Theories, p. 35.

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ethics, and the arts—are transformed into "motion." But attempts at reductionism of this kind continue. More recently, Moreno's sociometrics and Stauffer's law of migration represent perhaps more sophisticated and rigidly controlled experiments in treating human phenomena without the posed intervention of apperceptive mass between stimulus and response. Carey, as a matter of fact, contradicted his whole range of mechanical analogy more explicitly than juxtaposing to it the principle of emergence. The physical "laws" applied to man started with gravitation and finally led to man's power "to guide and direct himself and nature too." The least that can be said for this is that it is logically indefensible, in combination. Further, man's ineluctable progress, governed by physical forces, toward a greater diversity of employments, power to direct the forces of nature, and to determine his own destiny, could be contravened—and by man's chicanery, cupidity, and stupidity. Carey used no physical laws to explain the "British system," but instead apportioned blame for human selfishness. Since Carey's whole system of thought was rooted in an attempt to move men to adopt such a course of action as would improve their lot, exactly why he so many times made man the helpless tool of physical force is difficult to imagine. As good an inference as any is that this avid reader, who lacked the discipline of an academic training, indiscriminately threw together the authoritative, and contradictory, theoretical influences of his own period. Even more questionable is Carey's statement of the identity of social and physical laws. Carey regarded this as one of the greatest "discoveries" of the nineteenth century but implemented it with only the thinnest of forced analogies. Sociological writing other than Carey's has strained in this direction and will probably continue to do so in the future, but that such

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efforts will eventually be crowned with success is most improbable. While the direct operation of physical factors, such as temperature, rainfall, and topography set limits on the range of human activity, only indirectly can they foster cultural development in certain directions. Even so, physical phenomena must pass through the screen of the cultural heritage as it stands in any given moment in time—a cultural heritage made up of systems of law, morality, ritual, group alignments, and level of technological development—before the effects of physical phenomena upon human behavior can be correctly gauged. And owing to the range of cultural differences manifest at different places in different periods of time, these effects must of necessity differ. Further, within a strictly sociological frame of reference, even the "same" described phenomenon will be in fact a different thing owing to divergent conjunctures of physical and cultural influences. Thus the falling birth rate in a primitive tribe and the falling birth rate in metropolitan New York require an enumeration of different factors for their explanation. For the obvious reason that precision of formulation must be sacrified, most sociologists since Carey have also attempted to avoid the issue of the psychologist's "apperceptive mass," W. I. Thomas' "definition of the situation," Talcott Parsons' "point of view of the actor," and Robert M. Maclver's "dynamic assessment" (the referent in all cases being, for present purposes, identical). All of these men quite properly insist that in the human individual and social realm what happens to the stimulus before it elicits response must be analyzed, for not the given situation, but the situation as assessed, will determine the character of the response. It may very well be that, by taking this tack, sociology must abandon any pretension to being a science, if science be defined as invariant sequence, but the inevitable loss

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of precision would then be compensated by a gain in validity. The discussion immediately above is not meant to imply that the search for social laws of behavior must be abandoned. It may very well be that further knowledge will afford a firmer basis for establishing them than is now vouchsafed to us. But when they are, they will be founded in the particularities of the human-social realm, and not in the data of any of the physical sciences; they will further have to be founded in the distinctions separating human from animal conduct, the distinctions which Carey himself ably analyzed. It will be recalled that Carey defined social science as treating: . . . of man in his efforts for the maintenance and improvement of his condition, and may now be defined to be the science of the laws which govern man in his efforts to secure for himself the highest individuality, and the greatest power of association with his fellowmen.

This, in conjunction with the assertion of universal law, would justifiably lead to the expectation that Carey would spell out exactly, for future generations, a blueprint of purpose, and what is more important, the means whereby that purpose could be achieved. But the blueprint appears nowhere in his pages. William Elder, Carey's good friend and disciple, has outlined the reason in a passage of rare brilliance: The unity or universality of law did not help him to resolve the questions of representative government; the rights or duties of government in the matter of popular education, its limits and kinds; the descent of property; the rights and limits of governmental jurisdiction in relation to capital and labor, or any of the functions assumed by monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy. All this for the simple reason that civil government is in itself incapable of a scientific order, but is, and must be, guided and authorized by established custom and prevailing necessity, and is only a system at best, so far as it is even that—a system of expediencies which must adapt the

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highest perspective right to the variant conditions of society; that is, it must do the best it can through a series of blundering compromises between the absolute right and the presently practicable. . . . 43

Carey had the rather startling literary habit of incorporating in his own theory the very elements he indignantly condemned. Time and time again he took the Manchester School to task for treating of man as a mere producer and consumer of wealth. Instead, announced Carey, he would treat of the W H O L E MAN, all his ideals, aspirations, and passions, as a being desirous of improving his entire socio-political condition. MAN, the responsible being, is seeking to elevate his physical and moral state. Yet Carey remained, throughout his career, as thorough a materialist as any of the men he accused. How does man improve his condition? By "applying himself to the production of such things as are either useful or agreeable to him." The accumulation of wealth was made the necessary precondition to lowering the rate of illegitimacy, to the education of the children of laborers, and even political democracy rests upon accumulated wealth. Civilization and commerce are synonymous. Civilization is also to be measured by the output of the blast furnace, and "woman's value" grows with "the growth of wealth." Here lay the basis of Carey's tortuous biological analogies of the relationship between state and society, by which he "proved" that the state's proper functions were to impose protective tariffs on imports and, at the same time, to adopt a strictly hands-off policy in internal affairs. It was not only that efforts to accumulate capital must not be interfered with, but the state must also adopt measures to foster that accumulation. In other words, the more the capitalist accumulates, the more fortunate is the workman, the more free becomes the slave, and the 43 Elder, op. cit., p. 21.

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more spirituality irradiates throughout the society. Carey left no room whatsoever for doubt that the "perfect harmony of interests" depended absolutely upon the bank balance of the capitalist class. Carey's generation, of course, was not like our own, nurtured as it is on the doctrine of poverty in the midst of plenty. Nevertheless, his prediction of the society-wide beneficent result of the mere accumulation of wealth has been proved false, however much it may have had temporary validity in the period in which he wrote. Carey here, as so frequently in other contexts, identified contiguity of occurrence with cause and effect. If the immigrant is hated during a period of low tariffs, and welcomed during a period of high tariffs, then the tariff is the direct cause of this complex socio-psychological shift in attitude. If workers are leaving Pennsylvania to go West and old maids are having difficulty in finding husbands during a time when the Camden & Amboy Railroad holds a monopoly, then that monopoly is clearly at fault. Without citing his sources, Carey introduced figures to show that bastardy was high in England after the passage of the poor laws, and relatively low in this country. The difference between the two rates, of course, is attributed to the poor laws in one case, and their absence in the other. This intellectual game, untroubled by rules, has been played by most writers on social topics who have penned as many pages as Carey, but very few have played it so often and with such evident enjoyment. A similar lack of critical sense was evidenced in Carey's use of his much-vaunted inductive method. As has already been pointed out, he could use it with telling effect, particularly in a polemical context. Yet in most cases it was more honored in the breach than in the observance. If ever a man built a whole complex system of thought on a single, monolithic deductive

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principle, that man was Carey and that principle was the protective tariff. One can only regret that Carey did not succeed in establishing inductively that man everywhere prospers, renounces war, becomes a better husband and father, turns to the creation of great works of art, and loves his fellow man, when and where duties on imports are raised to levels which keep them off the home market. The present tragical necessity for reconstructing Western society would cease to furrow the brow of modern man, since the solution would be so easy. Carey cannot be held in extreme culpability for failing to foresee our time of troubles, yet neither can he be excused for the unsupported claim of a relationship between the eminence of French painting and the newly inaugurated French protective tariff in his own time. Carey loved words, and loved ideas which towered to an empyrean height of abstraction, with perfect impartiality. He constantly confused the striking analogy with logical demonstration. His pages evidence anything but careful analysis. His judgment was emotional and intuitive, often singling out a supporting argument in the theoretical structure of one of his enemies, beating it to a pulp, all the while ignoring the structure as a unity. A t times his tactics bordered on the ludicrous. Not only did he have recourse to authority (e.g., Adam Smith) in refuting Mai thus and Ricardo, but also accused them of advocating the world's miseries and of being the cause of the cursed British system. In combination, they became a sort of Antichrist, for the Supreme Being would never permit His universe to wallow in their doctrines. So much for induction. In sum, it is not far from the mark to say that Carey's total system failed to fulfill his claims for it. He converted too much into his brief for a controversial reform measure. Attacking materialism in principle, he made materialism the foundation

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of his history, politics, sociology, and ethics. He failed to analyze these areas very far beyond the statement of their dependence upon the accumulation of wealth and the density of population. No system can be concocted from a recipe made up largely of an attack on England, an attack on free trade, a denunciation of Malthus and Ricardo, all well-seasoned with aphorisms and biological and mechanical analogies. What was said above still stands: there was, and still is, much of value in Carey for the sociologist, but one must feel his way through a tangled jungle of denunciations, contradictory analogies, and wearying reiterations of unsupported abstractions.

3

Empirical Sociology

has the advantage of hindsight in assessing Carey's examination of the issues of his day. Nevertheless, there would appear to be some justification for stating that in most instances he was in error. So many portents of the times were correctly evaluated by some of his contemporaries, portents which Carey often misinterpreted, that we can legitimately regard his work in this area as a failure, and seek to infer the reasons. There were two. In the first place, Carey was not particularly interested in examining empirical data as things-in-themselves; instead he merely used them, or rather aspects of them, as props for his monolithic social reform and his deductively derived general principles. T H E PRESENT-DAY CRITIC

Second, starting from the general premise that there was a harmony of all interests, men had only to be taught (by Carey) that this existed and all behavior systems would fall in line. When they very evidently did not, instead of seeking the reasons why, Carey had recourse to the age-old righteous indignation of the prophet denied, and heaped contumely upon those who failed to see their real interests. Such a procedure carried Carey to heights of resounding rhetoric, but his perspective was warped. Like a host of his intellectual descendants, Carey believed that all issues could be settled by rational demonstration to his rational contemporaries and waxed furious when exhortation fell on deaf ears. Association. Carey defined his general principle of associa105

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tion in various ways. Quite frequently, however, it referred to a hope for the future of a series of local-regional economies, with a balance of agriculture, commerce, and industry, that precluded area specialization in either the manufacture or the production of raw materials, and hence also precluded the necessity for trade at a distance. A highly diversified division of labor was to be the cornerstone of these local socio-economic structures, placing the "plough, loom, and anvil" side by side. Most political issues were to be local, and to be decided locally. The central government was to be strong enough to preserve internal peace and impose protection against foreign imports but was to leave the local structures largely to themselves. Except for the protectionist theme, Carey's Utopia bears more than a passing resemblance to those of Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes. There was nothing wrong with Carey's insight into what was required for the economic base to a stable social order. Virtual replicas of Carey's theme are appearing even today: The basis of economic progress lies in the stable organization of industrial, commercial, and service enterprises, not in a reversion to greater reliance on the exploitation of natural resources, which in some areas would involve further exhaustion of the best resources, accompanied by diminishing returns.1

Yet two questions remain. Were social and economic trends of Carey's period veering in the direction toward which he pointed? Were the means of actualizing such a development through planned political action to be found in his writings ? With regard to the first question, disagreement is general. Lewis Mumford 2 states that at mid-century, except for the New York metropolitan area, America represented a series of bal1 2

National Resources Committee, Problems oj a Changing Population, p. 114. The Culture of Cities, p. 346.

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anced local economies, since capitalism had not emerged far beyond the individual entrepreneurial stage. Hendrick claims that prior to the Civil War such words as "trust," "interlocking directorate," and "holding company" were not in our national vocabulary. Ours was a land of farmers, city artisans, industrious independent businessmen, and small-scale manufacturers. Not until after the war did the corporation eclipse the single owner and the copartnership.3 On the other hand, a severe critic of Carey claims that long before mid-century the American economy was in a state of chronic imbalance which made his projected Utopia a ludicrous dream: We have seen how difficult it was during the preceding period to find hired workmen, and how the factory system was not possible; since then (1808 to 1832) it had effectively risen and consolidated itself; yet even in these years difficulties were encountered . . . in 1819 . . . in consequence of the crisis manufacturers and workers were abandoning the factories in large numbers in order to take up agriculture. But at the end of this epoch, and all the more so at the time when Carey was writing, the state of affairs had altered. In several States, and in the New England States particularly, the industrial transformation was complete, and capitalistic industries had been established on a sound basis; and this is admitted by the lastnamed writer, who adds that the machinery in the American factories was even better than that in England. The largely increased population, and the ever-growing difficulty of cultivating the soil without adequate capital, brought to the factories a large contingent of hired labourers.4 It seems clear that Carey's period was such that his Utopian type of reorganization would not have been so far removed from the realities of his day as they would at present. On the 3 4

Burton J. Hendrick, The Age oj Big Business. Ugo Rabbeno, The American Commercial Policy, pp. 173-74.

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other hand, the trends of his times were clearly pointing to the present and not to his imagined future. The relationship between manufacturer and worker made that clear. By 1820 the wage system was established in the Middle States and in New England. The first great strike in this country, in 1805, involved the Philadelphia cordwainers, the very men whom, as we shall note later, Carey advised to return to their work and become capitalists. Labor contests continued in other cities. The first fairly universal issue was the ten-hour day: in 1827 several hundred Philadelphia journeymen struck for it, but it was not generally adopted until the Civil War. And by 1837, strikes were being primarily addressed to increased wages instead of fewer working hours. Labor did not take to new associationist and communistic schemes; what it wanted was more wages for less work.5 In other words, was the hour already too late for the type of industrial-community development which Carey envisoned? He seems to have overlooked certain economic changes, and most certainly he ignored a range of sociopsychological ones that had already occurred or were then taking place. Since men continue to advocate the Carey-type Utopia in a period which affords an even more uncertain basis for it than at any time during his own lifetime, there would appear to be little point in continuing to belabor his shortcomings in this regard. Much more important is the fact that the specific reforms Carey plumped for afforded no means whatsoever for actualizing the type of society he insisted would result from instituting those reforms. He propagandized for more and more immigration, but verbally chastized the immigrant for hastening to the open West, instead of remaining in the rela5 Edward Channing, "The Period of Transition 1815-1848," A History United States, V, pp. 111-12.

of the

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tively overcrowded Northeast. He opposed all further EastWest railroad building, and advocated a great North-South road, to connect the industrially developed Northeast with the agriculturally overdeveloped Southeast. (It is possible that Philadelphia's ramified economic interests in the Southeast, in contrast with New York City's domination of trade with the expanding Northwest since the opening of the Erie Canal, had something to do with this opinion.) Carey regarded all the measures he advised as tending toward decentralization, in contrast to the centralization of the British system. With much justification, Jenks boldly proclaims that Carey's "association" was, in fact, spelled "centralization": This principle of association, which leads man to interaction, is a principle of centralization, and if this principle should lead to what he says frequently that it does lead, all people would concentrate in the same spot. . . . Furthermore, he sets no limit on population density, and frequently makes utterances to the effect that an unlimited increase in population density would prove itself a blessing and very vocally complains the thin scatter of populations. 6

Carey never set any limit to the operation of his law of human gravitation, except that the attraction to smaller centers would prevent the total population from moving toward one spot. He had nothing but approval for the mounting population figures of the Northeastern metropolitan centers, and that trend, which, among other effects, resulted in the virtual strip6 Jeremiah W . Jenks, Henry C. Carey als Nationalöl{pnom, p. 41. T h e original reads: Dieses Prinzip der Association, welches die Menschen z u m Verkehr untereinander treibt, ist ein Prinzip der Zentralization, und wenn das Prinzip das bewirkte, was er es häufig bewirken lassen will, so würden all Menschen an einen Ort zusammenlaufen. . . . Er setzt ferner keine Grenze für die Dichtigkeit der Bevölkerung, spricht sich sogar häufig so aus, als ob eine grenzenlose Verdichtung der Bevölkerung ein Segen wäre, und beklagt mit beredten Worten das Zerstreubtleben einer dünnen Bevölkerung.

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ping of population in northern New England during the fifties and sixties, was hardly in a neo-Fourierite direction. And it apparently never occurred to the doughty champion of the people's rights against the tyrannical monopoly of the Camden & Amboy Railroad, that his doctrine of protection, far from fostering balanced, quasi-independent, local industrial communities, would in part lead to further concentrations of control and power. Protection could, and did, according to many scholars, foster the beneficent effects he claimed for it during the immediate post-Ghent period, but not after a certain level of capital accumulation had been reached—and Carey insisted upon limitless capital accumulation. There are many proponents of protectionism today who would continue to argue that protection brings prosperity. But the most ardent partisan would hardly dare to claim, in the light of recent history, that protection breaks down monopoly and promotes balanced, small-scale local socio-economic aggregates. In short, Carey was in error. Slavery and secession. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War, Carey constantly attempted to compromise the slavery and secession issues in some way, as, indeed, did the majority of Northern conservatives. In his first book7 he struck the note which was to reverberate throughout his writings for the next twenty-five years. The situation of the slave improves with his increased value; if the cotton planters accumulate capital by economy and industry, they must invest it, by means of which the demand for slaves rises and so does the price. The slave's increased value leads to an increased concern for his welfare. There is, then, no real bone of contention left between employer and employed, under any political condition obtaining in the United States. T

Essay on

Wages.

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Joseph Dorfman says of Carey's next book8 that it was prepared with definite attractions to Southerners as the Whigs readied themselves for the 1836 campaign and sought to hold the Southern members of the alliance in line. If this interpretation is correct (nowhere do Carey or his followers state or infer anything of the sort), it would appear to have been designed only indeterminately to cheer South Carolinian hearts. Carey does state that the slaves of the West Indies would have been better off if Great Britain had not freed them, but allowed free trade gradually to bring this about—this book was written during Carey's nominally free trade period. To support his adduced law of political economy that an increase of population evidences the extent to which persons and property are secure—the slaves in the United States doubling in population every twenty-five years—he states that the nominal slave of the United States is economically better off than the nominal freedman of Ireland. An idyllic picture of relations between master and slave in the United States follows, and then he continues: W e by no means desire to be considered friendly to the continuance of slavery, but, much as we should wish to see every man free to dispose of his time as he thought proper, we would most unhesitatingly oppose any attempt to change their condition. The work is going on, and will go on. Every man, black and white, in the United States, will be free at the time when it would be advantageous to him so to be, and to desire to urge it on is to desire the greatest possible injury to the slave himself. By discontinuing the importation of slaves we have ceased to sin against nature, and we may now, without fear, leave it to her to remedy the existing evil. She can do it, and all she desires to enable her to do so, is the continuance of peace and tranquility, of freedom of trade and of action, and of cheap government. 9 8 9

The Harmony of Nature. Ibid., pp. 309-10.

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The surest way to promote the freedom of the slave is to increase his value. If the United States continued at peace and capital was allowed to accumulate, the eventual freedom of the slave was inevitable, since as the slave owners became more wealthy, it would be to their interest to pursue such a course as would lead ultimately to abolition. Carey was, here as elsewhere, facing both ways, and if it were his intention to cadge Southern votes with this sort of thing, it would appear to have had only a very limited appeal. In any event, in this book appears the only sympathetic hand he ever extended to territorial expansion. The way to make Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky free states, Carey insisted, was to admit Texas to the Union as a slave state. The virgin soil of Texas would profitably employ all the slaves from the Northern tier of slave states whose soil was exhausted. This exemplifies what was to become an increasingly irritating literary habit with Carey, stating that the best way to achieve a desired result was to follow a course of action which to all those actively engaged in a given movement appeared a means to secure its polar opposite. But shortly thereafter Carey was to condemn consistently northwestern as well as southwestern territorial expansion and internal migration over large distances, as well as territorial aggrandizement. In fact, while he usually accused Britain of being responsible for slavery in this country, as well as for all our wars, in 1855 he claimed that not Britain, but the proslavery democracy was responsible for the Mexican War. 10 The history of Carey's attitudes and activities on the slavery issue, like that of the tariff, is of only seeming inconsistency and change of mind. Carey's most general attitude toward 10

"American Labor Versus British Free Trade" (pamphlet).

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slavery was one of annoyance—a sort of "plague o' both your houses" sentiment toward both planters and abolitionists. In his letters to politicians during the fifties, he complained bitterly of the dogmatism on both sides which prevented each from seeing that protection would reunite the nation, ultimately free the slave, and—at the same time—improve the material prosperity of the planter. From the evidence of his books, pamphlets, and correspondence, it can legitimately be inferred that Carey used this issue to buttress his protectionist arguments; that while the arguments on slavery shifted with the group he addressed, consistency inhered in his real purpose —promotion of the tariff. In addressing the South, he combined cajolery and threat, stating that the North is "adverse to the further continuance of their rights of property" because of the "system of commercial policy" they enforce. 11 At the same time, Carey declared himself opposed to abolitionism. The slave has prospered in the South as nowhere else, and the "true friend of the Negro race" is bound to urge the perfect respect for the property rights of the cotton planter—he who does otherwise is the real enemy of the Negro. A little later, again addressing the South,12 Carey stated that that section was misguided in allowing the British to dominate her great staple, raw cotton. With protection, she could trade directly, not only being free of the intervention of Manchester, England, but also of Lowell, Massachusetts. Carey, of course, was attempting to undercut the Southern charge, which was constant in the fifties, that the South was being impoverished by the protective agitations of Northern manufacturers, the avarice of New England ship11 12

"What the North Desires," open letter of June 13, 1850. "Two Letters to a Cotton Planter" (pamphlet).

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pers, and New York banks. But it is interesting that at the same time he was here willing to include a New England city to be left out of the "harmony of interests." The following year his book on the slave trade appeared13 in which the space devoted to the subject of the title was much less than that given to old arguments, such as attacks on the British system and the sequence of soil cultivation. And the slave trade, of course, is attributed to "free trade." Carey's argument is difficult to follow unless his own redefinition of slavery be carefully kept in mind; by slavery Carey is not at all referring to a political condition, but a limitation of economic choices. In the United States, the Negro "has steadily increased in numbers and advanced toward civilization," while his condition more nearly approached slavery in the British West Indies where he was politically freed, but where he was denied the opportunity of increasing his standard of living, denied access to machinery and technology, forced to raise and ship raw produce, deprived of the right to "associate." Britain, he said, was attempting to reduce the rest of the planet to slavery through free trade, by compelling all other nations to export raw produce great distances at great expense, impoverishing the land and diminishing the freedom of the owner, and by preventing technology from passing out of England. It is not that slavery causes exhaustion of the soil, but that exhaustion of the soil causes slavery to continue. Slaves are bred on the American southeast coast for the Western market, where the soil is not yet impoverished. The Southerner is unable to form an alliance with the artisan, so he exports men and raw materials. In turn, this is caused by the dependence upon distant markets. On the other hand, where men come together and combine their efforts, towns arise, land becomes valuable, and 13

The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign.

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the value of slaves falters. England, by cheapening her own labor, prevents the South f r o m manufacturing and exploiting her great natural resources. Slavery can be abolished, but not through political intervention: It is desired to abolish the trade in slaves. No such trade could exist were men everywhere free, but as they are not so, it has in many countries been deemed necessary to prohibit the sale of men from the land, as preliminary to the establishment of freedom. Nothing of this kind, however, can now be looked for, because there is no power to coerce the owners of slaves to adopt any such measures; nor, if it did exist, would it be desirable that it should be exercised, as it would make the condition of both the slave and his master worse than it is even now. Neither is it necessary, because there exists "a higher law"—a great law of the Creator—that will effectually extinguish the slave trade whenever it shall. . . come into activity.14 This higher law of the Creator is a combination of machinery, diversity of employments, and the protective tariff.' Freedom grows in all those countries possessing a protective tariff (including Russia and Spain), and slavery grows in Great Britain because of free trade. I n the editorial pages of the Tribune,15 Carey took u p the questions of secession and territorial expansion. Like m a n y N o r t h e r n editorialists, Carey insisted that only the South would be the loser f r o m secession because, economically, the N o r t h was carrying the South on her back: ". . . we feel disposed to place the loss of the N o r t h , f r o m the continuance of the Union, at about forty dollars per h e a d ; while the gain therefrom does not exceed forty cents." Commercially, the N o r t h was not dependent upon the South; rather, the reverse was true. Carey would not believe that the "monstrous Nebraska Bill" could " Ibid., p. 295. 15 "The North and the South." Reprinted from the New Yor\ Tribune.

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become law, but if it did and the South still wanted to secede after extending the slave power, "in the words of Senator Fessenden, 'They need not put it off a day on our account.' " Carey predicted that only the Deep South could ever secede, if secession should occur, because of the economic bonds forging the border and northern tier of Southern states to the North. He was particularly vitriolic on the question of "enlargement of territory." The Mexican War had been purely a Southern scheme of aggrandizement. Northern industry was being taxed to buy Southern land and support Southern wars, while the South opposed Northern internal improvements. Because of her "absurd jealousy," the South remained ignorant of her own economic interests; by adopting a policy of protection, she could—like the North—become an industrial Eden. Carey's voice was one more decibel of sound swelling the martial chorus, for "the real disunionist is he who advocates compliance with southern demands." One might assume that Carey's attitude toward slavery was hardening, that he was being swept along with the ground swell of Northern antislavery opinion which formed so much of the early Republican party's strength. But such an interpretation would be in error. In a letter of July 11, 1870, to Pennsylvania's former governor, A. G. Curtin, he pointed out how in 1854 he had "conquered" antislavery sentiment on the Tribune in order to foster sympathy for Russia in her military test of strength with England: At the time I controlled the Tribune in regard to all economic questions. But it required considerable time to persuade the editor to see that the Russian one belonged to the department. Anti-slavery sentiment stood in my way, but I conquered it at last, and thenceforth the Tribune printed all I had to say on the subject, which was, as you may imagine, not a very little.

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Of far greater import is an unsigned pamphlet in which Carey claimed to be a Southerner addressing the South, imploring her to guard herself against the North as well as England. 16 He fastened on the emotional bugaboo which haunted the old South—the "desecrating hands of northern fanatics and traitors" which may turn loose an "inferior race" to "riot without restraint." If the South would only adopt a system of manufactures and internal improvements, European—and especially British—manufacturers would be crippled if not prostrated (so much for the "harmony of interests"!). In other contexts Carey had said that the British supported the slave power. Here he stated that, true to the instincts of their interest, "their sympathies are with both the know-nothing and the abolitionist." If only the South should adopt the protective system, she could undersell both England and the North. While Northern fanaticism cannot see these things, "we of the South can." Provided these lines are Carey's, and the virtually unmistakable phraseology is being used along with the two listings of the pamphlet cited under his name as evidence that they are, they represent a remarkably cynical and double-dealing piece of deliberate manipulation. If any further evidence were required to demonstrate the fact that for Carey the slave issue was literally a handmaiden to the promotion of economic policy, it can be found in words he penned while the "irrepressible conflict" was raging: "The Southern rebellion at length emancipated the North, protection was re-established by means of the Morrill tariff. . . ,"17 And 16 "The T r u e Policy of the South." Reprinted from the Gazette. T h e pamphlet examined was in the University of but was uncatalogued. This pamphlet is catalogued, under Library of Congress, but was unobtainable, evidently lost. In listed as part of Carey's bibliography. 17 In the Iron Age, December 15, 1864.

Austin (Texas) State Pennsylvania Library, Carey's name, in the Elder's Memoir, it is

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later: "Let us continue the system now so happily re-established among ourselves; let us maintain that protection to which we are so greatly indebted for the power to carry on the present war "18 If wonder be expressed at the complete lack of concern shown by Carey with the lot of the slave in all this economic and political backing and filling, it must be remembered that such humanitarian feeling touched few more than a small group of vocal abolitionists in the North, and that Carey, although charitable and kindly in personal relations, never allowed himself the luxury of worry over the fate of those who were spatially remote, except in so far as their lot could be used to promote his long-term reform program. Quite characteristic is his reply to a letter from Thomas Webster, Jr., of Philadelphia, dated January 22, 1859, in which Webster asked him to contribute to the cause of buying Bob Butt, a Virginia slave whose family was now to be broken up on the auction block. Butt had done sterling work in burying the dead of Portsmouth during an epidemic. Carey replied (no date): W e have millions of black slaves, but more millions of white ones —men who are called free, and yet have but little more control over their actions than your poor friend Butt.—In this cause, I am laboring. And if you knew how much it has cost and is costing me, you would, I feel assured, be quite convinced that it was right for me to leave the cause of the other class in other hands.

For Carey, then, slavery and secession were neither moral nor political problems, but narrowly economic ones—resting, finally, on the Southern free-trade policy. Hardly a broad vision. He failed to grasp the conjuncture of forces and circumstances which was ineluctably approaching the bursting point. Writing twenty years before, De Tocqueville warned that the 18

In the Iron Age, December 22, 1864.

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American political structure, dividing sovereignty within and between the states, was a source of weakness which, in conjunction with slavery, constituted a formidable danger to the future existence of the Union. Unlike Carey, De Tocqueville had little faith in mere legislation to close the widening breach, pointing out that society exists where men hold the same opinions, and not only where they obey the same laws. Carey, at the same time he plumped for legislation, was doing everything in his power to create divisive opinion. Yet Carey must not be taken to task too severely. His editorial views were more typical than unusual in the North, prior to the outbreak of war. The slave power remained the oversimplified villain of the piece throughout the Northern press. Likewise, while the majority of papers, until Lincoln's call for volunteers, pledged themselves to the preservation of the Union, sectional and party interests dictated no broader view than Carey exhibited. Aside from the small but noisy abolitionist press, there was a general acceptance, with Lincoln, that the Negro was biologically inferior. In fact, the tendency was to vilify both master and slave. Universally, the issue of coercive union or passive secession was discussed in terms of localregional economic advantage and disadvantage.19 It is not so much Carey's ends that are in question, however, as the means he listed to attain them. The South's right to property in persons was sacrosanct; political enfranchisement was out of the question. Yet the Negro could be more "free" if his value at home were raised through Southern adoption of protection and economic diversification. By these means, in contradiction of the above, the slave would ultimately become politically free, but the Southern planters in the meanwhile would have become more powerful and more wealthy. This 19

Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession.

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crazy quilt of cross-purposes could have made little sense to the Southerners to whom it was addressed, nor could they have been pleased when Carey roundly vilified them when he was addressing Northern interests. And Carey missed the point, as did most of his generation, that men are not motivated by the truth but by what they believe to be true. T o the South, the protective tariff remained the historical embodiment of a detestable Yankee financial domination. Agitation against the tariff was the entire issue of South Carolina's original espousal of secession in 1832. The convention which met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4, 1861, to frame the constitution of the new Confederacy, wrote in the specific provision that no protective tariff was ever to be legislated. Whatever may have been the source of the South's economic plight, it remained convinced that the North was responsible, pointing to the speculation in cotton paper, the Northern monopoly of the foreign export business, and the heavy tribute being paid to Yankee shipping interests. Above all, the tariff remained to the South an "unequal tax." Carey ignored the fact that the entire range of socio-economic development in the North, which gratified him, was arousing fear and hostility in the South. The rising tide of immigration remained in the Northeast, or pushed into the expanding Northwest, only a tiny backwash reaching below the MasonDixon line. The South correctly interpreted this, in conjunction with the constantly growing disparity in industrialization and concentration of wealth, as hastening the day when Southern political power would be destroyed. Early attempts at industrialization had appeared in the South, but so many factories had been forced into bankruptcy by Northern competition that the entire region made only feeble further efforts in that direc-

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tion prior to the Civil War.20 Moreover, the South retained a romantic-feudal philosophy which found trade and industry somewhat distasteful. Non-fluid slave capital was not easily transferable into manufacturing pursuits, and all available Southern capital found a ready market in an expanding cotton economy. There was a lack of adjustment among capitalistic, industrial, and agrarian elements, but Southern economic difficulties were rooted in a whole evolving complex which could never have been reversed by legislative fiat. It was the spectre of Northern railroad trackage, Northern production and Northern wealth, Northern reception of increasing hordes of immigrants, and, finally, the rising Northern political power that was becoming strong enough to ignore Southern demands, which reduced the South to a frenzy of fear that a phoenix host of John Browns would descend upon them and smash the central theme of their history: . . . it is a land with a unity despite its diversity, with a people having common joys and common sorrows, and, above all, as to the white folk with a common resolve indomitably maintained—that it shall be and remain a white man's country. The consciousness of a function in these premises, whether expressed with the frenzy of a demagogue or maintained with a patrician's quietude, is the cardinal test of a southerner and the central theme of southern history. 21

To all this Carey devoted no attention. With his materialistic philosophy it may even be he remained ignorant that disparate ideals, whatever economic bases they may have had, were making sectional strife inevitable. He paid no heed to the power of propaganda, of which Uncle Tom's Cabin was a monumental prototype, nor the rise of antislavery societies, nor 20 21

J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 22. Ulrich B. Phillips, "The Cardinal Theme of Southern History," p. 31.

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the split in religious bodies over the slavery question. He ignored completely the whole moral-reform zeal of a romantic, crusading age, the dark glass through which the North saw a cloven-hoofed planter, and the South saw an evil, sinful, grasping Yankee Antichrist. In large measure, Carey's failure to assess properly the sociological factors which formed the background for secession and war can be attributed to the fact that he was the child of an age that put its trust in Truth, the road to that shining citadel being paved with rational demonstration. It was an age that did not doubt its own convictions, even when these should clash with a counterargument. It was not an age of tolerance. It was not an age that reviewed public opinion polls to discover impersonally which way the wind was blowing. Nor was it a time when discussants of political and economic issues, except in their public pronouncements, tended to shun the authority of right versus wrong in favor of guessing how thoroughly the general public had been swayed one way or another. The belief was not then widely held that it is not truth but what men believe or can be made to believe is truth that controls the present and shapes the future. 22 It is no accident that modern novelists have all become amateur empirical sociologists, explaining man's fate in terms of the impingement of environmental forces. It was likewise no accident that the eminent writers of Carey's day—Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Emerson, and Thoreau—concerned themselves with the metaphysical problem of Good and Evil, or debated universal principles such as the nature of man in the abstract, or argued man's perfectibility and spun various Utopian dreams. The intellectual climate did not nurture any empirical sociology, and there was no empirical sociology. 22

Arnold W. Green, "Duplicity."

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With this fact must Carey's failure as an empirical sociologist be tempered. Labor. Throughout his life Carey maintained an essentially "free-trade" position on the labor question. The interests of capital and labor are synonymous, the individual laborer should not combine with his fellows but strive to accumulate savings so that he could himself one day become a capitalist. Beyond supervising physical safety on the job and preventing children from working in factories "to the loss of health and life," the state should in no wise interfere; certainly, all wages and hours legislation is unjust to both capital and labor. Supporting the whole is another general "law": while the profits of the capitalist tend to increase in amount, the proportion going to labor in the form of wages constantly rises over the proportion going to capital. In one of his earliest pieces,23 Carey lamented that building was slack that season because the builders did not know what the trades unions would do. The journeymen were only warring against themselves. And at about the same time he addressed the cordwainers of Philadelphia, during the period when they were organizing and striking for higher wages, and warned them that a rise in the wages of shoemakers would drive business out of Philadelphia or cause a rise in the price of shoes which would be detrimental to the interests of all hand workers and their families in the United States.24 In his books, also, Carey warned labor that it must do nothing to prevent the growth of capital, and cited various examples where a "combination" of workers had wreaked harm on them23

The National Gazette, March 12, 1836. The Pennsylvanian (n.d.)> signed "Franklin." This, and the previous citation, are from newspaper clippings mounted in a bound book, Volume XIII of the "Collected Works," part of the complete collection of his writings which Carey left to the University of Pennsylvania Library. 24

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selves. He lamented that the baneful effects of England's poor laws, with their temptation to idleness, had been transported to the United States; he also warned that the increase of charitable societies would do "serious injury." Nowhere did Mathew Carey and his son more thoroughly part company than here. Henry Carey questioned any attempt on the part of labor to wrest higher wages or improved working conditions by political action, and bitterly assailed all eleemosynary schemes to lighten the burden of the laboring class during periods of temporary indigence. Nor did the passage of time, which brought an emerging large-scale and impersonal industrial order, serve to modify his views on this question appreciably. The fullest and most systematic statement of these views appeared in the report of the Constitutional Convention committee, of which he was the chairman. 25 This report was incorporated as part of the new Pennsylvania state constitution, later affirmed by popular vote. Wages and hours legislation had recently been proposed, and Carey's committee cited their opposition to both. "Sumptuary laws have never yet been able to secure their own execution nor are they likely ever so to do." The state, however, does stand in loco parentis to the helpless, and statute law should protect children from being worked in factories to the point of loss of health or life, and should provide miners with proper ventilation and safety devices. But hours and wages legislation is "unjust" to all parties concerned because it overlooks the fact that the interests of capital and labor are in fact indissoluble. Labor associations make a mistake in limiting the number of apprentices and in demanding immigration restrictions. In the nature of things, "there is no possibility that labor shall ever fail of its opportunities if its market be kept free and fairly 25

Capital

and

Labor.

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balanced." Yet, at the present time, there is some job competition among laborers. How is it to be removed? Through protection. (This was at a time when the tariff was pegged higher than it had ever been in the history of the country.) Finally, the priority of wages in manufacturing costs should be limited to the joint property of the capitalist "associates," and the latter should not be forced to assume any individual liability for wage payments. If this assurance is not given the capitalist, he may send his capital abroad for investment. All this might have had some internal consistency if it were meant to apply either to the conditions prevailing along the Atlantic seaboard during Carey's boyhood or the Utopian future he projected, consisting of a series of local, balanced, semiindependent, industrial communities. But placed in the context of then prevailing capital-labor disputes, it stood as a strictly partisan plea. As Jenks observed,26 Carey ignored completely the factual competition which was taking place between capital and labor over the relative cut each was to receive from the augmented profits accruing from increased production. The same defects can be observed here which were noted in his analysis of slavery and secession: the insistence upon general principles apart from the specific contexts in which they operate; a failure to assess the values and attitudes of those who were at least enmeshed, and increasingly embroiled, in those contexts. Mistaken or not, labor in the first half of the nineteenth century was extending its organization, and increasingly seeking legislation to secure higher wages and shorter working hours.27 Carey made no attempt to analyze the factors fostering this movement. While monopoly and finance capitalism did not 26 27

Jenks, op. cit. John R. Commons & Others, History oj Labour in the United States.

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develop until after the Civil War, the trend toward an increasing proportion of propertyless wage earners was unmistakable; urban centers (attracting propertyless wage earners in the main) augmented their population by 75 per cent during that period, while the population of the country as a whole increased by only 35 per cent.28 By 1860 the output of mill, shop, and mine exceeded in value that of the farm. New speedingup processes were appearing in the mills, and labor was not sharing equally in the new prosperity—the average wage for unskilled labor in the veritable strike year of 1853 was one dollar a day. The new nationally organized unions were beginning to agitate against further immigration at the very time when Carey was interceding with Salmon P. Chase to find means to bring more in. With the war, the Northern capitalist class waxed fat and openly dissipated, adding point to the longstanding Southern charge that the North had imposed upon her manual workers, her "mud-sills," her own kind of slavery.29 Like many others, before and since, Carey assumed a set of ideal and static conditions, which never obtain in the social realm, but only through which his general principles could be made to apply. One example must suffice. Carey made the prediction, in one context, that further developments in technology would toll the death of Southern slavery. He constantly reiterated that further developments in technology would further diversify employments, thus fostering an increasing independence of all labor. These claims are fulfilled only during the earlier stages of an expanding capitalist economy. Where capital accumulation and regional specialization have reached a certain stage of development, further improvements in technology foster greater specialization, increase the gap between 28 29

J. G. Randall, op. cit., p. 88. Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict 1850-1865.

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little and big capital, and most certainly doom the hopes of the wage earner to break into the capitalist class. Thus American historians all list Eli Whitney's cotton gin as an important factor in reviving Southern slavery and in forcing Southern capital into cotton production. And thus today, further increments in technological improvement, particularly in basic industry, require retooling on a scale which can be met by the resources available to about two hundred key corporations. Immigration. Throughout his life Carey remained a staunch advocate of immigration, and more immigration. Immigration would augment population, production, and consumption. To the charge of organized labor, that it led to competition in jobs, Carey made no direct answer, stating obliquely that increased tariff duties would wipe out the "temporary" competition. And like his father, Carey took an active part in fostering immigration. To take the place of Northern draftees in mill, forge, and farm, Congress in 1864 passed an act allowing contracts to be made in foreign countries whereby immigrants could pledge their wages or other property they might acquire in the new world to pay the cost of their transportation. The American Emigrant Company, organized to facilitate this legislation, was incorporated in Connecticut, with a capital stock of one million dollars, supplied by bankers, employers, and politicians. It was endorsed by Carey, Salmon P. Chase, then Chief Justice; Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles Sumner.30 Yet not entirely consistent with the Utopia Carey claimed to envision was his berating the mid-century immigrant for not remaining in the relatively overcrowded Northeast and for his very evident land hunger and determination to push west to acquire free or cheap land. Whatever else may be said for Carey's position, it was a feeble complaint against an inexorable 30 Dorfman, op. cit., II, 966-67.

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tide. Frederick Jackson Turner has made western expansion the key to American history up to the expiration of the frontier in 1890. Marcus Lee Hansen 31 has pointed out that the Swedes, Germans, and English who were streaming west in the midcentury were not pioneer farmers, but permanent settlers who bought out the native pioneers, who, in turn, then left for the frontier. In other words, the former were participating in a transitional quasi-Fourierite formation of settled, permanent localities, which certainly afforded a more secure base for the formation of the type of community Carey advocated than the Northeast. Further, Carey ignored this fact: the immigrant, generally speaking, of whatever period and from whatever point of origin, is so situated that he must go wherever economic opportunity presents itself. Later immigrants, from southern and eastern Europe, remained in the urban East because the open West had disappeared and economic opportunity was afforded only in industry. As Hansen avers, the mid-century immigrant, from northern and western Europe, tended to arrive during periods of industrial prosperity, went to work in the Eastern factories, and moved to the Western farm areas with his savings during periods of industrial recession. In other words, the people whom Carey took to task for not observing the "harmony of all interests" were apparently furthering their own. One of the more fantastic of all Carey's claims was the supposed relationship between minority-group-prejudice and the tariff—that hatred of the immigrant has appeared in the United States during periods of low duties, and has tended to disappear during periods of high duties: Five-and-twenty years since, the stranger, whether Protestant or Catholic, was always welcomed. Until then, however, the number 31 The Immigrant in American History.

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of immigrants had never exceeded 30,000, and it was not until the country had felt the beneficial effects of the tariff of 1828, in increasing the demand for labor, that it reached a single hundred thousand. Scarcely, however, had the effect been felt in Europe, before the system was changed—before mills ceased to be built, and mines ceased to be opened. A brief period of speculation being followed by a rapid decline of commerce, the demand for labor died away; and then it was that, for the first time, there was exhibited that feeling of jealousy which was indicated by the creation of a political party having for its object, the exclusion of foreigners from the rights of citizenship. The policy was changed again, and as the demand for labor grew, the party died away, to spring again into existence under the system of 1846, and on a larger scale than at any other time before. 32

Modern historical research has not borne out Carey's contention. The nineteenth-century peak of hatred of the stranger was reached in the period of 1840-4433—the same period during which the country was blessed with the high tariff of 1842. This was the time of the Bible burnings in New York, and the Philadelphia riots of 1844, which left thirteen dead and fifty wounded, and three Catholic churches burned in three days of rioting. In 1845-50 "race hatred" declined (the low Walker Tariff being passed in 1846), but Billington attributes this to the nation's absorption in such new issues as the Oregon Boundary, the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, and the question of slavery in the territories. With the rise of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic "Know-Nothing" movement (1850-54), prejudice against the stranger again mounted, and tariff duties remained low. Yet by 1860 the Native-American Party was defunct and hatred of the immigrant and the Catholic had ceased to serve as a fulcrum for political organization at the very time when the country was suffering the further reduced 32 33

Principles of Social Science, II, 247. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant

Crusade

1800-1860.

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duties of the 1857 tariff. The more obvious conclusion, that hatred of the immigrant rises with the tide of immigration, apparently never occurred to Carey. This generalization is not unqualifiedly true, either, for it requires the presence of certain attendant circumstances, but it is demonstrably closer to the mark. Politics and government. Reference has already been made to Carey's correspondence with Buchanan in 1850, when Carey asserted that the Democratic party had always been victorious when it espoused protection and had always been voted down when it failed to do so. His claim is easily refuted. The Democrat, Jackson, elected to the presidency in 1828 and again in 1832, was a milk-and-water protectionist who indifferently supported the tariff in principle, and only in Pennsylvania. Although the Compromise of 1833 provided for a gradual reduction of duties to a point where "protection" was virtually abandoned, Jackson succeeded in passing on the reins of power to his chosen Democratic successor, Van Buren, in 1836. The tariff was not even an issue in any guise or in any state, in 1844 and 1852, when the Democrats, Polk and Pierce, respectively, were elected. Throughout this period, as a matter of fact, the election of a Democrat over a Whig depended largely upon whether the New York State Democratic machine was split or united on the homely issues of local patronage and power. It was perhaps fortunate for Buchanan's own ultimate success in reaching the presidential mansion that he paid Carey's advice no heed. In the years immediately succeeding the Compromise of 1850, it was becoming obvious that divisive sectionalism was endangering the Union. Union sentiment, North and South, still outweighed what was later to become the determination of each section to impose its will upon the other. With no trace of protectionism in its platform, the Democratic party

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nominated Buchanan on the main plank of noninterference by Congress with slavery in state and territory. He was elected in 1856, defeating Fremont, the candidate of the new Republican party, even in Pennsylvania. Here, as elsewhere, Carey tried to force more eggs into his tariff basket than it would hold. But undaunted, Carey again plied Buchanan with protectionist pleas, this time in print, in his most frequently quoted pamphlet, and the one which received widest circulation.34 Carey was a consistent champion of decentralization of governmental power and control, at least in internal affairs, and he implored Buchanan to arrest the trend—long characteristic of the Democratic party, so Carey claimed—of absorbing all authority and power in the federal government. Only increased tariff duties, of course, would reverse the trend. One of Carey's accusations against the Democrats made them responsible for "credit instability": the daughters of mechanics have been forced into prostitution because of the party's history of war on local banking. Buchanan was the prototype of the fussy old bachelor. Unfortunately, his reaction to this part of Carey's argument has not been recorded for posterity. Carey's assessment of the function of government can be stated in a few words. Democracy is a superior political system to either aristocracy or tyranny. Democracy, peace, and prosperity all grow where population density constantly mounts, where the central government adopts a hands-off policy in internal and local affairs, where property is secure, and where tax levies are kept at a minimum. His central proposition stated a direct relationship between the growth of capital and the growth of population: anywhere in the world, democracy is extended where capital is permitted to grow with population. s i Letters to the President, on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the and Its Effects as Exhibited in the Condition of the People and the State.

Union,

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We have shown that, with the increased ratio of population, there is a tendency to diminution in the necessity for interfering with the affairs of individuals, in consequence of the increased facility in obtaining from a diminished number of taxes the supplies requisite for the support of the government. 35

It is interesting to compare Carey and De Tocqueville (with whom Carey took issue) on the function of population density in the politics of democracy.36 The passage of time has proven De Tocqueville's discernment much the keener, even though his original publication, in French, antedated Carey's attempted refutation by a few years and, at the time De Tocqueville was writing, the combined trend toward agglomeration of populations and agglomeration of power could scarcely be said to have commenced. De Tocqueville clearly saw the danger of sheer size for a political philosophy and system which required a large measure of local control and responsibility for perpetuation. To Carey, democracy grows with the extension of boundaries and the agglomeration of populations, as does world peace. Carey further quarreled with De Tocqueville's claim that democracy in the United States was to be understood as the result of its peculiar and accidental situation, its laws, and the customs and manners of the people. Carey countered with the statements that laws and manners are dependent upon the increase or decrease of wealth, that the growth of democracy is in precise ratio to the increase in wealth. The tendency to equality is the result of this perfect security in the enjoyment of the rights of person and property, and exists in precisely the ratio in which they are enjoyed. Such being the case, it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain to what M. de Tocqueville refers, 35

Principles

36

Cf., Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Henry Reeve, trans.

of Political

Economy,

II, 120.

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when speaking, as he so frequently does, of a "tyranny of the majority," which is entirely inconsistent therewith. 3 7

And to clinch his argument, he said that "nature" points to democracy as the political condition at which all nations must eventually arrive. Carey dismissed De Tocqueville's warning against the tyranny of the majority on the grounds that the will of the majority must be synonymous with democracy. In fact, he frequently referred to the majority will as "a higher law." De Tocqueville would have appreciated the bitter irony of Republican Germany's voting the Nazi terror into power; it is doubtful that Carey could have assessed it properly. Nor could Carey have appreciated Herbert Spencer's pointed paradox: "If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves?" Thomas Jefferson, antedating all of them, had stated the dependence of democracy upon a wide diffusion of power and control, localism, and the primacy of a free-holding agriculture; and the reverse danger of concentration of ownership, the agglomeration of urban populations, and the continued immigration of Europe's "artisan" class. What Carey advocated in this connection was, of course, inconsistent—localism and the wide diffusion of property rights in free agricultural holdings, plus the extension of industrial incorporation, the indefinite expansion of cities, a constant increase in population, more and more immigration, and state control of international commerce. Taken as a whole, Carey's program was certainly in line with the waning of the essentially historical meaning of democracy —individual control of individual destiny—and with the ultimate appearance of the "mass state" and "mass society," phenomena recognized by all modern social scientists, both those 37

Principles of Political Economy, II, 241.

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who advocate "planning" and those who warn against what "planning" must inevitably do to the classic conception of democracy. There is no mention in Carey's pages of what American democracy was increasingly becoming in his own period, clearly evidenced in his own correspondence: the organization of pressure groups to secure legislative privilege. But what we have here is probably an historical constant—the gap between men's creeds, and their deeds. Carey refused to accept any political post on the grounds that the sheer fact of being part of a political organization required a compromise of personal conviction in order to perpetuate organizational power. Yet he sacrificed the protection of his Walnut Street library more than he evidently realized. The tariff as sovereign remedy. The bulk of Carey's pages, both in books and pamphlets, was devoted to eulogizing the protective tariff, and even when he turned to other topics protectionism was invariably dragged in by the heels. It is for this reason that Carey has been called, in the present discussion, primarily a social reformer rather than a social scientist. But during Carey's earlier years of writing, he was a "free trader"— of a sort, until approximately 1848, when he consciously and wholeheartedly adopted a protectionist philosophy. The two most probable sources of Carey's early advocacy of free trade are the Wealth of Nations and the tariff history of the United States during the thirties. Adam Smith was his earliest master, and not until much later did Carey ever question anything written by him. Smith was widely hailed as the champion of free trade, especially at this time, although there was much in the Wealth of Nations that could be quoted in defense of the opposite position, which Carey did when he openly espoused protectionism.

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Indeterminately following the advice of Mathew Carey, both the Federalists and the early "Republican" party vied to surpass each other in advocating higher duties on imports after the Treaty of Ghent. In 1816 the Republicans passed a tariff bill reaching beyond the duties even Hamilton, the Federalist, had asked for. With the first great business panic of the new Republic's history, in 1819, the Republican party was faced with an impasse, plus the genesis of South Carolina's long history of tariff resistance. Under the leadership of Henry Clay, and with the sanction of Mathew Carey, a compromise was effected in 1833. Congress, in the Tariff of Abominations, provided that the tariff should be gradually reduced until it should approximately reach the 1816 levels by 1842. South Carolina then repealed her first nullification ordinance. The compromise was broken by the victorious Whigs in 1840, when the duties on manufactured products were again raised. It was from this time that the Democratic party officially adopted a consistent low tariff policy from which, in principle, it has never deviated. Henry Carey apparently went along with the compromise, as did his father, but he attacked any further reductions of those duties, as is shown in his early newspaper article: A short time since it was announced that the Comptroller of the Treasury had, under the Tariff of compromise, totally disregarded the m i n i m u m principle, and that there was every reason to believe that the administration, desirous of conciliating the opponents of the Tariff, had determined to act upon that law "as they understood it" without regard to the words of the law, or the intention of Congress. 38

And he was evidently more concerned with specific items than with the over-all principle. In a letter to Senator Wall of New 38 The National Gazette, May 14, 1834. This is contained in a volume of early newspaper clippings, Volume XIII of Carey's "Collected Works" in the University of Pennsylvania Library, and signed X.

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Jersey, January 25, 1837, he charged New England with attempting to ruin her fellow state, Pennsylvania, by seeking a reduction in the duty on coal. Dorfman, perhaps Carey's most acidulous recent critic, attempts to explain Carey's nominally "free trade" period in a way which must be recognized as inference that may, but not necessarily must be, adduced from the available facts: . . . from 1835, when he began to write economics, until after the passage of the Tariff of 1842, Carey called himself an out-and-out free trader. But then this was the period of the Compromise of 1833 and the Whig alliance of protectionists and free-traders to oust the Jackson hard-money Democrats. T o call oneself a protectionist at the time was no advantage. Those who had not publicly asserted themselves as protectionists before the compromise had a tremendous advantage. They could eulogize free trade and apply the doctrine in its wide and ambiguous sense of "freedom of business enterprise" against any restraints they disliked, just as they could identify the laborer with the industrialist when occasion warranted. 39

One thing is certain: however much of a "free trader" Carey may or may not have been during the period of his stated allegiance to the principle, he remained then, as later, a nationalist and defender of parochial economic interests. He inveighed against travelers spending money in Montreal which could better be spent in Philadelphia and New York, and he warned that any attempt to reduce the duty on iron, except very gradually, would ruin the country. There would be little point in attempting to trace the tortuous history of Carey's pleadings for the tariff once he espoused it. Here, as everywhere else except in his treatment of population, he made extravagant claims for a single proposition without stating the attendant circumstances by and through which 3» Dorfman, op. cit., I, 790.

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the proposition could be validated. Thus, all that was needed to bless the United States and the world with prosperity was the tariff. The tariff would find husbands for old maids and free the entire sex from an age-old bondage. The tariff would make Southern planters rich, but it would also ultimately free the slave. French painting became preeminent throughout the world only after France adopted a sane stand on the tariff. The tariff would lower the bastardy rate, improve morals, eliminate crime and war. As in his treatment of secession and slavery, he adopted the dubious device of insisting that his advice was really in the interest of those who were rejecting it, and against the interest of those who were in favor of it. In his third letter to Senator Hunter, Chairman of the Committee on Finance, he averred that raising the duty on imported iron was not in the interests of the ironmasters; quite the reverse, it was in the interests of the farmer and the planter. This rare bit of reasoning was developed as follows: Incidental protection is an absurdity; and yet we have gentlemen in Congress urging "the reduction of the duty on some few of the manufactured articles, that there may be a healthy competition with importations from abroad of similar manufactured articles." Now this is precisely what is desired by some of the larger ironmasters because it will tend to raise the prices of all the iron they have to sell. They do not make railroad bars; and they know that if that description of iron be admitted free of duty, it will so raise the price of all iron in England, as to enable them to add six, eight, or ten dollars per ton to all their stoves, ploughs, and axes. Is this the course that the farmer and planter should desire to see pursued ? It is not. 40

As he continued to pile pamphlet upon book, Carey became 40 Plough, Loom, and Anvil, VI (1853), 129-44; p. 142. The three untitled letters in this journal were subsequently collected into a pamphlet: "Three Letters to Hon. R. M. T . Hunter, U.S.S." (1853, 42 pp.).

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even more dogged in his insistence upon the sovereign nature of his remedy. Even after the passage of the Morrill tariff, Carey continued to wage war on a defeated enemy, demanded ever higher duties, and solemnly warned of the danger of backsliding. The Civil War failed to swerve him from his single purpose. His expressed incredulity at William Cullen Bryant's refusal to debate the tariff issue publicly is an indication of his failure to appreciate that others could not restrict the range of their interests as narrowly as he could. Bryant, at this time, was editor of the New Yor\ Post, a Democrat, a free-trader, and one of the most ardent Northern "radicals" insisting on a vigorous prosecution of the war. In Carey's published letters to Bryant, of which there were two— written in December, 1859 and March, 1860—Carey expressed indignation at Bryant's previously published claim that the crisis of 1857 showed man's inability to handle one of these "epidemic visitations." He challenged Bryant to a debate in print on the tariff issue, promising to print a total of three hundred thousand copies in various protectionist journals. In the pamphlet which contained Carey's letters to Bryant, he also included Bryant's refusal which had originally appeared in the Post. Bryant was pictured as too busy to take up such a cudgel, and as stating that the free trade-protection controversy was relatively unimportant as viewed against the more pressing issues of the day. The refusal continued in a tone of contemptuous irony which was perhaps unkind, but nevertheless something to which Carey was most vulnerable: If Mr. Carey is anxious to call out some antagonist with whom to measure weapons in a formal combat, and can find nobody who has an equal desire with himself to shine in controversy, we can recommend to him a person with whom he can tilt to his heart's

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content. One Henry C. Carey, of Philadelphia, published, some twenty years since, a work in three volumes, entitled "Principles of Political Economy," in which he showed, from the experience of all the world, that the welfare of a country is dependent upon its freedom of trade, and that, in proportion as its commerce is emancipated from the shackles of protection, and approaches absolute freedom, its people are active, thriving, and prosperous. We will put forward Henry C. Carey as the champion to do battle with Henry C. Carey. This gentleman, who is so full of fight, will have ample work on his hands in demolishing the positions of his adversary, with which he has the great advantage of being already perfectly familiar. When that is done, which will take three or four years at the least, inasmuch as both disputants are voluminous writers, we would suggest that he give immediate notice to his associates, the owners of the Pennsylvania iron-mills, who will doubtless lose no time in erecting a cast-iron statue in honor of the victor. 41 Carey stated he could not believe that Bryant was the author of the above lines, and, rather humorlessly, insisted that pauperism, slavery, and crime, "as you have seen, follow everywhere in the train of the British free-trade system, of which you have been so long the earnest advocate." T h e extravagant paean of praise to the tariff mounted. T h e papermakers, Carey claimed, were not sufficiently protected by the new Morrill tariff. As for iron production, the key of civilization, while it was advancing, it was not advancing as fast as the population increase, and the ironmasters, likewise, required more protection. H e also stated that the British freetrade policy was the cause of the Civil War, and we would be well advised to fight E n g l a n d with legislation instead of with arms, as we must, unless more protection be forthcoming. T h i s was written prior to Appomattox, and Carey came close to sedition. After claiming that the power to prosecute the war 4 1 Henry C. Carey, "Financial Crises: Their Causes and Effects." Letters to William C. Bryant.

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had come mainly from the mining states and eulogizing his home state, he stated that the internal war tax on iron was more than removing the protective duty and unless this state of affairs be corrected, the ironmasters would have the duty of ceasing production. 42 It is not within our province to assess Carey's main claim for the tariff—that under all conditions it fosters national prosperity, and that national disaster befalls when duties are reduced. Most modern economists would disagree, but little would be served by a listing of all the arguments since oui chief concern with Carey is his sociology. Yet a few further observations can be made which stop short at the border of technical economic territory. In the first place, his promotion of protection forced him into a glaring philosophical contradiction. There is a universal harmony of all interests. Man, like the rest of the universe, is governed by natural laws he is powerless to resist. At the same time, man should act to control his political destiny by insisting upon free trade within national boundaries and empower his given national government to restrict the importation of foreign goods. In brief, at one and the same time, Carey stated his trust and distrust of Providence. Carey did attempt to demolish his own structure of inconsistency by insisting that he really was a free-trader who wished first to see British domination of the world economy smashed as a necessary prerequisite to the establishment of "universal peace." Even so, that he ever foresaw a time when protective duties would have fulfilled their function is debatable—his own statements can be quoted on 42 The Way to Outdo England Without Fighting Her. Letters to the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, On the Paper, the Iron, The Farmer's, the Railroad, and the Currency Questions. Schuyler Colfax, Indiana Whig, and at this time the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, was later the Republican Vice-President during Grant's administration—1869.

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either side and the qualification became increasingly weak in his later writings. Although Carey's strictures against Great Britain had perhaps greater application for the period of his boyhood when the young Republic had to exert a Herculean effort to become something more than an English storehouse of food and raw materials, many historians can be cited in support of Carey's contention that English commercial and financial power were inimical to the United States down to the Civil War. William Archibald Dunning points out that Peel's destruction of English protectionism in 1846, to establish "free trade," was actually designed to give the home country and her colonies new advantages in a world economy.43 Drucker avers that free trade benefits relatively weak members of the society of nations only under mercantile conditions; under industrial conditions, stronger members thrive at their expense, becoming an instrument of discrimination against new industries. "This, at least, is how it appeared to the young and weak industrial system of the United States when the more advanced England of 1840 proclaimed it."44 And while short shrift is given by Van Vleck to tariff reduction as a cause of the panic of 1857 (in Carey's published letters to Buchanan, he had blamed the panic on the tariff duties of that year which further reduced the low Walker tariff of 1846), the financial domination of London is singled out as the main factor in the complex of causes which created that national debacle.45 To reiterate, this is not the place to settle the status of the tariff as a technical-legislative measure. Carey's claims for the tariff as an independent variable, apart from a given context of 43 44 45

The British Empire and the United States, esp. pp. 176-77 and 184-85. Peter F. Drucker, The Future of Industrial Man, p. 72. George Washington Van Vleck, The Panic of 1857.

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circumstances is, however, another matter. Certainly, the inconsistent way in which tariff policy was pursued throughout the period in which Carey was writing, makes his extravagant claims for its demonstrated direct effect upon the entire range of social as well as economic phenomena absurd: It is very doubtful whether, with the defective information at our disposal, we can learn much as to the effect on the prosperity of the country even of the whole series of tariff acts. Probably we can reach conclusions of any value only on certain limited topics, such as the effects of protection to young industries during this time; as to the general effect of the protective measures we must rely on deduction from general principles. At all events, no one can trace the economic effects of the act of 1828. T o ascribe to it the supposed prosperity of the years in which it was in force, as Henry C. Carey and his followers have done, is only a part of the exaggeration of the effect of protective duties which is common among their opponents as among their advocates.46

Taussig adds that between 1832 and 1860 there was so much vacillation in tariff policy that the effects are impossible to gauge. A tariff system, only one of the many factors entering into any given economy, may be strengthened or undermined by other factors; in any event, it is impossible ever to trace its distinctive contribution. It may be argued (as Carey did) that the revival of 1843 was attributable to the higher duties incorporated in the act of 1842, but with equal logic it has been claimed that the country's prosperity from 1846 to 1860 can be traced to the low duties then in force. Contra Taussig, Carey regarded this last period as one of depression. Taussig makes a series of observations which may explain, in part, why Carey repeated again and again his bewilderment and resentment that those who most ardently should have 46

F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, p. 108.

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supported the tariff were frequently the very ones who were too lethargic to be moved: Mr. Rice, of Massachusetts, said in 1860: "The manufacturer asks no additional protection. He has learned, among other things, that the greatest evil, next to a ruinous competition from foreign sources, is an excessive protection, which stimulates a like ruinous and irresponsible competition at home."—Congress. Globe, 1859-60, p. 1857. . . . In later years Mr. Morrill himself said that the tariff of 1861 "was not asked for, and but coldly welcomed, by manufacturers, who always and justly fear instability."—Congress. Globe, 1869-70, p. 3,295. Morrill and his supporters claimed it was necessary to put domestic manufacturers on an equal footing with foreign, because of the new internal revenue measures which were extremely high. Yet for 20 years the high tariff remained, even though internal revenue measures were gradually and completely withdrawn. 47 A n d yet Carey, unlike most social reformers, lived to see his dream come true, lived to see the high protective tariff become a permanent fixture on the American scene. In 1862, and again in 1864, the Morrill tariff of 1861 was revised upwards, and the high tariff policy wavered only slightly, f r o m time to time, down to the present day. There is no evidence whatsoever that Carey, in his declining years, ever doubted its success, but he could hardly have remained unaware that his country in no way resembled the happy chain of local-diversified communities he had promised would result f r o m that policy. American capitalism was safely entrenched behind tariff walls, but the gap between social classes steadily widened. Urban poverty in the cities, and rural poverty in the West, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, at least to the satisfacion of some critics of the philosophy of the dollar, disclosed the tariff as a class instrument. In any event, never again did it receive popular support, and f r o m 1878 to the present it has been under attack by liberal groups. « Ibid., pp.

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4

T l i e O ricins of C a r e y ' s S o c i a l Science

ONE OF THE more dubious activities which is common among scholars is the ready attribution of one writer's influence upon another when corollaries and parallels can be traced through the central themes of both. This is a particularly questionable enterprise for the mid-century period, a period which for intellectual quickening had its counterpart only in the seventeenth century. That Carey was a child of his age is easily demonstrated; tracing the specific lines of his intellectual ancestry is a different matter. To maintain sure footing, only acknowledged influences will be noted, or those for which the evidence, in context, appears clearly tenable. Carey's most obvious debt is to his father, because of the parallelism of their ideas and his father's virtually taking over his education—both described in the first chapter. It is a curious fact, however, that nowhere in Henry Carey's writings does the name of his father appear. From his first major effort, The Essay on Wages, down to the close of his literary career, he claimed Adam Smith as his master. In his later writings, this may have been sheer nostalgia for a first love, since he acknowledged several points of departure. In any event, Carey's references to Smith were eclectic from first to last, since so much in the latter's system could be quoted on both sides on many issues. Like Smith, Carey, after dropping Senior's "wage 144

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fund" theory, made labor both the cause and measure of value. Smith presented a glowing picture of the beneficial effects of a complex division of labor, and Carey may have originally acquired his point of view at this source, although by the time Carey was writing it was fairly common currency. Recall, however, that Carey early denied Smith's imputation of an innate "propensity to truck and barter" as the cause of the division of labor (while in some contexts he alleged a utilitarian origin of society, his usual declaration was Aristotelian). The point will be constantly reiterated in this chapter, however, that Carey was not so much influenced by other scholars as he sought out their ideas to support conclusions which had an essentially non-scholarly basis. Thus Carey, during his avowedly protectionist period, by some sleight of hand attempted to make Smith a supporter of the tariff. To do this he did not cite Smith's qualification of laissez faire, that taxes on imports were justifiable to make a nation self-sufficient in such things as saltpeter, in shipping (the Navigation Acts), and to protect some manufacturers from the importation of specific items for which internal revenues were collected. To do this would have forced the admission that Smith was, after all, a virtually unqualified spokesman for free trade. Instead, Carey pointed to Smith's doctrine that agriculture was the basis of any national economy, followed by manufactures and trade in that order, as a refutation of both Ricardo and free trade—a conclusion which is not borne out by the Wealth of Nations. Further, that Smith, as well as Ricardo, stated that the interests of various economic classes are at variance was never mentioned by Carey. Carey was acquainted with the writings of Friedrich List on protectionism, in fact he made occasional references to them in his own work, but since the boundaries of List's and Mathew

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Carey's ideas are coterminous, there would seem to be little point in maximizing Henry Carey's debt to the former. As for Carey's lifelong refutation of Ricardo and Malthus, there were many American heretics of political economy who anteceded his main arguments in this connection, but nowhere does he cite them, so that exactly to whom he was indebted remains in question. As early as 1805, Hezekiah Niles was writing articles in his Niles' Weekly Register in Baltimore.1 Like Mathew Carey, he believed Adam Smith's theories inapplicable to the United States, and he and the elder Carey were frequent correspondents although Stone avers there was little exchange of ideas between them until the 1830's. Like the Careys, Niles was an optimist, and believed that population and wages might both continue to increase. Niles denied the Malthusian theory need alarm Americans: our vast territory and abundant resources could easily absorb further increments of population. Even List had quarreled with Malthus on the grounds that an improving technology could be expected to increase the food supply and thus care for the needs of larger numbers. It seems unlikely that Carey was altogether unacquainted with the work of Cardozo who, more systematically than any previous American, was taking Malthus to task as early as 1826. Cordozo insisted that an improved scientific agriculture could obviate the operation of diminishing returns, and stated that Malthus had been refuted in England itself, since increases in population had been accompanied by increased means of subsistence. His vision of America's future was as glowingly optimistic as Carey's, and what he advocated to realize that dream oftentimes reads like a paraphrase of sections from Carey's Principles of Political Economy: the aboli1

Richard G. Stone, Hezekiah Niles as an Economist.

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tion of primogeniture and the dividing up of agricultural lands, the security of "person and property," and a moderate tax burden, all of which would aid in keeping a safe margin between food production and population increase.2 At this early date Cardozo was using an argument in refutation of Malthus which was to become one of Carey's: that what Malthus was attributing to a law of nature might very well be "the result of an imperfect social organization." Even earlier, Jean-Baptiste Say, in a book published by Carey and his father, was pointing out the universal benefits accruing from the division of labor leading to a "concentration" of population (the term was not his) in large cities. Carey's, of course, was a parallel theme. Say declared that the nature of men's occupations leads them to assemble in villages, towns, and cities. And great cities are not a burden, he adds, since they do not exist at the expense of smaller communities "as they do not receive from them any value without giving another value in exchange."3 In the last analysis, however, the attempt to trace the origins of Carey's central theme, and its attendant buttressing arguments, in the writings of other men is probably bootless. Carey himself insisted that his protectionism and his insight that Malthus and Ricardo must be wrong resulted from his observations in his own native land, and no valid reason is apparent for calling his assertion to question. In an undeveloped continent with boundless resources, free—or at least cheap—land, a population which seemed destined to continue doubling every three decades or so, and an expanding economy whose primary requirement was labor and more labor, the classical doctrine of diminishing returns and the ideas of Malthus on population 2 3

J. N. Cardozo, Notes on Political Economy, esp. pp. 124-25. Jean-Baptiste Say, Catechism of Political Economy, John Richter, trans., p. 135.

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and of Ricardo on rent, as popularly understood, would probably have appeared either heresy or rank nonsense to any man who would only lift his eyes from a treatise on political economy, written in England, to gaze upon the land about him. As for the social reform context within which Carey made his economic pleas, the entire history of the social science movement must be invoked. As the Bernards point out in their excellent volume, two streams of thought flowed into the nineteenth century from the past, and while both were addressed to human welfare, the liberal democratic tradition—in contrast to the German, essentially authoritarian ideology—stressed the importance of reason, natural law, science, and the individual, and minimized the state.4 With minor deviations, Carey strengthened the liberal democratic tradition which was also one of seeking a methodology and theory that would lead to the betterment of mankind. As far back as the eighteenth but more predominantly in the mid-nineteenth century, the social science movement was caught up in various schemes of social planning, an emphasis which has, if anything, steadily increased down to the present day. In other words, the ideals of social reform and science were steadily being forged together. Carey's debt to the past and his legacy to the future then become apparent. Carey's period was the great age of faith in man's ability to refashion his world nearer everyone's heart's desire. Lectures, lyceums, revivals, Utopian schemes; pleas for the emancipation of the laborer, the slave, and the female, all blended into a rather discordant symphony of self- and community-improvement that came more and more to rely upon legislation rather than individual soul-cleansing as industrialism and secularism gradually supplanted agrarianism and eschatological Christian4

Bernard and Bernard, op. cit.

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ity. George Seldes, adopting Horace Greeley's felicitous phrase to his own use, has called it "the stammering century." It was a time when a noisy search for salvation, leading into a hundred deviant bypaths, resulted from the impact of material progress upon the evolving cult of will which sought surcease from the very progress it fervently embraced. If this be reduced to the idea of salvation by effort, Carey's fervid zeal appears more understandable in his own period than it would in our own. Thus, also, Carey's constant invocation of the Deity as the source of all law and his plea that God could not permit the conditions described by Malthus and Ricardo to occur were in accordance with the popular revolt, continued through midcentury, against all deterministic theories migrating from Europe to America. In that God-dominated period, there was a strong public pressure on all social scientists to avoid discovering evil in the universe of God's creation. Carey was in no way conscious of supporting a Calvinist doctrine in attributing evil in the world to men's "selfish motives," but his feelings on the matter were actually not far removed from the Calvinist doctrine of original sin. In all probability he was merely writing within a set of current literary conventions, and it must be kept in mind that his avowed purpose was to reach as large a popular audience with his message as he could. The influence of the clergy on American social science was strong throughout the century, particularly through the grip the collegiate seminaries maintained on the textbook trade. Carey's ideas, except for his protectionist stand, were safely within the frame of reference imposed by the close association of ministerial and merchant-capitalist groups in the northeastern states: . . . as a general rule these religious writers set up no standards for direct action on social ills. Quite the contrary; the religious contri-

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bution supports the theory of automatic natural-law control which really refers to a particular type of institutional control. Religious symbolization becomes identified in the texts with this natural-law system. Later in the century religion, political economy, and the merchant class may be said to have gradually yielded ground before the advance of science, economics, and the new industrialists. Another characteristic of the clerical surveys is that they explain the functioning of the economic order in terms of laboring groups in such a way as to make clear to workers the justification for thencurrent economic practices of merchants and professionals.5

It will be recalled that the keystone of Carey's sociology was "association," a term sometimes used synonymously with "society," at other times used to describe the "concentration" of population and the accompanying beneficent complex division of labor. Carey's research procedure is nowhere better illustrated than in the history of his use of this term. As early as 1838, with the publication of the second volume of the Principles of Political Economy, he had worked out his full treatment of the content to which the term refers without actually using the term. He used the term itself for the first time in 1848, in The Past, the Present, and the Future. His adoption of the word did not in any way change his referent. He was very evidently trading on the popularity Fourierism had attained in America in the forties. Charles Fourier (1772-1837) developed a doctrine which resembled Carey's but which also deviated in several significant ways. Fourier spoke of the power of attraction that universally tends to draw men together for united action. Previously interposed obstacles have prevented the operation of the law of attraction, and have led men into anti-social conduct. Once these obstacles have been removed, and they can be with 5 Michael J. L. O'Connor, Origins of Academic p. 284.

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cooperative social action, universal harmony and peace will prevail and the individual passions of men will coalesce harmoniously into a supreme passion of love for humanity. The phalanxes (individual communes), however, were to be rigidly planned and association was to be totalistic, involving all individuals in all of their social relations. The Brook Farm (1843-44) was organized on the principles of "Associationism," which at this time was closely identified with "social science." In 1840 Arthur Brisbane had begun to popularize the Fourierite movement in America with his book, Social Destiny of Man, and later, in 1844, with A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine of Association. Carey very probably picked up the term from Brisbane or Greeley, since it was Brisbane who converted Horace Greeley to the doctrine, and Greeley was at this time very close to Carey. The following passage, representing direct Fourieristic influences, is from one of Greeley's printed debates with Henry J. Raymond which appeared originally in the Tribune: By Association I mean a social order which shall take the place of the present township, to be composed of some hundreds or some thousands of persons, who shall be united together in interest and industry for the purpose of securing to each individual the following things: (1) an elegant and commodious house; (2) an education, complete and thorough; (3) a secure subsistence; (4) opportunity to labor; (5) fair wages; (6) agreeable social relations; (7) progress in knowledge and skill. As society is at present organized, these are the portion of a very small minority. Under the present system, capital is everything, man nothing, except as a means of accumulating capital. Capital founds a factory, and for the single purpose of increasing capital, taking no thought of the human beings by whom it is increased. The fundamental idea of Association, on the other hand, is to effect a just distribution of products among capital, talent and labor.6 6

Quoted on pp. 125-26 o£ Harry W. Laidler, A History of Socialist

Thought.

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Carey's departures are at once evident. Fourier and Brisbane, following Godwin and Rousseau, had made our total civilization the perverter of natural harmony. Carey singled out free trade. Fourier and Brisbane had seen "attraction" as a phase of the Newtonian principle of gravitation, as did Carey, but while they had viewed it as operating through a human desire to come together, Carey had continued the mechanical application—attraction varies directly with the density and inversely with the distance. That is, this was the usual case, although, as has been noted, Carey sometimes regarded attraction as a sort of instinct. Carey attributed human ills more to human weakness and chicanery than to the Fourierite claim that the social organization itself was defective, although, again, he at times adopted the latter position. As a matter of fact, the uses Fourier and Carey made of the term association had little in common. The Fourierites wanted to run against at the current while Carey wanted to speed it along. To Carey, commerce was synonymous with civilization, and association could take place only upon a foundation of increments in wealth and population. While at times Carey drew a picture which resembled the rural phalanstery of the Fourierites, his "association" more typically required further migration to already large centers. Carey never questioned the size of American cities in his day, and never stated what their optimum growth should be. While Brisbane, following Fourier, wrote details of social organization, described methods for organizing education and developing vocational aptitudes, in these spheres Carey insisted upon laissez faire. If the workman would only cease organizing his imaginary grievances against the capitalist, he would have enough money in the form of increased wages to educate his children himself. Indeed, Carey went so far as to identify association with the

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specific provision of limited liability for corporations. At first glance, Carey's statements in this regard resemble Maine's "status to contract" and Durkheim's statement of a developing division of labor which takes society from "mechanical" to "organic" solidarity. Carey had said that force rules in early society and the early cultivator could be easily enslaved. In all cases of involuntary union, the principle of unlimited liability, or solidarité, is seen to exist.7 With the increase of population and wealth, voluntary union grows, and the growth of individuality, morality, and spirituality follow. But the accompanying "limited liability" is not a pervading principle of reorganization, instead, it is solely and strictly an economic-legal protection for the capitalist. The point being established is simply that while Carey very probably borrowed extensively from the Fourierite literature, that literature never became an integral part of his system but remained as a sort of excrescence to the whole. Carey's debt to Auguste Comte (1798-1857), on the other hand, was direct and acknowledged. The idea that all science is one is at least as old as Pascal, but it is a reiterated Comteian theme, and Carey very probably derived it from Comte. The "law of the perpetuity of matter," which Carey acknowledges as stemming from E. Peshine Smith also probably came from Comte; in fact, Comte used the term "indefinite perpetuity of matter." And from Comte Carey doubtless derived the idea, in inchoate form, of the universality of laws governing all matter—although Carey announced it as his own. Comte had said that vital transformations are subject to the universal laws of chemical phenomena, but had gone on to insist that each science has its own laws. Comte's distinctions in this connection are no more clear than Carey's, since Carey had gone on to 7

The Vast, the Present, and the Future, pp. 212-13.

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insist that human behavior could not be understood by turning to the study of lower animal forms which lacked a social heritage. At any rate, Carey did push the idea of the identity of social and physical laws, and in its clear insistence comprised a new theme. Carey stated his acceptance of Comte's hierarchy of the sciences, except that he would not include mathematics. But Carey's "tree of life" (previously described) was evidently meant to stand as a revision of Comte's schema. Comte had listed on the basis of "successive dependence": mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and social physics (sociology). The sciences first to develop are those which are general, simple, abstract, and remote from man; gradually they come to deal with particular, compound, and concrete phenomena. However Carey's "tree" may deviate from Comte's classification, it was meant to illustrate that the nearer we approach man, "his uses and purposes, we find the greatest retardation of that positive knowledge so early attained in reference to the method to be pursued in the effort for its attainment." Teilhac goes so far as to declare that Carey's economic harmonies owe a great deal to Comte's system. Agriculture, Carey declared, was the base of any given economy. It was also a "science," concrete and close to man's interests that was chronologically late in development: A n d Carey, recollecting the classification of Comte, carries it to another plane, agriculture being for him the essence of social science. At all times, as elevated as it was as a science it is that which depends on natural and social accidents: it is also the supreme art. 8 8 Ernest Teilhac, Historié De La Pensée Économique Aux États-Unis Au DixNeuvième Siècle. Chapter II "L'Économie Politique D'Henry-Charles Carey," pp. 52-111, p. 66. T h e original passage reads: "Et Carey, se rappelant la classification d'Auguste Comte, la transporte sur un autre plan, l'agriculture étant pur lui l'essence de la science sociale. Toutefois, si élevée qu'elle soit comme science, elle est cela qui dépend le plus des accidents naturels et sociaux: elle est aussi l'art suprême."

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Teilhac continues: It seems that it was there, in this opposition of logical subordination and chronological subordination, as a new projection on a new plane of Comte's classification: while the elevation of value of a given production, in respect to subsequent production, is more or less compensated for by its lowering of value with respect to a preceding production, labor and land seem unable to undergo a rise in value without a corresponding diminution. 9

Unfortunately for Teilhac's case, the relationship posited by Carey to which Teilhac refers was fully worked out in The Past, the Present, and the Future, long before Carey was aware of Comte. Carey may here, as he did from Fourier, have derived a later philosophic underpinning, but the basic idea in neither case was borrowed. Auguste Comte gave Carey, for the most part, an authoritative support for an intellectual goal which Carey had been striving toward since his earliest work: a reconciliation of science and social reform, an attempt to use science not only to study society but also to control the direction society should take. Yet even so, Comte, at least in America, failed to mesh gears with his generation, since in this country at that time "science" had to serve as the handmaiden to the Deity (the role ascribed by Carey), while Comte had insisted upon a basic disparity between theology and science. And there is nothing of fundamental importance in Carey's sociology which was taken over from Comte. Carey's system was essentially an elaboration of the theme of the division of labor, and the learned discussions of trees of knowledge, the identity of all scientific 9

Ibid., p. 71. T h e original passage reads: "Il semble qu'il y ait là, dans cette opposition de la subordination logique et de la subordination chronologique, comme une projection nouvelle sur un plan nouveau de la classification d'Auguste Comte: tandis que l'élévation de valeur de tout produit donné, par rapport au produit subséquent, est plus our moins compensée par son abaissement de valeur par rapport au produit précédent, travail et terre semblent ne subir qu'une augmentation de valeur sans une diminution correspondante."

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laws, were accretions, not an integral part of it. In fact, since he was well acquainted with Comte's writings when he wrote his main work, it seems only reasonable to assume he picked and chose to his own purpose for he made no attempt to refute the following passage and even failed to mention it: There is something so chimerical in attempts at universal explanation by a single law, that it may be as well to secure this Work at once from any imputation of the kind, though its development will show how undeserved such an imputation would be. Our intellectual resources are too narrow, and the universe too complex, to leave any hope that it will ever be within our power to carry scientific perfection to its last degree of simplicity.10

In his main work Carey does not explain exactly where he derived the notion of applying the laws of motion and force to the social realm. This was done in a pamphlet which appeared at the same time in which he stated that Count Rumford and Sir Humphry Davy had proven that "every manifestation of force must come from some pre-existing equivalent force, and must give rise to some subsequent and equal amount of force in another form." 11 What was new, of course, was the direct application of such principles to the social realm, such as the claim that weakness and poverty prevail in Turkey and Ireland because "the human plates are promiscuously piled, and in which, in consequence, there is little or no circulation. . . ." Many have played the game of attributing origins to Carey's thought with, at best, uncertain validity, and in the case of foreign writers, with a tendency to exaggerate the influence of fellow countrymen. Thus Teilhac, cited above, maximizes Carey's debt to Comte beyond all proper proportions, even 10

The

Positive

Philosophy

of

Augusts

Harriet Martineau, I, 17. 11

Review

of the Decade,

1857-67,

p . 5.

Comte,

translated

and

condensed

by

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calling Carey's sociology Durkheim's (the fact: Durkheim read and quoted Carey; Carey remained unaware of Durkheim), and his psychology that of Tarde. Leslie claims that Carey owed "not a little" to Herbert Spencer,12 but the reasons for questioning the extent of his debt have already been enumerated. And while Carey is frequently mentioned as being a disciple of List, Baird persuasively breaks the imputed connection. Alfred Marshall had said that List's Outlines of a New System of Political Economy, published in Philadelphia in 1827, had clearly influenced Carey's first important work, which appeared in 1835, the Essay on the Rate of Wages. But Carey, at this time, was a "free trader." And Carey had not begun the study of German until 1856, so List's National System of Political Economy, published in Germany in 1841, immediately prior to Carey's adoption of a protectionist position "was to him a sealed book until 1851, when a French translation by Richelot appeared in Paris."13 Certainly, Carey's system as a whole cannot legitimately be attributed to any one man or even, directly, to any group of men, and this is particularly true of his sociology, which in the incisiveness of its insights, apart from the encumbrances of physical science analogies, was far ahead of its time. The cavalier way Carey quite evidently used the work of other men to his own purposes lends support to the opinion that he was developing a set of conclusions which comprised an emergent system, and he engaged in the practice of shopping around to buy the most attractive outside props to the structure that he could find. On the basis of the accumulated evidence, the three outstanding sources of Carey's thought will be here treated as: his 12

T. E. C. Leslie, "Political Economy in the United States," p. 501. IS Henry Carey Baird, "Carey and Two of His Recent Critics," p. 7.

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reaching intellectual maturity during a period of unprecedented economic expansion; the direct and obvious influence of his father, Mathew Carey; and his role as spokesman for the coal and iron interests of the State of Pennsylvania. Following is a persuasive summary of the imputed relationship between man and period: The population increased 32.7 per cent from 1830 to 1840, and 35.9 per cent during the next decade. The wealth per capita in 1860 was more than double that of 1840. The growth of factories and industries, of inventions and skill, compose an amazing chapter in material civilization. During the two decades after 1830, the railroad mileage grew from 29 to 9,021 miles. Philadelphia, the home of Carey and most of his followers, was the railroad center. Though spread over a vast area, the population of the country maintained political continuity while it was incorporating vast bodies of immigrants. Under a new and liberal form of government, a growth of national feeling was manifest. The extension of transportation facilities was uniting diverse interests into common interests, was bringing the farm into touch with the manufacturing cities, and was emphasizing that unity of national interests which formed so clear a basis for the "principle of association," which was the fundamental tenet of the Carey school.14 As has already been indicated, Mathew Carey, whose personal relationship with his son was very close, was his mentor in childhood and early manhood, and he clearly adumbrated the outlines of his son's later thought, particularly its social reform phase: protectionism, the singling out of Great Britain as the primary enemy of all mankind, the desirability of increased immigration, the harmony of class interests, the desirability of a balanced economic system so that a large proportion of the population would not be turned into "hucksters and retailers of their productions," the proposition that free 14

Turner, op. cit., p. 110.

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government is the means and not the end of prosperity. And most important of all, perhaps, he bequeathed to his son the role of active conciliator of clashing internal economic interests for the purpose of welding together a great and prosperous national community. No discussion of the origins of Carey's thought must overlook the abundantly evident fact that his whole system was, in the last analysis, slanted in the direction of a promotion purpose —to influence public opinion in favor of the protective tariff. The relationship is evident enough; the only question remaining is how far is it to be imputed? One may even run the danger of accusing Carey of philosophizing his own pocketbook, as Dorfman does in no uncertain terms. The argument, pushed to its logical extreme, is examined in the final chapter of this study. A more modified position, that Carey was the spokesman for the interests of his State, is taken by many investigators. Perry claims that his protectionism, far from being an outgrowth of the rest of his system, is in fact a contradiction of it. His protectionism arose from his hatred of England and his desire to raise the price of Pennsylvania coal and iron.15 Leslie points to the tariff's failure to gain acceptance in its entirety outside Pennsylvania as proof that Carey's system was practicable for Pennsylvania alone rather than for the nation.16 The obvious Marxian answer is not adequate to the question of why Carey hammered this one issue into a key to unlock all the mysteries of the universe, since thousands of men of his class rejected his theories, a matter of never-ending bewilderment and bitterness to Carey. Part of the answer is unquestionably to be found in his geographic parochialism. Carey was a product 15 16

Arthur Latham Perry, Political Economy, p. 83. Leslie, op. cit., p. 503.

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of Pennsylvania, its interests and its politics. More than this, he had, as a young man, absorbed the mercantile, quasi-aristocratic, Federalist flavor of Philadelphia, which was frequently out of touch with the western counties of the state. It was Philadelphia, the mercantile and financial hub of the infant republic, which seized the initiative in promoting internal improvements, domestic manufactures, and the tariff, as early as the first quarter of the nineteenth century.17 And, according to Klein, a state spoils system, later to be taken over into national politics, first developed in Pennsylvania. The early political picture in Pennsylvania was chaotic, partly because of the fluid condition of party alignments and party labels. Yet while Philadelphia's wealthy class failed to achieve any unanimity of broader political purpose (Jackson's cause was heralded by many of them), and the counties of Pennsylvania were often divided on other issues, the various presidential aspirants of the period—Jackson, Calhoun, Adams, and Clay—were all forced to pose as ardent protectionists in Pennsylvania since on this issue there was early unanimous agreement. By 1824, according to Klein, when the tariff seriously entered politics, "the grazing and agricultural population of the state were as firmly convinced of the necessity of high duties as were the makers of goods." But nowhere else, not even in the rest of the Northeast, was such unanimity forthcoming. Pennsylvania's consistent stand on this issue is to be largely attributed to her early industrial and financial domination— economic strength rather than weakness. Invariably, protectionist agitation in behalf of a specific commodity did not appear until domestic production was well established. Agitation for the protection of iron manufacture, for example, became 17

Philip S. Klein, Pennsylvania

Politics 1817-1832,

p. 16.

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vehement only after 1840 when the introduction of the anthracite process increased output and lowered production costs. It was a developed and expanding market, rather than an infant industry, which Carey and others were seeking to "protect."18 This, in conjunction with Pennsylvania's long history of close mercantile relations with the South, throws new light on Carey's equivocal, and at times contradictory, stand on the slavery question. Because of economic interests, Carey and his home state tended to adopt a tolerant attitude toward the planters; yet the tariff, which since 1833 had fostered secessionist sentiment in the South more than anything else, continued to be the key to Pennsylvania's participation in national politics. Within Pennsylvania, the failure to stop passage of the reduced Walker tariff of 1846 was popularly believed to have resulted from the annexation of Texas. The act could not have passed without the votes of the two Texas senators. This "always remained to the protectionist Whigs a reminder of the injustice caused by the admission of that State into the Union." 19 So Carey and his fellow Whigs fought the campaign of 1846 on the tariff issue alone; meanwhile, the demand for Protection of Free White Labor over Southern Slave Labor swelled to crescendo volume. And it was shortly thereafter that the Whig Legislature of Pennsylvania passed the series of bills protecting the rights of captured fugitive slaves. At mid-century, when the Democrats made a renewed bid for power, they tried to assuage the South and at the same time pose as protectionists in Pennsylvania. The Northern Whigs, in 1852, attempted to mend Southern fences by promising to endorse the Compromise of 1850 if the Southern Whigs would support the tariff. But the minority free-soil and abolitionist 18 19

Malcolm Rogers Eiselen, The Rise of Pennsylvania Protectionism, Henry R. Mueller, The Whig Party in Pennsylvania, p. 129.

p. 268.

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Whigs, in the North, were pushing their party into a political graveyard, and the Whig party disappeared in Pennsylvania when the state went over to Buchanan, according to Klein, because of the rumor then circulating that if Buchanan were defeated the South would refuse to pay the sixty million dollars which it owed to merchants and manufacturers of Philadelphia.20 As has been pointed out, Carey, in his published letters to Buchanan, expressed himself as willing to see the Democrats victorious provided they would support the tariff. But the Democrats continued to refuse to see reason, and at this time Carey parted company with many of his fellow Pennsylvania Whigs to back a winner. The Pennsylvania Whigs, who controlled the banks, the coal mines, and iron foundries of the State—the wealthy classes, in other words—decamped in droves to the Democratic party, because they considered it the only conservative party remaining, after the Whigs became increasingly tarred with the abolitionist brush. Carey was not so deflected from his monolithic purpose: T h e rise of the Republican Party in 1856 as the successor of the W h i g Party found Carey a prominent supporter. His view of what the role of the Republican Party should be was expressed by one of the still-born Pennsylvania parties that he and his group were interested in hatching. This was the "Iron Platform Association," a so-called Pennsylvania W o r k i n g Men's Party. Its "DemocraticRepublican platform" called for "a gradual, peaceful and patriotic abolition of slavery" by encouraging through a protective tariff "free labour in the whole union, N o r t h and South." 2 1

The Pennsylvania Republicans were able to carry the state in 1860 only on two assumptions: that the "weak coffee" protective plank that came out of the Chicago Convention would 20 21

Klein, op. cit., p. 231. Dorfman, op. cit., p. 803.

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immediately be strengthened, and that the South would not refuse to accede to the will of the majority. 22 Wilmot and Cowan were sent to the United States Senate to spike any further attempts to extend the slave power, and yet a popular interest was maintained in the Crittenden proposals, which would do just that. Carey, like many other Pennsylvanians at that time, tried to eat his cake and keep it, too. He was willing to capitalize Northern antislavery sentiment to promote the tariff. He found it equally expedient to decry antislavery sentiment in order to hold the conservative South in the Union. The evidence would appear sufficient to lend credence to the following evaluation: Environmental influences, rather than the writings of other economists, seem to have constituted the chief sources of Carey's inspiration . . . it may be said that Carey's economic philosophy was deeply rooted in the protectionist soil of his native state. Pennsylvania bred him; Pennsylvania educated him; and when the time was ripe, Pennsylvania called upon him to become her chosen evangel of her chosen creed. 23

The evidence from his own pen makes the case complete. He who extolled the perfect harmony of all interests increasingly, as his lifelong quest became firmly registered in national legislation, repeated again and again the debt the nation owed to his home state; and, previously, he had shown every willingness to foster sectional politicking as a means to open the road to that legislation. In his earlier writings, while insisting that protection was synonymous with the harmony "of all interests," constant references to the particular necessity of protecting iron production (at that time the very heart of Pennsylvania industry) appear; indeed, he frequently went so far as to make 22 23

See Stanton Ling Davis, Pennsylvania Politics, Eiselen, op. cit., p. 273.

1860-1863.

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the level of iron production the index to civilization. In his pamphlets he attacked New England for failing to rally round the protectionist banner of the "middle states." He was willing to foster Southern distrust for New England in order to entice the South to make an alliance with the "middle states" on the tariff. It was with the war and the passage of the Morrill tariff, however, that Carey openly sang his praise to the power and interests of the "middle states," at one point advising the iron men to cease production, during the war, if further duties on imported iron were not forthcoming. All of his strictures on banking and currency revolved about the theme of striking Pennsylvania free from the shackles of the New York money monopoly and the New England banks. An excerpt from one of his editorials, addressed to the citizens of Pennsylvania, hammers home his essential parochialism, "Such, fellow citizens, have been the effects of permitting [Pennsylvania] to be led, when she should have placed herself in the lead—of endorsing the opinions of others, when she should boldly have proclaimed her own." 24 Carey's correspondence with protectionist political leaders is even more illuminating, the nature of it at least leaving him open to the charge that the elaborate structure of his theoretical system was more than coincidentally geared to his personal fortunes. On January 25, 1837, he wrote to Senator Wall of New Jersey, "We (I mean my brother and myself) have paid nearly One Thousand dollars duty upon the iron we have used in the past year, in making railroads & other improvements. How, then, can we supply coal at free trade prices?"25 This was 24

Philadelphia American and Gazette, October 20, 1858. From "American Prose," Simon Gratz Autograph Collection, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 26

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at the time when he was extolling the blessings of free trade in his published works. Those who care to do so may make what inference is to their liking between Carey's lifelong advocacy of cheap money and easy credit, and the following excerpt from a letter to James Martin, of the Bank of the United States, dated May 11, 1841. Carey was pleading for an extension of his notes held by the bank: Nearly fifty days have elapsed since I had a conversation with you respecting certain notes held by the Bank of the U. S. and already they have come round again. Being at present unable to make any change in them, I deem it best to put upon paper what I have to say in relation to them, that the matter may be fully understood by yourself and the other members of the Committee. I am perfectly aware how impervious are your necessities, and that you appear to have good cause of complaint against all those who do not pay your claims upon them, thus disabling you from meeting the demands upon the Bank, yet I doubt if, in my case, there is as much real as apparent cause for dissatisfaction, because the Bank itself has made the difficulty, and has subjected me to the mortification of addressing you as I now do. I am no speculator. With a single, and not very important, exception, all the property I hold was bought with a view to keep it, and not on speculation, and I could, with a perfect convenience, hold it all, free from debt, had not the Banks in general, and yours in particular, kept the country for years in a state of disturbance.

On April 1, 1855, William A. Crabbe, of the Harrisburg Legislature, wrote Carey that "your charter" can be obtained, but that "you" would be "obliged to pay for it. . . . Don't send anyone from the city up here, and don't pay a farthing until the bill is through the Governor's hands and is a law. Draft such a bill as you want proposed.... Tell me if you please, the maximum you could afford to pay an outsider, and I'll manage it."

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From James H . Campbell, at that time a "lame-duck" Whig member of Congress, Carey received the following rather involved and rambling information on December 4, 1856: We are in more danger respecting the iron interests of Pa. at this time, than we were in the last session. Some of our old friends are saying that Penna, having decided in favour of free trade democracy, must have it carried out in practice. Then the large bai. in the treasury, and the reserve derived from existing duties, makes our position an embarrassing one. The true remedy of increasing the rates in order to diminish the reserve, would not have the remotest chance of success. We must sometimes look at what can be done rather than what we should do. The Rail Road men are making an effort to combine free iron with free wool—this combination if effected would be, I am afraid as successful, as corrupt—I am satisfied "free wool" as a raw material would increase the production and price of domestic wool, by increasing the demand—We may . . . be driven to free wool for New England to keep the duty on our iron—We shall see. The powerful Seward-Weed combination in N e w York State kept in touch with Carey through the mediation of their faithful lieutenant and Carey's good friend, E. Peshine Smith. On October 2, 1856 Carey was informed that "two young politicians from N e w York, in the confidence of Mr. Weed," would call on him to collect a number of protectionist pamphlets for distribution "where they will do the most good." And Smith, like Carey, apparently cared little for party affiliations in the good cause of promoting protection; he wrote to Carey on September 7, 1856, stating: Weed, as [Stanton] told me was much chagrined at his failure in some schemes for raising money for Pa. . . . Stanton's belief was that Pa. can be carried but that it is hard work and depends upon persuading the [Native American Party] men some, dragooning them some, & cheating them some—all which methods he thought would be faithfully tried.

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Justin Smith Morrill's correspondence with Carey indicates that the Morrill tariff of 1861, which almost launched America permanently on a high tariff policy, was not so much the result of the sort of theoretical persuasion at which Carey was a past master, as it was due to the pressure for revenue to fight the war, and to mollify the insurgent protectionist politicians who used the war to force their will. On July 6, 1861, Morrill wrote Carey about a conference he had recently had with Secretary of the Treasury Chase: His Philosophy is Free Trade or ad valorums, but he confessed that in his present agony for money, the latter failed. He suggested something like the Tariff of 1846.1 told him it could not get 20 votes of the Republican party in the House. At last he came into the same channel and agreed with me that all we could do with the Tariff was to increase it upon several things—in specifics—on the whole he is willing to throw his theories to the dogs. And to quiet Carey's fears, Morrill again wrote him on March 18, 1862, I think many of your apprehensions are unfounded, and many will be removed by amendments which the committee will propose. All the main objections of [your pamphlet] we have already got a provision that will remove. Philadelphia will not be hurt. (Author's italics.) One other point is also abundantly evident—that Carey was well aware of the fact (which controverted his stated belief) that legislation of this kind benefits some much more than others. On July 26, 1862, he wrote to J. H. Scranton, wealthy Pennsylvania iron man: For myself, I have to say, that while I have every confidence in the possibility of doing all that is needed, I will take no part in it— being tired of working & paying for men who never hesitate to do me injury when it can be done with profit to themselves.—Your

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Railroad Co., now profits of a tariff that it owes to me, to the extent of $30,000 a month Had I been a lawyer, & had obtained a verdict for a single million, my fee would count by tens of thousands of dollars. As counsel for the coal & iron men, I have recently obtained verdicts of many millions, every farthing of which my clients put in their own proper pockets, leaving me to pay not only the costs of suit, but also all the losses they have inflicted on me, while I was giving all my faculties, & my means, to the promotion of their interests.

Since Carey recognized the connection between the success of his reform, and secession and war, there can be no doubt as to the further connection between the hardening of his attitude toward the South and the passage of the Morrill tariff. On May 11, 1865, Carey wrote to William Elder: The last evening that I was in England, in 1859, was passed in company with a very clever economist, whose ideas on many subjects were very sound, but he was a bitter free trader. In the course of our conversation I told him that without protection we should be ruined. "I regret to hear it" said he, "for we are now so strong that you can never again have protection."—He was right.—Without secession we never should have had it.

It is by this time rather obvious what kind of "realistic" interpretation can be made of all this mounting evidence. There would be a danger, nevertheless, in making the inference that Carey was involved in some kind of "capitalist plot" with the coal and iron men of his state to manipulate the country's problems to their combined personal advantage. Carey was always far in advance of his fellows, and he constantly assailed them for defaulting their own interests by openly flirting with free trade. The very least that can be said for Carey in this connection is that he remained unshaken during the many periods when it appeared to his fellows that they had a temporary advantage in scaling duties downward. James M. Cooper, Chair-

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man of the Committee of Invitation of the Iron and Steel Manufacturers of Pittsburgh, wrote Carey, March 29, 1865, about the difficulties of holding the protectionist ranks firm: There is a certain sluggishness of inertia about our Iron Men . . . for which it is difficult to account. The "pinch" is proving tighter however and when howling time comes, the most noisy and clamorous for relief will be those who are least disposed to put their shoulders to the wheel now.

And Cooper wrote Carey on January 14, 1868, of the difficulties of collecting a mere two hundred dollars for the distribution of Carey's propaganda: Mr. Morrell some time since requested me to collect from our Iron Men $200 to send you towards the circulation of your 13 letters to Hon. Henry Wilson, showing up the faithlessness of N e w England to the Doctrine of Protection to American I n d u s t r y . . . . I greatly fear however that the disaffection from the same cause viz. Competition, is extending itself, and that our own Iron Men are not free from its infection.—There is no other explanation of their extreme indifference and reluctance to subscribe money to further the cause.

Cooper went on to say that after several weeks delay he had gotten one hundred dollars from six "Iron Men," to which he had added fifty dollars of his own for the distribution of the pamphlet. But some others did a better job of peddling his pamphlets. The most notable, perhaps, was "Pig Iron" Kelley—William D. Kelley (1814-90), Carey's chief mouthpiece in Congress, who had earned his nickname by his untiring efforts to raise the duty on iron by proposing amendment after amendment to prevailing tariff rates. A former Philadelphia judge, he had once been a free-trader, but by 1866 was recognized as the leader of the protectionists in Congress. Long a Carey confidant and a regular attendant at the Vespers, his ideas on greenbacks,

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money, and specie payments, as well as the tariff, were exact replicas of Carey's. Reelected fourteen times to Congress and serving for twenty years on the Committee on Ways and Means, he worked long and efficiently for his mentor and the manufacturers of Pennsylvania. In his letters to Carey, Kelley made constant requests for bundles of his protectionist pamphlets which he, Kelley, was actively distributing among his fellow Congressmen, all the while assuring the author that they were "in active request." And Kelley, like Carey, was not a man to overlook a single promotion opportunity: You may have observed that Frederick Douglass, hitherto considered a free-trader has brought his newspaper out in favor of protection. It is destined to be a great power among the colored people of the South, and I have therefore suggested to Mr. Wharton [Joseph Wharton, Philadelphia ironmaster, protectionist, frequent visitors at the "Vespers," and founder of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania] the propriety of opening correspondence with Mr. Douglass, and if need be, contributing a small sum of money to aid him in forcing his paper into southern circulation.

The quotation is from Kelley's letter to Carey, dated January 15, 1871. Carey never flagged in his promotion of the tariff and used whatever help came to hand. Strangely enough, his personal relationship with Simon Cameron remained cordial at the same time that he freely expressed his detestation of the man. He had even gone so far as to accuse Cameron of being a crook and devoid of honor, to Lincoln, in a vain attempt to dissuade Lincoln from taking Cameron into his Cabinet. On May 8, 1872, the then Senator Cameron wrote to Carey from Washington: I am very much obliged to you for remembering me in connection with your proposed order for Rudesheimer, and beg you to

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order for me a half dozen of it. When it comes to hand I promise to drink your health, and that in a bumper, whenever I take a drink of that very superior tipple. Yesterday's work in the House was a very damaging one for the Free Traders. If any trick will enable them to galvanize the corpse of their bill it will be done; but the majority of twenty in favor of taking the head off the monster gives me hope for its complete destruction.

Carey's correspondence is most certainly revealing. What it reveals, however, is at least partly a reflection of the eye of the observer. This problem of imputation of motives will receive more extended treatment in the final chapter. For the present, it will suffice to say that the weight of the evidence not only clearly supports the contention that the boundary lines of Pennsylvania formed the foundation of Carey's system, but also that it was fashioned, in some indeterminate extent, by his personal economic interests. One of the heaviest costs in the manufacture of iron was coal, and Carey held large investments in Pennsylvania coal fields.

5

Infl uence

of Carey's influence finds no ready answer because the further question is then raised, what should it have been? N o universal measuring rod exists which can be applied. It has been said of art that any production must be judged in terms of what the artist attempts to accomplish. Using this criterion, it might be said that Carey's mission was a failure, since he tried to devise an entire system of thought, a system which, as an entity, was already forgotten with the turn of the century. Even an ardent discipleship could not keep it alive. On the other hand, while there is no evidence that Carey exerted any appreciable influence on the nineteenth-century giants of American sociology—Ward, Sumner, Ross, Cooley, Small, and Giddings—his formulations on the division of labor found their way, albeit in an indeterminate fashion, permanently into the literature through the work of the Frenchman, Durkheim. And as will be indicated, phases of his work continue to receive serious attention from present-day sociologists. Carey's main influence, of course, stemmed from his work in publicity and lobbying, vineyards in which he labored mightily. So much space has already been devoted to these activities of his that a mere summary statement will be appended here. Unfortunately for Carey's hopes in posterity, it was for these activities that he was for the most part to be remembered, while his theoretical social science, of which he T H E QUESTION

expected so much, received relatively scant attention. 172

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The Carey "School." A small group of Carey's personal friends and disciples, as determined as their mentor, took over his protectionist argument, and incorporated much of the buttressing theory. These men included Robert Ellis Thompson (Political Economy, 1875), E. Peshine Smith (Principles of Political Economy, 1853 and 1872), Stephen Colwell (The Ways and Means of Payment, 1859), and William Elder (Questions of the Day, Economical and Social, 1870).1 Of all these men, only Thompson was an academician, and he was the most precise in following exactly in the master's footsteps. As a group, however, they had ceased reverberating Carey's note of utopianism; they were somewhat more reconciled to the socioeconomic realities of their time. And there were several minor points of doctrinal deviation. Smith, like Sumner (and unlike Carey), insisted on keeping science and ethics separate. Colwell has been described by many as a sort of Christian Socialist, because, unlike Carey, he rebelled emotionally at what he felt to be some of the injustices of his own era. At one time, he declared, "Political economy, strictly so called, is as much opposed to the spirit of Christianity as it is antagonistic to socialism; or, in other words, there is far more in common between socialism and Christianity than there is between the latter and political economy."2 Otherwise, he was "sound," Carey said: Between us, however, there has never been any essential difference, and while it has been among the highest gratifications of my life, it has not been least of the assurances that have sustained me in my course of specialty of labor, that his views of social and economic 1 Bernard and Bernard, op. cit. See Chapters XXX-XXXII, pp. 424-57, for a more adequate and complete discussion of Carey's followers. The works of these disciples, cited above, are only representative of their several contributions. 2 Henry C. Carey, A Memoir of Stephen Colwell: Read before the American Philosophical Society, Friday, November 17, 1871, quoted on p. 24.

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theory have so nearly coincided with those which I had been led to form. 3

Colwell placed his main hope in the tariff for preventing labor from becoming a "merely marketable commodity." Of the entire group, Elder was perhaps the most qualified Carey follower, as the criticisms contained in his Memoir of Carey, cited above, indicated. As the Bernards have pointed out, he managed to free himself from the notion that mere legislation could be trusted to usher in a "harmony of interests." He viewed life in the society of his time as a warfare of interests, insisted that men must cooperate, must cease "lawless competition," and must actively work together to achieve a harmony of interests—the tariff to be merely one means to this end. Interestingly enough, with the possible exception of Thompson, the entire group was personally beholden to Carey. E. Peshine Smith had secured an important post in the office of Secretary of State Seward, largely through Carey's intervention. As for the others: Proposed by Carey and supported by the Pennsylvania Congressmen, Colwell was made a member of the all-important three-man commission set up by Congress in March 1865, to inquire and report on the best way of raising by taxation such additional funds as the government might require. The chairman was Carey's disciple, Wells. At the same time, through Carey's aid, another of his ardent disciples, William Elder . . . was made Statistician of the Treasury. H e had already informed the country that its great prosperity was due to the effect of the tariff and the gold premiums in keeping out foreign goods. 4

But of the entire group it was Thompson who was Carey's most diligent follower and he, more than any other, strove to «Ibid.,p. 4. Dorfman, op. cit., II, 975.

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force Carey into accepted academic circles.® Seven years before Sumner's "pioneer" course of a sociological nature was offered at Yale, Robert Ellis Thompson in 1869 was offering "Social Science (Carey)" at the University of Pennsylvania, in Carey's home city. Apparently a similar course was entitled "Social Science (Carey and Lectures)" in 1872-73, then being given as part of the English requirement. In 1874-75, the description was again changed, this time to "Social Science, Compositions and Original Declamations." In 1878-79, the course was offered independently of the English Department. Bossard avers that on the basis of his researches the University of Pennsylvania must in this country be given "priority both in the inauguration of a course in social science and in the creation of a professorship of social science." In 1874, Thompson was made the first professor of social science in the United States. The statement has been made that Carey never received an invitation to teach in the university in his home city. What significance this fact has, if true, at this date is impossible to judge. There certainly is no record that he ever received any such invitation, and there is no way of knowing what his reaction would have been had this been the case. Yet one thing is certain: his influence on the University of Pennsylvania could have been little greater had he been a permanent member of its faculty. Joseph Wharton, Pennsylvania ironmaster and founder of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, was also a Carey disciple and regular attendant of the Vespers. On September 16, 1869, he wrote to Carey: I have read with great interest and approbation the printed letter 6 What followis is adapted from James H . S. Bossard's excellent summary and assessment of Thompson: "Robert Ellis Thompson—Pioneer Professor in Social Science."

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you kindly sent to me, which states most forcibly most important truths. It must have occurred to you, as it has to me, that the contraction and resumption policy was probably enough directly urged upon McCulloch and his advisers by our English enemies. . . . John Fritz, the manager of our Bethlehem Iron Co., has just returned from a trip to Europe. He gave me yesterday a full account of his experience among the English iron masters, of their undisguised hostility to our nation and their bitter chafing at our tariff fortifications which they hope to see overthrown next winter.

Besides being a businessman and philanthropist, Joseph Wharton contributed occasional articles to several magazines. These were, for the most part, accurate reflections of the Carey doctrine in its various manifestations. In one of them, 6 for example, he attributed the "desperate" strikes and trade-unions of Great Britain to free trade, and the low price of pig iron in this country to protection. He attacked England vehemently for forcing the areas she dominated into agriculture alone, without the opportunity of developing trade and industry, and continued: That our progress might have been yet greater is most true, for our policy has vacillated in the degree of protection established at different periods, and in a similar degree has our growth been accelerated or retarded, as has been sufficiently demonstrated by Henry C. Carey. 7

The agreement which Wharton signed with the trustees of the University at the time of the founding of the Wharton School is most interesting since it provided for the establishment of professorships in specific fields, along with definite statements as to the policies to be promulgated in taxation and industry. For example: 6 "National Self-Protection," (Philadelphia: American Iron and Steel Association, 1875, 37 pp. Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly. 11bid., pp. 33-34.

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( g ) T h e necessity for each nation to care for its own, and to maintain by all suitable means its industrial and financial independence; no apologetic or merely defensive style of instruction must be tolerated upon this point, but the right and duty of national self-protection must be firmly asserted and demonstrated. 8 It need hardly be added that the present-day faculty of the W h a r t o n School is confined by no such ideological strait jacket. T h e r e was yet another m a n w h o continued the Carey tradition at the University of Pennsylvania—the economist, Simon Patten. W i t h Carey, Patten claimed that the plots of ground first tilled are not the best, and that protection should foster the cultivation of the m o r e fertile land; that with progress social inequalities tend to diminish; and that with a firm high tariff policy, America's future is cause for optimism. W h i l e Patten himself declared his debt to Carey, he consistently insisted that the G e r m a n economists had, in the main, influenced his thinking. T h e following passage is typical: It was natural that the first reaction against the classical economists should be inductive in form. T h e better knowledge of the laws of agricultural production which his residence in a new country gave him, enabled Carey to cast a doubt upon these physical laws which the classical school used as the basis of their reasoning. It was no longer possible to defend a system of political economy that determined the productive power of a society, and the income of its members, solely by making deductions from the laws of rent, and of diminishing returns. T h e inductive and historical work of the German economists was of far greater importance, because it brought to light a mass of facts relating to the progress of society, and the evolution of man. T h e result of these inductive and historical studies changed the character of political economy and reversed the order in which it is studied. It became less physical and more subjective in its character, and instead of proceeding from nature to man, it 8

Agreement: Joseph Wharton and The Trustees o/ the University of Pennsylvania.

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became evident that economists must begin with the study of man and end with a study of the relation of man to nature. 9

Philosophically, Patten deviated considerably from Carey. He had no praise for individual competition within national boundaries, as Carey had. He saw his country at the threshold of an economy of abundance which could be achieved by governmental control of "chaotic competition" and unrestrained individualism, although he was not a socialist and did not provide a blueprint for the society which he envisioned as much more "planned" than did Carey. There was even a New Deal flavor in his insistence that we no longer live in an age of pain and deficit, and that the rewards of saving have lost their justification since abstinence is no longer necessary. Academic circles. Carey's academic influence during his own lifetime was by no means limited to the university of his home city. Elias Peissner, teacher of political economy at Union College, Schenectady, New York, taught the Carey doctrine from 1855 to 1861. Horace Mann, writing to Carey from Antioch College on May 5, 1856, inquired if the McKean abridgement of his main work was suitable as a college text, stating that, above all, he was looking for a book which would show the connection between education and morals on the one hand, and rent and profits on the other. Whether Mann adopted Carey's book is not known to the present writer, but it seems probable in view of the fact that Mann had made the stipulation which Carey's work amply fulfilled. Henry Fowler, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Rochester, on January 27, 1857, requested a contribution of Carey's works for the local library. Carey received eighteen letters from C. A. Eggert, Instructor in Political Economy at the State University of Iowa, all of as purple a hue 9

Simon N. Patten, The Theory of Dynamic

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as this excerpt from a letter of November 10, 1866: "You remember Goethe perhaps in this also, that it will take 50 years before any of your great productions will be fully appreciated by your countrymen!" At least from 1866 to 1870, Eggert was using the Principles of Social Science as a text in his classes. Carey enjoyed quite a vogue at Princeton College (as it was then named). His most enthusiastic admirer there was J. H. Mcllvaine, teacher of political economy, who wrote him April 10, 1867, "Pardon me if I say that I fully believe all future ages will hold you as the true founder of the science of political economy." Mcllvaine adopted the abridgement of his Principles for class use; it was also used by two other Princeton professors, M. B. Hope and William A. Ingham. On December 14, 1864, Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institute wrote him that his Principles of Political Economy was one of the works adopted by the Board of Naval Science to be used by the students "and from which questions may be asked at the final examination." And George F. Magoun, of Iowa College, who stated that he had long taught "Mr. Carey's views," desired to know of H. C. Baird, in a letter of March 8, 1870, if there were a bust of Carey which could be secured for the College Library, to represent Political Economy—as Cicero represented Latin, and Shakespeare, English Literature. Carey himself replied to his letter: he did not have one, but should he ever sit for one he would be happy to comply with the request. Closer home, the Agricultural College of Boston University (at Amherst) listed in 1875 a course in social science based on the writings of Carey, Bastiat, Perry, and Walker.10 "Nor was the economic phase of Social Science lacking at Harvard. In 1876, Carey's Social Science (McKean's condensation) was one 10

Bernard and Bernard, op. cit., p. 648.

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of the texts used in Advanced Political Economy." Further investigation would unquestionably disclose other institutions which gave Carey a hearing. The fact that by 1888 the McKean abridgement of his main work had gone into at least eight editions argues for its fairly widespread use as a textbook. But there is no evidence that with the turn of the century Carey was being taught as more than one figure in the history of social science. Europe. As has already been stated, Carey's main work was translated into several European languages. He also had an extensive personal following among European scholars. Among those in France were M. Fontenay, Benjamin Rampel, and A. Clapier. Bastiat evidently borrowed some of Carey's ideas for his famed Harmonies Economiques, 1850 and 1851, further reference to which is made below. In Italy, Ferrara, the translator of the Principles of Social Science into Italian, was a wholehearted disciple who passionately defended Carey in the Bastiat controversy. In England, Judge Byles (Sophisms of Free Trade, 1847; American ed., 1872), leaned heavily on Carey for his formulations. In Germany, Dr. Dühring of the University of Berlin, an old friend who was to be remembered in Carey's will, strove to make Carey known. He wrote several books, among which were Carey's Umwälzung der Volkswirtschaftslehre und Socialwissenschaft (1865), and Die Ver\leinerer Carey's und die Krisis Nationalökonomie (1867). Another follower of Carey in Germany, who also promulgated his views in works in economics, was Schultze-Delitzsch, the great antagonist of socialism and promoter of cooperation.11 Professor Berg of the University of Upsala, a correspondent of 11 T h e statement of Carey's influence in Europe is largely adapted from Robert Ellis Thompson's Political Economy.

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Carey's who entertained him during his visits to Europe, made Carey's work known in Sweden. The evidence will not support the claim, however, that Carey's direct influence in Europe was of any considerable consequence. Even Elder12 admits that Carey would have been virtually unknown in Europe had it not been for the famed Carey-Bastiat controversy, and those writers in Europe at midcentury, particularly the Germans, who were seeking a theoretical support for national protective policies turned to Carey after having incorporated Bastiat's formulations in their own work. On the other hand, Bastiat did owe an unacknowledged debt to Carey; how great this was is impossible to measure. One Carey disciple, Rufus W. Griswold, accuses Bastiat of outright plagiarism.13 Professor Ferrara, the Italian translator of Carey and editor of the Biblioteca dell' Economista, said in this connection that Bastiat had lifted his key ideas from Carey.14 Thompson throws a little light on the issue by citing Bastiat's reply to the charge of plagiarism: M. Bastiat employed not only Mr. Carey's doctrines, but his facts, arguments, and even his figures and illustrations. But he made no acknowledgment of the American author; on the contrary, he set out by claiming absolute originality, and by asserting that his views were opposed to those of "all other economists, without exception." Mr. Carey very promptly called public attention to this literary procedure, and extorted from M. Bastiat the concession that "that grand and consoling cause, the accord of the interests of all classes, is more indebted to no one than to Mr. Carey. He has signalized and proved it from a very great number of differing points of view, in a manner 12

William Elder, "Henry C. Carey." "Henry C. Carey: T h e Apostle of the American School of Political Economy," p. 83, footnote. S. Austin Allibone, ed., A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, I, 339. 13

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to leave no doubt remaining about the general law. Mr. Carey complains that I have not cited him; it is perhaps a wrong on my part, but it was not an intentional wrong. Mr. Carey has been able to open up new vistas to me, to furnish me with arguments, but he has not revealed any principles to me." 15

On the other hand, Perry claims that Bastiat's main debt is to Condillac and the physiocrats, and that while Bastiat profited from some of Carey's ideas that there is more than enough that is distinctive in "the two authors to justify the claim of each to originality and merit." 16 By summarizing this controversy in terms of demonstrable fact: Bastiat, by his own belated admission, was clearly, if indeterminately, indebted to Carey for several of his key ideas; and also, that interest in Carey in Europe was quickened by the controversy—but by that date Carey was already known in Europe, via Bastiat. The American Social Science Association. The developing field of social science, as distinct from political economy, in both Europe and America had consciously attempted, down to the turn of the century, to reconcile scientific method with an essentially social reform purpose. In 1857, in England, Lord Brougham had been active in establishing the "National Association for the Promotion of Social Science," and the separate fields of investigation had been denominated as law amendment, education, prevention and repression of crime, public health, and social economy. The first local group of any importance in America was the New York one, which on October 9, 1862 founded the "Society for the Advancement of Social Science." After three years of preliminary work, the "American Association of Social Science" was founded October 4, 1865. The first issue of its journal, the Journal of Social Science: 15 16

Thompson, "Henry Charles Carey," pp. 820-21. Arthur Latham Perry, Political Economy, p. 82.

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Containing the Transactions of the American Association, appeared in June, 1869, and continued publication until 1907. The American Association's five departments of investigation were : education, health, finance, jurisprudence, and social economy.17 According to the Bernards, the American Association had been founded by conservatives who had seen earlier Utopian dreams dissolve in the face of a dynamic industrialism, and who tended to accept the social system largely as they found it. It was not a popular movement, but was engineered consciously from the top by professional workers and philanthropically inclined businessmen. But the Association was short-lived because it incorporated too many specific fields which were rapidly becoming highly specialized, and at the same time the combined scientific and reform interest was tending to polarize around two distinct groups. The American Economic Association was the first to split off from the original body; from the former, in turn, the American Political Science Association split off and, in 1905, the American Sociological Society. As for the original national body, it had its origin in a local society, and to a local society it returned: One of these local associations was the Philadelphia Social Science Association. In 1891 it came under the patronage of the University of Pennsylvania as the Philadelphia Academy of Political and Social Science and soon eclipsed the parent organization altogether, and it remains to this day a prosperous organization under the name of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. This association, organized November 17, 1869, was by all odds the most important of the local organizations . . . The Philadelphia Social Science Association was originally instituted as a local branch of the American Association for the Advancement of Social Science. . . . 18 17 18

Adapted from Henry Villard, "Historical Sketch of Social Science." Bernard and Bernard, op. cit., p. 551.

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When the original Association was disbanded in 1909, it was taken over by the "American Academy." Strangely enough, Carey was never an active member of either the local or national association, although he was elected an "honorary member" of the American Social Science Association in 1865. He did not contribute to the pages of the Journal, nor are any references to him to be found there, except in those issues which listed the total membership. The reason for Carey's failure to become an active part of the original association can only be surmised. It had a single emphasis—social reform on the periphery of the centers of control and power in American society—the articles appearing in the Journal dealt with protection of animals, deaf mutes, reformation of prisoners, the duty of the states toward the insane poor, art schools, and civil service reform. With no real evidence, then, we may advance the tentative hypothesis that Carey took no active part in the association or its Journal because he did not regard them as proper media for the promotion of his reform measures. This seems quite likely in view of the fact that even though he was an old man at this time, he continued to write pamphlets and contribute to other newspapers and magazines. Only two men directly connected with him, Horace Greeley and Joseph Wharton, contributed to the Journal. Wharton's sole piece to appear here is of particular interest, since it indicates that the Journal policy did not preclude the acceptance of articles advocating protection: Does the "laissez faire" or let alone doctrine which some sociologists insist upon as the law of nature, and as the correct rule for international trade, inculcate a really sound policy for the guidance of nations in their dealings with each other? 19

Modern sociology. The American giants of sociology of the 19

Joseph Wharton, "International Industrial Competition," p. 51.

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later nineteenth century—Ward, Sumner, Giddings, Ross, Small, and Cooley—all wrote during Carey's lifetime, but they were all much younger than he and, in terms of the speed with which American society was undergoing change, must be regarded as members of the generation which followed his. They paid him little heed. The writings of Ward contain one reference; a statement that Carey, along with Saint-Simon, Bastiat, and Mill, had formulated the doctrine of historical determinism, and aided in the undermining of the doctrine of free will.20 Small merely lists Carey among a series of writers who prove the immutability and tenacity of the "classical conceptions."21 It might reasonably be expected that of the entire group the man who expended almost as much energy attacking protectionism as Carey did in defending it, Sumner, would have quoted Carey if for no other reason than to refute him, but such was not the case. His little polemical treatise22 fails to mention Carey, although Sumner does cite the establishment of the Wharton School as a horrible example of the extent to which deluded protectionists are willing to compound their errors. Why did Carey fail to influence these men? Each of them was a far better system builder than he, so it is not surprising that his general frame of reference received short shrift. It might be argued that all of his theoretical formulations were meant to subserve his monolithic reform purpose, and that with the arrival of the final quarter of the nineteenth century it was all too evident that whatever else protectionism could or could not perform, it would not function alone to usher in a reconstruction of the social order, which all of these men, in one way or another, were attempting to promote. 20 21 22

Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 56. Albion W . Small, Origins of Sociology, p. 146. William G. Sumner, Protectionism.

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Furthermore, as a unit Carey's theories were too thin to serve as a model. There was no developed conception of human nature, no rigorous methodology, no sophisticated treatment of government or social classes, little history, and a rudimentary individual and group psychology which was supposed to shift with every minor change in tariff policy. There was a great deal that was valuable in Carey, and the work of all of them, particularly Cooley, conceivably could have profited from a careful perusal of his books; but what was valuable would have had to be rigorously culled from a horde of useless formulation, and by the time they were writing their main works most of what was valuable in Carey was already incorporated in the literature. And while some of Carey's ideas were compatible with some ideas held by each of them, other of his ideas were alien to each and all. Carey was indeterminately opposed to social Darwinism, opposing it in principle and advocating governmental intervention in international trade, but he, in fact, approved of a dog-eat-dog individual competition within national boundaries. While Sumner had transferred Darwinism to the human-social realm, he remained, more consistently than Carey, a free-trader. And the other men had even less in common with Carey. Ward favored a completely planned social order, and Ward, Cooley, and Ross stated their opposition to uncontrolled individualism. Although all of them, including Small and Giddings—like Carey—were convinced of the essential ultimate harmony of all interests, including class interests, they were—unlike Carey—also convinced that it had not as yet been achieved; and, with the possible exception of Sumner, all were convinced that only through a total corporate social effort could it be achieved. In other words, their conception of what American democracy could and should become was so tem-

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pered by the dynamics of an emerging complex social order, around the turn of the century, that it would have been sheer folly to place hope in the automatic adjustment of that total social order to the shifting vagaries of a single type of legislation, such as the protective tariff. Unlike Carey, they had turned to the study of group relations, as such, to chart the course toward a reformed future, so that Carey had little to say that the succeeding generation of sociologists were willing to heed. And only a reader who was as angrily partisan as Carey himself could react to his style of presentation with anything other than the feeling that here is a humorless, dogmatic, arrogant tub-thumper. His style was not only prolix, but also designed to arouse the ire of anyone trained to approach a new idea as something to be examined and weighed. Carey must have had thousands of readers who reacted to him as did Newcomb: About 1862 or 1863 President Thomas Hill, of Harvard University, paid a visit to Washington . . . he told me that in a public lecture at Philadelphia, a few evenings before, he had informed his hearers that they had amongst them one of the greatest philosophers of the time, Henry C. Carey. He spoke of his works in such enthusiastic terms . . . that I lost no time in carefully reading Carey's "Principles of Social Science." The result was much like a slap in the face. With every possible predisposition to look favorably on its teachings, I was unable to find anything in them but the prejudiced judgments of a one-sided thinker, fond of brilliant general propositions which really had nothing serious to rest upon either in fact or reason.23

However deplorable it may be, the widespread acceptance of any piece of scientific writing designed for general distribution depends as much upon form of presentation as inherent validity. Aldous Huxley has claimed that Bernard Shaw came 23

Simon Newcomb, The Reminiscences of an Astronomer, pp. 400-401.

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to believe that acquired characteristics are transmitted through heredity because Lamarck wrote so much more felicitously than any of his opponents. The handicaps of a faulty style and the habit of approaching one's readers with a verbal blackjack can be compensated for, in writing of this kind, only by associating one's name with a key idea or concept which is revolutionary and for which the present social situation is receptive. Carey had the misfortune to become identified with an idea that already had maqy adherents at a time when social receptivity, at least in intellectual circles, was already on the wane. Carey's name, nevertheless, has by no means disappeared from the literature. Gillette points out that the Census Report of 1860 contained a statement which was a virtual replica of Carey's law of migration, to the effect that urban centers attract population in direct ratio to their mass and in inverse ratio to the distance.24 Much of Carey's work fits well into the scheme of values presented by most modern writers of books on social problems; such ideas, for example, as that social science will lead to man's ultimate control of the forces of nature, that social problems are man-made and therefore amenable to correction by man, and that reform should take place "slowly and gently." In fact, Phelps so quotes Carey, with evident approval.25 Gunnar Myrdal refers to Carey's statistics on the number of Negroes imported into the United States (in Carey's Slave Trade, 1853), modified by the Bureau of Census, as the best estimate available.28 And as was stated above, it is not at all improbable that sociology in the future may pay a great deal more attention to 24 26 26

John M. Gillette, Rural Sociology, p. 208. Harold A. Phelps, Contemporary Social Problems, p. 783. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, I, 118.

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Carey than it has in the past. One of the ways in which such a trend might develop is adumbrated by Eubank, who complains that modern sociology has not as yet entered the third logical stage of a developing science: the organization of its concepts into a definite and logical system whereby the various parts are correlated into a consistent whole. He continues: The concept of social evolution as a philosophical idea is implicit in Comte, whose "hierarchy of the sciences" was also a hierarchy of phenomena. One of its earliest clear and explicit expressions is by H. C. Carey, whose three volume Principles of Social Science (1858) is based upon the postulate stated in the first chapter, that "there is but one system of laws for the government of all matter, whether existing in the form of a piece of coal, a tree, a horse, or a man" (Vol. I, p. 39), and that "the laws of physical science are equally those of social science" (p. 40) , 27

If a Carey vogue should develop in the future, however, it would much more likely arise from the conjuncture of his social philosophy with social-political developments of that future, rather than from a return to his contradictory pronouncements on the relationship between the social and physical sciences. Levermore predicted, sixty years ago, that if protectionism ever leads to socialism in the United States, Carey will be hailed as a prophet.28 If present-day trends continue in the direction of collectivism, Lester F. Ward may likewise be due for revival. Publicity and legislation. It was as pamphleteer, editorial writer, and lobbyist for protectionism, that Carey exerted his greatest influence. John L. Hayes, of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, in his letter to Carey of September 25, 1871, probably assessed Carey's mission to his own generation 2 T E a r l e E. Eubank, " T h e Conceptual Approach to Sociology," in Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker, Contemporary Social Theory, p. 54. 2 8 Charles H. Levermore, "Henry C. Carey and His Social System."

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more authoritatively than he realized. He told Carey not to brood over his expressed conviction of failure to reach the masses with his books. W h a t single paragraph has done more in our time than your resolution for protection at the convention, which nominated Lincoln and laid out the protective policy of the last decade? . . . If the masses do not buy your books, all the thinkers of the protective school read them, and recognize you as their master.

It is impossible to measure accurately the effects of Carey's endeavors as a propagandist for protection, since others were similarly engaged, and socio-economic events, particularly Southern secession, paved the way for its ultimate triumph in the Morrill tariff. Levermore has certainly not minimized his effectiveness in this field: Measured by results, the Carey school, and not its opponents, has achieved success in the United States. F o r thirty years, the stone which the builders rejected has been the head of the corner. Carey and his friends never captured our colleges; but, for a generation, they have dominated five-sevenths of the newspaper offices, a pulpit far more influential than the professorial chair. T h e arguments to which Carey gave form and eloquence are in the mouths of more than half the business men and farmers of our country; and, in the last Presidential campaign, the Republican party re-affirmed the extremest principles of the Carey school, including even the rancor towards England, with a violence and absoluteness that would probably have surprised Carey himself. 29

And regarding the passage of the Morrill tariff, a Philadelphia paper editorialized at the time, ". . . but for the untiring pen of Henry C. Carey, and his great personal influence, we doubt very much whether the present success would not have been postponed several years."30 One thing is certain, whatever 29 30

Ibid., pp. 572-73. Philadelphia North American, February 28, 1861.

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effect publicity had in fostering the ultimate and complete triumph of protectionism, this can be safely attributed to Henry Carey more than to any other single man. Carey's influence with legislatures was not limited to his considerable activity in applying personal lobby pressure. He freely supplied legislators and officials with facts and generalizations for use in speeches, publications, and drafting legislation. Salmon P. Chase wrote frequently, requesting from Carey statistics and articles on political science for his own use. On September 28, 1879, Governor W. Dennison, of Ohio, requested material from Carey to aid him in preparing some protectionist speeches. Edward Joy Morris (1815-1912), Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, frequently cited Carey's work in his speeches attacking the "low tariff," as his letter to Carey of April 5,1858, indicates. The speech of James Meacham, of Vermont, on the modification of the tariff, 81 cited extensive quotations from Carey's works to prove that periods of prosperity and high tariff duties have been correlated historically. Carey even had a considerable vogue among German legislators, during that period when they were building a nationaleconomic policy: In a short essay, Baron William von Kardoff-Wabnitz, a member of the Imperial German Parliament, sets forth his reasons for advocating Mr. Carey's theories, and urges their adoption in the practical working of trade, finance, and tariff, instead of the present fashion of English free-trade doctrines. H e endorses Carey's laws of national wealth as applicable to the existing state of affairs in Germany, and urges the study of Carey's works, instancing the fact of his own conversion f r o m free trade to protection, as one of the first fruits of reading Carey's Social Science.32 31 This speech was reprinted in pamphlet form, a copy of which is to be found in the Edward C. Gardiner Collection, Pennsylvania Historical Society. 32 J. G. R. "Henry C. Carey in Germany," p. 894.

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The translated title of von Kardoii-Wabnitz' essay is, "Against the Current! A Review of the Tariff Policy of the German Empire in the Light of Carey's Discoveries." And in it he cites the frequent quotations drawn by German legislators from Carey's writings. Carey's more typical relationship with legislators, however, was much more direct than through the medium of his writings; it was as personal lobbyist that they knew him best. On January 1, 1862, Truman Smith wrote him from Washington, "The coal question was yesterday settled in the Senate in conformity with your wishes. The duty is 3l/2 $ per ton. I think you did a good work while here and that you are entitled to thanks of all in this great interest."

6

Place in Intellectual History

CAREY'S LIFE HISTORY

cannot easily be squeezed into a summary

formula. I suspect that other assemblers of extensive biographical materials have experienced a similar hesitancy to write a single definitive statement since it is much easier to generalize about man in the abstract than one man in particular. In the case of Carey, however, there would appear to be unusual difficulties in seeking the summary formula. H e was a determined, headstrong, impulsive partisan, whose writings and activities are so elusive in logical, moral, or ideational consistency that, as is indicated below, various previous attempts to assess the man have selected valid aspects of his character to f o r m general statements which stand poles apart. Carey's historical mission continues to excite extreme reaction. In essence, he viewed himself as a doughty warrior almost singlehandedly holding the bridge against the deterministic doctrines spreading to America f r o m Europe which, f r o m his point of view, were designed to destroy the dignity of man. Others accepted his evaluation at its face value: The Calvinistic conception of total depravity would not have been more repulsive if it had stopped short of the Christian doctrine of regeneration than was the Malthusian theory of excessive population and the generally accepted belief that social science was the philosophy of wealth. Henry Carey's place in history will be as the Reformer of these old misconceptions. He showed that the world is large enough for its children, that Nature is helpful, and that the object of government is the promotion of the welfare of mankind. 193

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He gave mankind a new hope, by showing a scientific basis for the policy of national development . . -1

And Gabriel, today, has stated his acceptance of this point of view.2 To Gabriel, the critical intellectual issue of Carey's day was the controversy over free will versus determinism. The latter stemmed from the waning Calvinistic tradition, which gained a new lease on life with Melville's naturalistic determinism, and was again revived when the economic doctrines of Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill crossed the Atlantic. Carey, as interpreted by Gabriel, becomes an exemplar of the three predominant articles of democratic faith which, in midcentury, stood unalterably opposed to all determinisms. The first of these: the free individual is the master of his own destiny. Carey had defined social science as the discipline which fosters association and individualism. Like Emerson, Carey viewed liberty as progress' handmaiden. Like Mathew Carey, he proposed that the state be used as an instrument for the creation of a better society. When measured by the standards of the twentieth century, their ideas of national planning were crude and immature. But they grasped the principle and introduced it into the American thought stream. They were the first to formulate the theory of the positive State.3

Gabriel fails to recognize, however, that there was a logical discrepancy in Carey's advocacy of individualism—the uncompromising promoter of tariff duties overlooked the value connection between free trade and individualism in his later writings. This may be explained by the fact that to Carey free trade became synonymous with British determination to establish 1

"Champions of Protection—Henry Charles Carey, L.L.D.," p. 1. Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Course of American Thought. 3 Ibid., p. 86. 2

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monopolies in dominated areas. There is no justification, nevertheless, for Gabriel's claim that Carey, like Emerson, looked forward to the time when the state should decline in importance. Throughout all his writings, Carey continued to contradict himself on the question of the state's function at that time when state intervention should have aided in the creation of a new and more complex social order. Carey, did, on the other hand, remain convinced that protective tariffs for all nations would "equalize the condition of man throughout the world." The second article of democratic faith of the period, enumerated by Gabriel, is the mission of America. The conviction that the new world held aloft a torch which served to guide the faltering steps of the old, Carey shared with most of his literate contemporaries; indeed, that conviction remains today a cardinal tenet of American faith. Carey's principle of association, when applied to international affairs, required that each nation permit and encourage the fullest possible economic evolution on the part of its neighbors. Economic well-being is the foundation of moral advance. Carey looked forward to Utopia. Economic national planning, he said, "we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was the elevating while equalizing the condition of men throughout the world. Such is the true mission of the United States . . ." 4

The third one of these was religion. The Deism of the Revolution was dead. "The popular symbol of social stability for this generation was not, as in our day, the Constitution . . . or the Supreme Court, but was rather the village church whose spire pointed significantly heavenward." 5 To Carey, like Emerson, civilization depended upon morality. The frank supernat4 5

Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 13.

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uralism of the period is nowhere better reflected than in Carey's writings. He ultimately refuted Ricardo and Malthus on the grounds that a beneficent Being would not permit the gloomy conditions they had posited as economic laws. And yet Carey formulated his own social "laws" around the mechanistic conceptions of "molecules" and "gravitation." Gabriel again implicitly places Carey in the main stream of American thought: The harmony between science and Protestant orthodoxy in the Middle Period arose chiefly from the fact that the mechanistic concept of the universe derived from Newton's celestial mechanics did not deny any important specific assertions in the Scriptures. Newton, a devout Christian, had left voluminous writings on theological and biblical matters, and had given to his discoveries a religious interpretation.6

Parrington's approach to American thought, and incidentally to Carey, is more squarely in the modern vogue of making idea and ideology subservient to economic change: Having swept across the continent to the Pacific coast like a visitation of locusts, the frontier spirit turned back upon its course to conquer the East, infecting the new industrialism with a crude materialism, fouling the halls of Congress, despoiling the public domain, and indulging in a huge national barbecue . . . until running full tilt into science and the machine, its triumphant progress was stopped and America, rejecting individualism, began the work of standardization and mechanization. 7

And one of the chefs preparing this national barbecue was Henry Carey, but there "wasn't room for everybody" to partake of Carey's "blowsy doctrine." Carey's role is depicted as that of purveying to the more sophisticated the "seductive arguments that Horace Greeley disseminated amongst the plain people." American manufacturers are deeply in debt to Carey. * Ibid., p. 27. Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, III, 4.

7

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And yet, in qualification of these seamy imputations, Parrington points out that in his ideas on cheap money and a low interest rate, Carey made common concert with Western farmers and such dissimilar men as Peter Cooper, Thaddeus Stevens, and Wendell Phillips: Picturesque militants grown old in warfare, they were of an earlier generation, inheritors of the ideas of simpler times before production for consumption had been superseded by consumption for profit, ardent equalitarians who would not see their hopes frustrated and America became a plutocracy without a struggle. 8

In contradistinction to the two previous appraisals, Joseph Dorfman's acid imputation of Carey's motives is completely without qualification.9 Not only is every phase of his system depicted as a mere reflection of his class interests, but he is also accused of meretriciously shifting his stated principles for personal profit, as in the Camden and Amboy Railroad controversy, reviewed above in Chapter I. That Dorfman has too closely hammered together personal profit and stated principle is possible. Accusations of this kind could probably be laid at the door of every man who ever entered the lists of public controversy with his pen. On the other hand it is undoubtedly true that the connection between Carey's stated principles and his private interests was more direct and obvious than in the case of many others. One more example of the juxtaposition of stated principle and private interest will suffice. In a letter addressed to the Boston Daily Advertiser, October 21,1869, Carey rather sententiously declared, "For thirty years I have had but one objective in view, that of trying to persuade our people to enable them8

Ibid.,111,277. Dorfman, op. cit. In particular, see Vol. II, Chap. X X I X , "The Carey-Colwell School," 789-826. 9

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selves to fill the great place before the world for which the Creator had so evidently intended them—and to this I have given both life and fortune." And on July 8, 1862, Carey wrote an undesignated official of the Pennsylvania Coal Company: As [Truman Smith! has told you that as is certainly the fact, you are indebted to me for a change in the tax law that relieves you to the extent of $100,000 a year. You will, as I think, scarcely doubt of this propriety of my addressing you on the subject of the injury you have done and are doing to my friends and myself—The object of my letter being that of inquiring if some mode cannot be adopted of relieving all who are interested in cash from a continuance of the losses that have thus far resulted from the unfortunate warfare of your two companies. You would not, I am sure, be desirous of inflicting loss on one who has just rendered you an important service.

Truman Smith, on September 17, 1862, wrote Carey from Washington that the Pennsylvania Coal Company had "justly and honorably paid me for my services." He also said that he could not "consent to be the organ of communication as to any grievances which you may suppose you have sustained. . . ." Finally, Smith declared that while Carey had been a valuable ally in lobbying for the reduction of the coal tax, that it was not "all due to your interposition." Throughout his voluminous correspondence with business and political leaders of his day, Carey brought every conceivable argument and pressure to bear to foster tariff legislation, and did not hesitate to point out how this would benefit the personal fortunes of himself and his correspondents. One is fully justified in viewing his formal claim of advocating increased tariff duties at the sacrifice of personal fortune with considerable skepticism. Yet the question remains—was Gabriel's assessment of Carey's historical mission, on the one hand, correct, or were Parrington's and Dorfman's ? The question, so posed, probably has no answer, reminding one of the efforts of certain

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American psychiatrists to diagnose Hitler's "neurosis" at a distance of several thousand miles. Particularly is the attempt to assess anyone's motives a hazardous enterprise, since it takes the investigator into a shadow land of uncertain conjecture, where "we are asserting a nexus between an overt action and a purely subjective factor that cannot be exposed to any kind of direct scrutiny and that is not, as such, manifest in the action." 10 An effort to do so must, nevertheless, be made. Henri Pirenne has pointed out that while sociology may content itself with hypostasized forces and mass averages, any treatment of historical materials perforce considers unique events and evaluates individual personalities. One thing is certain: Henry Carey had not the slightest doubt of the altruistic nature of his own views, nor of the universality of his general propositions; he was not a cynical, conscious manipulator of public sentiments. Further, that to an observer there was an evident self-referent, or even class bias, in Carey's writings is, in itself, no justification for attacking him. "That everybody's views, opinions, judgments, are liable to be influenced, or even dominated, by personal feelings or interest, without any deliberate intellectual dishonesty, is notorious Psychology has almost wiped out hypocrisy." 11 Voltaire's famous dictum, to the effect that history is a pack of tricks we play on the dead, has some application here. H e meant that the social values of any given present fashions a faulty glass which will inevitably distort the past. Quite possibly a majority of modern intellectuals, living in a neo-New Deal era, regard profits as virtually indecent, are conditioned through their training to search for clashes of economic interest, and have made the search for private motives to explain 10 11

Robert M. Maclver, "The Imputation of Motives," p. 2. J. A. Hobson, Free-Thought in the Social Sciences, p. 45.

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public pronouncements quite fashionable. Carey lived in a different era. The profit-taker was performing a public service. His activities were part of a progressive harmony of material and spiritual interests. And the romantic-polar concepts of Good and Evil never shaded one into the other. Carey never suspected that his writings, public or private, would ever be used to call his motives to question. It would be difficult to call to mind any historical figure who, since the eighteenth century, surpassed Carey in his yearning for the approbation of posterity. The careful, methodical file of his correspondence, with copies of his replies attached, could hardly have been left in his estate knowingly containing items to his discredit. He had no way of knowing that future generations would adopt divergent standards for the intervention of private citizens in public affairs. And like most men of his time, he had no way of knowing that their accepted convention of proclaiming lofty principles would some day fall harsh on the ears of another generation which was to accept the convention of self-effacement—within reasonable limits, of course. And yet it is an admission of the present writer's inability to escape his own time-bound bias that the following passage in a letter to Carey from Washington Representative George W. Scranton, dated April 30, 1860, is found difficult to square with Carey's protest of writing for all mankind: We hope to get the Tariff Bill to a vote this week but possibly will not succeed in doing so till next week. When it gets into the senate we shall look for you and Dr. Elder to pay us another v i s i t . . . . Coal stocks and estates well located are improving in value and have touched the lowest points, if we can carry the Tariff Bill through, you may safely mark up your coal interests. I will sit down with you and we will join in the business and agree upon the increase percentage that we will start with.

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Still another way to view Carey's career is to distinguish between public and private morality. It is James Hayden Tuft's thesis that a wedge is driven between private morality (arising in family, neighborhood, among personal friends) and public morality (political and economic groupings) as a society moves from primary to secondary group organization. 12 The morality of kinship and local habitation is rooted in thousands of years of social experience, while that morality groping to define rights and duties within the impersonal large-scale organization of modern economic and political life is too new, insecure, and uncertain to be regarded as a definitive code. Following Niebuhr, Tufts asserts that nations, privileged classes, and proletarians as they vie for power in a series of chaotic transitions cannot be either rational or reasonable; in the inevitable struggle fcfr place in line, particular in-group needs and interests assume supreme value and thus "distort life." In brief, it was just as true in Carey's day as in our own that the discussant of largescale business and political issues found it virtually impossible to free himself from the, at least potential, charge of special pleading. A society which was splitting along several planes— into class, nationality, regional, occupational groups, to mention only a few—fashioned this dilemma, no matter how "wholistic" the approach of the observer. Thus the gentle and essentially reasonable Charles Horton Cooley, by insisting that society and the individual are one, two sides of the same coin, was inevitably led to make certain incidental judgments of capital-labor strife which some Marxist critics have leaped upon as horrible examples of "bourgeois reactionism." There is, then, nothing contradictory of what has previously been said of Carey, in the present insistence that he was an honest man, possessed of a rock-like integrity. Each unique 12

America's Social Morality.

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individual comprises a multitude of facets; the observer focuses a cone of light upon one segment of a revolving globe, and as the globe moves, one part will reflect that light while another remains dark. Abraham Lincoln has been canonized by his countrymen, and yet, if certain facets of his character be viewed as an isolated unit in the larger unity, he stands revealed as a double-talking, power-driven, slick politician. 13 As Lincoln Steffens has attested, the ethics of politics and business are different. If it be assumed that a man such as President Lincoln was incapable of doing some of the things Carey did, Henry Carey, in turn, was incapable of doing certain things Lincoln was forced to do to maintain his position. When Governor Curtin (Pennsylvania) and his followers remonstrated with Lincoln in his announced intention of making a place for General Cameron in his Cabinet, Lincoln had the unhappy task of attempting to placate both factions. He sought advice. Carey wrote him, January 7, 1861: H a v i n g heard from Thos. Dudley [Republican State Chairman for N e w Jersey] that you desire to hear from me in relation to the appointment of General Cameron to a place in your cabinet . . . there exists throughout the State an almost universal belief that his fortune has been acquired by means that are forbidden to the man of honor & the gentleman. There stands on the records of the courts, and but a very few years old, charges that would, if proved, involve the commission of serious crime. . . . Most of our well-disposed fellow citizens . . . look upon him as the very incarnation of corruption. . . . His appointment would be a signal to all the vultures of the Union to flock around the Treasury.

This letter is a measure of Carey's integrity. If such be possible, Simon Cameron was an even more monolithic protectionist than Carey. But expediency forced Lincoln's hand, and Cameron was made Secretary of War, a position which he and 13

See Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln

and the

Patronage.

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his henchmen found most lucrative in grafting war contracts. Carey's regard for Lincoln, never very high, was not then improved. Carey's code was a rigid one. The settled conviction that all politicians are knaves and scoundrels was part of it. He was approached many times to run for some office, and he consistently refused. When Hector Orr, of Philadelphia, wrote him suggesting that he run for Governor on the basis of his eminent reputation throughout the State, Carey replied in 1858 (exact date not given in Carey's filed reply-copy), "I owe you many thanks.—I am not, however, fitted for the place you would give me—having no axes of my own to grind. No man can ever be made governor or president, that is not ready to sell the public for promotion of his private interests." I am willing to subscribe to Levermore's final assessment: Penetrating through those enveloping qualities of Carey's life, which neutralized so much of his possible usefulness and which have led so many half-cultured minds astray,—his defective deduction, his untrained, emotional temperament, his arbitrary zeal, his over-confidence,—the critical student in the future may still discern this wholesome core: an honest man in earnest, who had the strength to hope for the future of laborers and of all mankind, who had the grace to prefer the growth of a national spirit to the immediate increase of a national income, and who possessed the grace and strength combined to give the lie to that golden rule of the gospel of dollars: "It is the chief end of the state's economy to buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the dearest." 14

Exactly what Carey's historical mission was, then, appears difficult to determine. I suspect the same could be said of all men, great and small, living and dead. Each human personality is an amalgam, probably in differing proportions, of noble aspiration and petty self-seeking, of service to the defined com14

Levermore, op. cit., p. 582.

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munity, and unlovely ego-demand. If this formula flouts logical consistency, the fault—if such there be—must lie in human nature. Henry Charles Carey devoted his life to his fellow man, to a vision of the better society which would emerge if the future were to actualize the principles he enunciated. He was also the most effective mouthpiece a growing capitalist class could claim for its own, making a special plea for their, and not too incidentally his own, interests. And there the matter must remain.

Bibliograpky Note: All of the works listed below, except for some of Henry Carey's pamphlets, are cited in the text. And each work is listed but once, in terms of the main use to which it was put, although many items could have been included under two or more of the following categories: A.

B.

(in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) "American Prose," Simon Gratz Autograph Collection. Buchanan Papers. Edward Carey Gardiner Collection. Lea & Febiger Papers. Mathew Carey Papers. "The Papers of Captain Thomas J. Baird 1813-1828." Thomas H . Shoemaker Collection. MANUSCRIPTS

MATHEW

CAREY—Biographical Materials

Baird, Henry Carey. "Memoir of Mathew Carey," American Bookseller, Feb. 1, 1885, pp. 58-64. Biographical Sketches. Philadelphia: John Clarke, n.d. Author not cited. Bradsher, Earl L. Mathew Carey—Editor, Author, and Publisher. N e w York: Columbia University Press, 1912. Mathew Carey Autobiography. Brooklyn, N . Y.: Eugene L. Schwab, 1942. This material first appeared as a series of letters in the New England Magazine, 1833-34. Rowe, Kenneth H . Mathew Carey, A Study in American Economic Development. Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series 51, No. 4, 1933. C.

MATHEW

CAREY—Works

"The N e w Olive Branch" (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: M. Carey & Sons, 1821. Pp. 258-382 of a miscellaneous pamphlet collection in the University of Pennsylvania. Library entitled Appeal to Common Sense and Common Justice. "Addresses to the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry" (6th ed.). Philadelphia: H . C. Carey and I. Lea, 1822, separate pagination (251 pp.), in the pamphlet collection cited above. The Crisis. An Appeal to the Good Sense of the Nation . . . (4th ed.). Philadelphia: W m . F. Geddes, 1832. Pp. 12. Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land . . . (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: L. Johnson, 1833. Pp. 36. 205

HENRY CHARLES

206 D.

HENRY C.

CAREY

CAREY—Biographical Materials

Allibone, S. Austin, ed. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors (three vols.). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874. Baird, Henry Carey, "Contributions to Trade History. No. 11. The Carey-Baird Centenary, January 25, 1885. Memoir to Henry Charles Carey . . . American Bookseller, XVII (1885), 102-6. Testimonials to Henry C. Carey, Esq. Dinner at the La Pierre House, Philadelphia, April 27, 1859. Philadelphia: Collins, 1859. Pp. 79. The Centenary of the Birth of Henry C. Carey, LL.D. Appropriate Tributes to His Life and Wor\. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1893. Pp. 9. "Carey and Greeley," Social Economist, VII (1894), 134-45. Author not cited. "Champions of Protection—Henry Charles Carey, LL.D.," Home Market Bulletin, IX (1898), 1-4. Author not cited. "The 150th Anniversary of Henry Charles Carey," Publisher's Weekly (1943), p. 2,172. Author not cited. Elder, William. "Henry C. Carey," Sartain's Magazine, X (1852), 444-49. . A Memoir of Henry C. Carey. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird & Co., 1880. Pp. 39. Kaplan, A. D. H. Henry Charles Carey, A Study in American Economic Thought. Johns Hopkins University Studies, Vol. 49, 1931. Oberholtzer, Ellis P. Philadelphia, A History of the City and Its People. (Three vols.) Philadelphia: S. J. Clarke, n.d. R., J. G., "Henry C. Carey in Germany," The Penn Monthly, VII (1876), 894-97. Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. Vols. IX (1898) and XV (1904). Scharf, J. Thomas, and Westcott, Thompson. History of Philadelphia. (Four vols.) Philadelphia: L. H. Evarts & Co., 1884. Thompson, Robert Ellis, "Henry Charles Carey," The Penn Monthly, X (1879), 816-34. E.

HENRY C . C A R E Y — W o r k s

BOOKS Essay on the Rate of Wages: With an Examination of the Causes of the Differences of the Labouring Population Throughout the World. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835. Pp. 225. The Harmony of Nature: As Exhibited in the Laws Which Regulate The Increase of Population and of the Means of Subsistence And in the Identity of the Sovereign and the Subject; The Landlord and the

BIBLIOGRAPHY

207

Tenant; The Capitalist and the Workman; The Planter and the Slave. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836. Pp. xii + 381. Principles of Political Economy. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Vol. I, "The Laws of the Production and Distribution of Wealth" (1837). Pp. xvi + 342. Vol. II, "Of the Causes Which Retard the Increase in The Production of Wealth, and Improvement in the Physical and Moral Condition of Man" (1838). Pp. vi + 466. Vol. Ill, "Part the Third: Of The Causes Which Retard Increase in the Numbers of Mankind," pp. 3-91. And "Part the Fourth: Of The Causes Which Retard Improvement in the Political Condition of Man." Pub. in 1840 by Lea & Blanchard. Pp. 95-270. The Past, the Present, and the Future. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1848. Pp. 474. The Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial. New York: Myron Finch, 1852. Pp. ix + 229. This was published at the offices of the Plough, Loom, and Anvil, the protectionist journal to which Carey contributed many articles. The integral text was adapted from his articles first appearing in the journal in December, 1849, and January to December, 1850. There were several printings of this book, containing varying numbers of other contributions to the journal, and a varying number of pamphlets written during this period. The pagination of the appended material is extremely uneven. The edition cited was the second, which is in the University of Pennsylvania Library. The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign. Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey & Hart, 1853. Pp. 426. Principles of Social Science. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Vol. I (1858, pp. xxii + 474). Vol. II (1860, pp. xvi + 480). Vol. Ill (1860, pp. xvi + 511). McKean, Kate, Manual of Social Science; Being A Condensation of the "Principles of Social Science" of Henry C. Carey, LL.D. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1864. Pp. x + 548. The Unity of Law; As Exhibited in the Relations of Physical Social, Mental, and Moral Science. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1872. Pp. xxi + 433.

PAMPHLETS YEAR

The Credit System in France, Great Britain, and the United States (130 pp.) 1838 This subject was subsequently still further treated in a magazine published in New York, to the extent of over 100 pp 1838-39

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Answers to the Questions, "What Constitutes; what are the Causes of Unsteadiness of the Currency; and what is the Remedy?" (81 pp.) 1840 Commercial Associations of France and England (40 pp.) 1845 What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade (53 pp.) 1850 What the North Desires (8 pp.) 1850 Two Diseases Raging in the Union—Anti-Slavery and Pro-Slavery (11 pp.) 1850 The Prospect, Agricultural, Manufacturing, Commercial, and Financial, at the Opening of the Year 1851 (8 pp.) 1851 How to Increase Competition for the Purchase of Labor and How to Raise the Wages of Labor (16 pp.) 1852 Two Letters to a Cotton Planter (27 pp.) 1852 Ireland's Miseries and their Cause (16 pp.) 1852 The Wording of British Free Trade (52 pp.) 1852 British Free Trade in Ireland (16 pp.) 1852 Letter to a Farmer of Ohio (16 pp.) 1852 Three Letters to Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, U.S.S. (42 pp.) 1852 The Present Commercial Policy of the Country (10 pp.) 1852 Letters on International Copyright (72 pp.) 1853 Second Edition (88 pp.) 1868 The North and the South (40 pp.) 1854 Coal, Its Producers and Consumers (19 pp.) 1854 American Labor vs. British Free Trade (48 pp.) 1855 The True Policy of the South (15 pp.) 1855 Present Situation and Future Prospects of American Railroads (8 pp.) 1855 Money. A Lecture before the American Geographical and Statistical Society (28 pp.) 1857 Letters to the President, on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Union, and Its Effects as Exhibited in the Condition of the People and the State (171 pp.) 1858 Financial Crises, their Causes and Effects. Letters to William C. Bryant (58 pp.) 1860 The French and American Tariffs Compared (29 pp.) 1861 The American Civil War (23 pp.) 1861 The Way to Outdo England without Fighting her. Letters to Hon. Schuyler Colfax on the Paper, the Iron, the Farmer's, the Railroad, and the Currency Questions (165 pp.) 1865 The Public Debt, Local and National (16 pp.) 1866 Contraction or Expansion; Repudiation or Resumption (47 pp.) 1866 Resources of the Union. A Lecture before the American Geographical and Statistical Society (26 pp.) 1866

BIBLIOGRAPHY

209 YEAR

The National Ban\ Amendment Bill (8 pp.) 1866 Reconstruction—Industrial, Financial, and Political (79 pp.) 1867 Review of the Decade 1857-1867 (40 pp.) 1867 The Finance Minister, the Currency, and the Public Debt (40 pp.) .. 1868 Resumption; how it may be Profitably Brought About (16 pp.) . .. .1869 Shall we have Peace? Peace Financial and Peace Political (66 pp.) . .1869 Review of the Report of the Hon. David A. Wells, Special Commissioner of the Revenue (66 pp.) 1869 Our Future (7 pp.) 1869 Review of the Farmer's Question (12 pp.) 1870 Wealth—of what does it Consist? (11 pp.) 1870 Memoir of Stephen Colwell (35 pp.) 1871 The International Copyright Question Considered (30 pp.) 1872 The Rate of Interest and its Influence on the Relations of Capital and Labor. Speech in the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (22 pp.) 1873 Capital and Labor. Report of Committee on Industrial Interests and Labor in the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (31 pp.) .. .1873 Currency Inflation. How it Has been Produced, and How it may be Profitably Reduced. Letters to Hon. B. H. Bristow, Secretary of the Treasury (20 pp.) 1874 The British Treaties of 1871 and 1874 (38 pp.) 1874 Monetary Independence. Letters to Hon. Moses W. Field (12 pp.) . .1875 The Senate Finance Bill (12 pp.) 1875 Manufactures—At once an Evidence and a Measure of Civilization (7 PP.) 1875 To the Friends of the Union Throughout the Union (4 pp.) 1876 Appreciation of the Price of Gold. Evidence before the U.S. Monetary Commission (16 pp.) 1876 Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization versus British Free Trade. Letters in Reply to the London Times (36 pp.) 1876 The Three Most Prosperous Countries in the World (2 pp.) 1877 Resumption—When and How will it End? (12 pp.) 1877 Repudiation—Past, Present, and Future (43 pp.) 1879 Note: The above listing of Carey's pamphlets is adapted from pp. 37-39 of Elder's Memoir. Elder has not listed the pamphlets Carey wrote in attacking the Camden and Amboy "monopoly," and I have followed suit. They fill "Volume 11" of the "Collected Works" in the University of Pennsylvania Library. "Volume 12" is made up of his clippings on the same subject, which appeared in various New Jersey papers, mostly the Burlington Gazette, and were signed "Citizen of Burlington." In all, Carey wrote over three thousand pages of pamphlets. And from 1848 to 1852 he wrote many long articles for The Plough, the Loom, and

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the Anvil, which, according to Elder, was established "largely through his influence, and was published in Philadelphia by his friend and early and ardent disciple, the late John S. Skinner." Many of these protectionist pieces were later reprinted as pamphlets. Volumes XIII, XIV, and X V of the "Collected Works," in the University of Pennsylvania Library, contain what are probably the bulk of his newspaper contributions, clipped and mounted; many of his New Yor\ Tribune protectionist editorials, and pieces which appeared in Philadelphia newspapers—The Pennsylvanian, the National Gazette, the American and Gazettem and the Iron Age—are also to be f o u n d in these three volumes. Wor\s

Dealing

Wholly,

or in Part, with Carey's

System

Baird, Henry Carey. "Carey and T w o of His Recent Critics," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, XXIX (1891), 2-8. Bernard, L. L., and Jessie. The Origins of American Sociology. N e w York: Crowell, 1943. Bossard, James H . S. "Robert Ellis Thompson—Pioneer Professor in Social Science," American Journal of Sociology, XXXV (1929), 239-49. D o r f m a n , Joseph. The Economic Mind in American Civilization, two vols. N e w York: Viking Press, 1946. Eiselen, Malcolm Rogers. The Rise of Pennsylvania Protectionism (Privately printed University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. thesis, Philadelphia, 1932). Eubank, Earle E. " T h e Conceptual Approach to Sociology," pp. 47-63 in H a r r y Elmer Barnes and H o w a r d Becker, Contemporary Social Theory. N e w York: D . Appleton-Century, 1940. Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The Course of American Thought. N e w York: Ronald Press, 1940. Gillette, John M. Rural Sociology. N e w York: Macmillan, 1936. Griswold, Rufus W . "Henry C. Carey: T h e Apostle of the American School of Political Economy," American Whig Review, XXIII (1851), 79-86. Jenks, Jeremiah W . Henry C. Carey als Nationalö\onom (Halle-Wittenburg University Ph.D. thesis, 1885). Klein, Philip S. Pennsylvania Politics. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1940. Leslie, T . E. C. "Political Economy in the United States," Fortnightly Review, XXXVIII (1880), 488-509. British pub. Levermore, Charles H . "Henry C. Carey and His Social System," Political Science Quarterly, V (1890), 555-82. Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma, two vols. N e w York: Harper & Bros., 1944. Newcomb, Simon. The Reminiscences of an Astronomer. N e w York: H o u g h t o n , Mifflin and Co., 1903.

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O'Connor, Michael J. L. Origins of Academic Economics in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1944. Parrington, Vernon L. Main Currents in American Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., combined ed., 1927, 1930. Patten, Simon N. The Theory of Dynamic Economics. (Privately published, Philadelphia, 1892.) Perry, Arthur Latham. Elements of Political Economy. New York: Chas. Scribner & Co., 1866. Perry, Arthur Latham. Political Economy (18th ed.). New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1883. Phelps, Harold A. Contemporary Social Problems (rev. ed.). New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938. Rabbeno, Ugo. The American Commercial Policy (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan, 1895. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1946. Simpson, George. Émile Durkheim on the Division of Labor. New York: Macmillan, 1933. Sorokin, Pitirim A. Contemporary Sociological Theories. New York: Harper & Bros., 1928. Sully, Richard. "The Study of Political Economy," Merchant's Magazine, LII (1851), 250-68. Taussig, F. W. The Tarifl History of the United States (6th ed.). New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1914. Teilhac, Ernest. Histoire De La Pensée Économique Aux États-Unis Au Dix-Neuvième Siècle. Paris: Recuil Sirey, 1928. Thompson, Robert Ellis. Political Economy. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1875. Turner, John Roscoe. The Ricardian Rent Theory in Early American Economics. New York: New York University Press, 1921. Wharton, Joseph. "Agreement: Joseph Wharton and the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania," dated June 22, 1861, 31 pp. Pamphlet in the University of Pennsylvania Library. Wharton, Joseph. "International Industrial Competition," Journal of Social Science, No. 4 (1871), 49-73. Wharton, Joseph. "National Self-Protection." Philadelphia: American Iron and Steel Association, 1875. Pp. 37. (Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly.) Whittaker, Edmund. A History of Economic Ideas. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1943. G.

General Billington, Ray Allen. The Macmillan, 1938.

Protestant

Crusade

1800-1860. New York:

HENRY

CHARLES

CAREY

Cardozo, J. N. Notes on Political Economy. Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1826. Carman, Henry J. and Luthin, Reinhard H. Lincoln and the Patronage. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Channing, Edward. A History of the United States, V, "The Period of Transition 1815-1848." New York: Macmillan, 1928. Cole, Arthur Charles. The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865. New York: Macmillan, 1934. Commons, John R. & Others. History of Labour in the United States (two vols.), I. New York: Macmillan, 1918. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. Translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau, three vols. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1896. Cooley, Charles Horton. Social Organization. New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1911. Davis, Stanton Ling. Pennsylvania Politics 1860-1863. Cleveland: The Bookstore, Western Reserve University, 1933. Mimeographed. Drucker, Peter F. The Future of Industrial Man. New York: John Day, 1942. Dunning, William Archibald. The British Empire and the United States. New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1914. Fahrney, Ralph Ray. Horace Greeley and the Civil War. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1936. Green, Arnold W. "Duplicity," Psychiatry, VI (1943), 411-24. Hansen, Marcus Lee. The Immigrant in American History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940. Hendrick, Burton J. The Age of Big Business. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. Hobson, J. A. Free-Thought in the Social Sciences. London: George Allen & Un win Ltd., 1934. Johnston. "The Circulation of Matter," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, LXXIII (1853), 550-60. Laidler, Harry W. A History of Socialist Thought. New York: Crowell, 1927. Maclver, Robert M. "The Imputation of Motives," American Journal of Sociology, XLVI (1940), 1-12. Mueller, Henry R. The Whig Party in Pennsylvania. New York: Columbia University Press, 1922. Mumford, Lewis. The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938. National Resources Committee. Problems of a Changing Population. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938. Perkins, Howard Cecil, ed. Northern Editorials on Secession, two vols. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1942.

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Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Cardinal Theme of Southern History," American Historical Review, XXXIV (1928), 30-43. Randall, J. G. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: D. C. Heath & Co., 1937. Say, Jean-Baptiste. Catechism of Political Economy, John Richter, trans. Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817. Small, Albion W. Origins of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924. Spencer, Herbert. "Theory of Population," Westminster Review, American ed., LII (1852), 250-68. Stone, Richard G. Heze\iah Niles as an Economist. Johns Hopkins University Studies, LI, 1933. Sumner, William G. Protectionism. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1885. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Henry Reeve, trans. New York: George Adlard, 1838. Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI by D. C. Somervell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. Tuft, James Hayden. America's Social Morality. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933. Van Vleck, George Washington. The Panic of 1857. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Villard, Henry. "Historical Sketch of Social Science," Journal of Social Science, No. I (June, 1869), 5-10. Ward, Lester F. Pure Sociology. New York: Macmillan, 1903. Warner, W. Lloyd, and Low, J. O. The Social System of the Modern Factory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947.

Index Adams, John, 4 Allibone, S. Austin, 48, 181 American Emigrant Company, 127 American Museum, 5 American social science movement, 148, 182ff. See also "Social Science, Society for the Advancement of" "Association," 11, 63, 64, 66, 70S., 94, 105ff., 114, 143, 147, 150ff., 158, 174, 195; limits of Carey's, 108ff. See also Division of Labor Baird, Henry Carey, 6, 8, 14, 17, 19, 27, 36, 37, 157, 179 Bank of Pennsylvania, 9 Bank of the United States, 9, 32 "Bastiat Controversy," 180-82 Bastiat, Frédéric, 179, 180-82, 185 Bernard, L. L., and Jessie, 86-87, 148, 173, 174, 179, 183 Billington, Ray Allen, 129 Bossard, James H . S., 95, 96, 175 Bradsher, Earl L., 1, 6 Brisbane, Arthur, 151-52 Brook Farm, 151 Bryant, William Cullen, 138-39 Buchanan, James, 33, 130-31, 141, 162 Byles, John B., 180 Camden and Amboy Railroad, 28-30, 102 Cameron, Simon, 23, 36, 170, 171, 202 Cardozo, J. N., 146-47 Carey, Edward L., 4, 6 Carey, Henry C.: birth, 15; education, 15-16; soldier, 16-17; marriage, 17; adopted daughter, 18; protectionist, 17-18, 20-21, 28, 33, 41, 71,

84, 110, 114-15, 134ff., 159ff., 189ff.; publisher, 18-19; personality, 16-19, 22, 27-28, 31-32, 37, 39, 42-46, 49, 193ff.; businessman, 15-16, 20, 21, 22, 25-26; European travels, 22; editorial writer, 25-27; Russophile, 27; political office, 27-28, 31, 34, 124; organizational memberships, 46-47; sociologist, 50ff. (See also Sociology); death, 48-49 Carey, Mathew: birth, 1; departure for America, 2; duel, 3; marriage, 3; children, 4; publisher, 5-6; public citizen, 5-9; social and economic theories, 8-13; assessment of theories, 14; ideas differed from son's, 124; intellectual legacy to son, 144, 158-59; Compromise of 1833, 135; "national planning," 194; death, 14-15 "Carey School," The, 173ff. Carlyle, Thomas, 19 Carman, Harry J., and Luthin, Reinhard H., 202 Channing, Edward, 108 Chase, Salmon P., 35, 36, 41, 126, 127, 167, 191 Civil War, 26, 139 Clapier, A., 180 Clay, Henry, 4, 6-7, 9, 12, 14, 135 Cole, Arthur Charles, 126 Columbian Magazine, 5 Colwell, Stephen, 30, 173-74 Commons, John R., 125 Compromise of 1833, 135 Comte, August, 54-57, 153-56 Cooley, Charles H., 63, 90, 172, 185, 186, 201

216

INDEX

Cooper, J. F., 6 Cooper, Thomas, 32 Cramp, Charles H., 36

Immigration, 10, 108, 120, 127ff. See also American Emigrant Company Irving, Washington, 6

Dana, Charles A., 43 Davis, Stanton Ling, 163 Democratic Party, 33-34, 130-31, 135,

Jackson, Andrew, 9, 32, 43 Jefferson, Thomas, 7, 9, 23 Jenks, Jeremiah W., 109, 125 Johnston, 77

161-62

Division of Labor, 88ff., 106, 172. See also "Association" Dorfman, Joseph, 30, 111, 136, 159, 162, 174, 197 Drucker, Peter F., 141 Diihring, Eugen K., 180 Dunning, William Archibald, 141 Durkheim, fimile, 89-91, 94, 153, 157, 172 Eiselen, Malcolm Rogers, 161, 163 Elder, William, 20-21, 23, 36, 41-42, 46, 100, 101, 168, 173-74, 181 Eubank, Earle E., 189 Fahrney, Ralph Ray, 26 Federalist Party, 8 Ferrara, Francesco, 181 Fontenay, M., 180 Fourier, Charles, 128, 150-53, 155 Franklin, Benjamin, 2, 4 Gabriel, Ralph Henry, 194, 195 Gillette, John M., 188 Great Britain, 2, 111, 114, 141, 176 Greeley, Horace, 25-26, 149, 151, 184 Green, Arnold W., 122 Griswold, Rufus W., 181 Hamilton, Alexander, 4, 9, 12 Hankins, Frank Hamilton, 86 Hansen, Marcus Lee, 128 Hart, Abraham, 6 Hendrick, Burton J., 107 Hibernian Society, 7 Hobson, J. A., 199 Huxley, Thomas, 57

Kaplan, A. D. H., 8, 20 Kardorff-Wabnitz, Baron William von, 192-93 Kelley, William D., 21, 169-70 Klein, Philip S., 160,162 Labor, 13, 24, 107-8, 123ff., 152 Lafayette, Marquis de, 2, 4 Laidler, Harry W., 151 Lea, Henry Charles, 6, 14 Lea, Isaac, 4, 5, 6 Leslie, T. E. C., 43, 157, 159 Levermore, Charles H., 189, 190, 203 Lincoln, Abraham, 32, 41, 170, 202-3 List, Friedrich, 8, 12,145, 157 Maclver, Robert M., 95, 199 Madison, James, 4 Malthus, Thomas R., 62, 73, 74, 76, 80-81, 82, 83, 84-86, 103, 145, 146, 196 Mead, George H., 63 Mill, John Stuart, 12, 15, 22, 62, 63, 84,185 Morrell, Daniel J., 28, 169 Morrill, Justin Smith, 143, 167 Mueller, Henry R., 161 Mumford, Lewis, 106 Myrdal, Gunnar, 188 National Republican Party, 6, 8,9,135 Native-American Party, 129, 166 Newcomb, Simon, 187 New Yor\ Tribune, 25, 27, 115-16 Nile/ Weekly Register, 146 Niles, Hezekiah, 146

INDEX Nineteenth Century, age of faith, 122, 148-50, 155, 173, 193ff., 200. See also Progress Oberholtzer, Ellis P., 5, 6 Oswald, Colonel Eleazer, 3 Panic of 1857, 141 Pareto, Vilfredo, 56, 94 Parrington, Vernon L., 196, 197 Patten, Simon, 177-78 Pennsylvania Herald, 3, 5 Pennsylvania, Historical Society of, 21 Pennsylvania Society to Establish Useful Manufactures, 8 Pennsylvania Temperance Society, 7 Pennsylvanian protectionism, 23, 24, 130ff., 159ff., 175-76, 189ff. (Sec also Tariffs, various protective) Perkins, Howard Cecil, 119 Perry, Arthur Latham, 83, 159, 182 Phelps, Harold A., 188 Philadelphia "Aid for Kansas" committee, 38 Philadelphia Evening Journal, 45 Philadelphia Republican Club, 34 Philadelphia Social Science Association, 183 Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry, 8 Phillips, Ulrich B., 121 Poe, Edgar Allan, 6, 8-9 Political Economy: 9-13, 118-19, 13234, 144-46, 148, 158-59, 173ff., 18082, 194-97; Carey's, 29, 32-33, 41, 51-53, 68-74, 130ff. Population theory: Carey's, 74-87; Ricardo-Malthus', 74-87, 146-48 Progress, 64, 73-74, 106, 194 (see also Nineteenth Century . . . ) Rabbeno, Ugo, 107 Rampel, Benjamin, 180 Randall, J. G., 121, 126 Republican Party, 34, 35, 131, 162

217

Ricardo, David, 51, 62, 72-73, 81-83, 84, 85, 103, 145, 146, 196 Rowe, Kenneth H., 1, 9, 12

Say, Jean-Baptiste, 147 Scharf, J. Thomas, and Westcott, Thompson, 5 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 43 Schultze-Delitzsch, Hermann, 180 Scranton, Joseph H., 167-68 Secession, llOff., 115, 120-22, 164 Seldes, George, 149 Seward, William H., 174 Seward-Weed combination, 166 Simpson, George, 89 Slavery, 12, 37-40, llOff., 127, 161-62 Small, Albion W., 185 Smith, Adam, 10, 58, 134, 144-45 Smith, E. Peshine, 77, 79, 153, 166, 173-74 Smith, Truman, 192, 198 "Social Science, Society for the Advancement of," 182ff. See also American social science movement Sociology, Carey's, 50ff.; social and natural science, 54ff.; scientific method, 6Iff.; man and society, 63ff.; definition of social science, 65; irreconcilable elements of, 69ff.; "association," 70ff., 150ff.; population theory, 74ff., and assessment of, 85ff.; assessment of sociological theory, 87ff.; Carey's assessment of current issues, 105ff.; origins of social science, 144ff. (esp. 157ff.); influence of, 172ff.; Carey's "School," 173ff.; historical mission, 193ff. Sorokin, Pitirim, 97 South Carolina, 12, 111, 120, 135 Specie payments, resumption of, 41, 169-70 Spencer, Herbert, 54, 56, 64, 73, 79-80, 86, 93, 94, 157 Stone, Richard G., 146

218

INDEX

Sumner, William G., 97, 172, 175, 185, 186 Tariffs, various protective, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 33, 41, 62, 84, 116-17, 129-30, 131, 134-42, 159ff., 164ff., 190 (see also Pennsylvania protectionism) Taussig, F. W., 142, 143 Teilhac, Ernest, 154-57 Thomas, W. I., 95 Thompson, Robert Ellis, 15, 19, 48, 49, 95, 173-75, 180, 181, 182 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 118-19, 132 Toynbee, Arnold J., 93 Tuft, James Hayden, 201 Turner, John Roscoe, 83, 158 Union League of Philadelphia, 26, 47 Universities, Carey's influence upon other, 178-80

University of Pennsylvania: 21, 32, 48, 185; Carey's influence upon, 175-78 Van Vleck, George Washington, 141 "Vespers, The," 35-37 Villard, Henry, 183 Ward, Lester F., 64, 94, 97, 172, 185, 186, 189 Warner, W. Lloyd, and Low, J. O., 92 Washington, George, 4, 5 Weber, Max, 91-92 Weems, Parson, 5 Wharton, Joseph, 21, 36, 175-77,184 Whig Party, 27, 33, 135, 161-62 Whittaker, Edmund, 84 Yellow fever epidemic, 7, 8