Reassessing Henry Carey (1793–1879): The Problems of Writing Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America

Journal of American Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 465-485

  Dawson, Andrew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85012503352     PISSN: 00218758     EISSN: 14695154     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021875851006358     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans (New York: International Publishers, 1953), 44. My thanks to Gillian Potts and Russell Potts for commenting on this article.
2. R. W. Griswold, “Henry C. Carey and his Political Economy,” International Monthly Magazine, 2, 402, quoted in Malcolm R. Eiselen, The Rise of Pennsylvania Protectionism (Philadelphia : Porcupine Press, 1974; Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1931), 274.
3. [James E. Harvey], Testimonial to Henry C. Carey, Esq. (Philadelphia : Collins, Printer, 1859), 3-5.
4. A brief but interesting description of Carey's theories is in Broadus Mitchell “Henry Carey,” Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), 487-89.
5. Charles H. Levermore, “Henry C. Carey and His Social System,” Political Science Quarterly, 2 (Dec. 1890), 558, although he ultimately rejects the charge of venality, 572; Eiselen, 1974, 176-77; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, Vol. 2 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966; originally pub. 1946), 789-805. For milder versions see : A. D. H. Kaplan, Henry Charles Carey : A Study in American Economic Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1931). 46-47; and Paul Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity : America's First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 261. Conkin talks of Carey's “ elevation of private or provincial interests into absolute and universal truths. ” Unless we believe there are such universal truths then all of us are open to the same criticism. Ideology is precisely the elevation of partial or class-bound views into a wider frame that seeks to appeal to all. Not withstanding, the best introduction to Carey's economic ideas is Conkin, Chs. 10 and 11.
6. Testimonial, 6.
7. His friends and associates were ex-Federalists, conservative Democrats, Whigs and Republicans drawn from the world of academia, law, industry, politics and journalism. Other friends included ironmasters Stephen Colwell and Joseph P. Wharton, Congressman William D. Kelley, Rufus Griswold, editor of the American Whig, Robert E. Thompson of the Penn Monthly, and Morton McMichael of the North American. Dorfman, 789, 805; Kaplan, 13-15; Arnold Green, Henry Charles Carey (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), 47.
8. Henry Carey did not retain his paternal religious affiliation but turned to Episcopalianism.
9. Elwyn B. Robinson, “The North American: Advocate of Protectionism,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 64 (July 1940), 345-55; Levermore, 560-61.
10. Green, 20, 23-24, 37, 43, 45, 49; Kaplan, 12-13.
11. For Carey's role in introducing the tariff plank see Arthur M. Lee, “Henry C. Carey and the Republican Tariff,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 81 (July 1957), 280-302.
12. The terminology adds to the confusion on this point. High-tariff advocates are often referred to as the “ nationalist school” but they were no more nationalist than low-tariff advocates who also declared their policies to be in “ the national interest. ” Low- and high-tariff economists, I would argue, are symptomatic of broader and deep-seated differences within American society. F. A. Fetter, “The Early History of Political Economy in the United States, “ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 88 (1944), 55-57.
13. H. C. Carey, Essay on the Rate of Wages (Philadelphia : Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835), 15-18, 29, 56.
14. H. C. Carey, Principles of Social Science, 1 (Philadelphia : Lippincott, 1858), 86 quoted in Levermore, 565.
15. Although real wages had improved in Europe, they had not risen as fast as in the United States because capital accumulation (and therefore wages) was checked by the activity of governments, war and taxation. Carey, Essay on Wages, 62-81, 180-81.
16. H. C. Carey, Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia : Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837), 10-20, 300-2.
17. Isaac Ilyich Rubin, A History of Economic Thought (London: Pluto Press, 1989), 329-30.
18. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 266-68.
19. Prophets of Prosperity., 269, 272.
20. Carey, Political Economy, 1, 340.
21. Political Economy., 1, 341.
22. Levermore, 557.
23. Carey treats banking in Principles of Political Economy, vol. 3.
24. H. C. Carey, The Past, the Present, and the Future (Philadelphia : Henry Carey Baird, 1872; originally pub. 1848), 160-61.
25. Carey treats banking in Principles of Political Economy., 164.
26. Carey treats banking in Principles of Political Economy., 205.
27. Henry Carey Baird, “Carey and Two of his Recent Critics,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 29 (1891), 171, quoted in Dorfman, Economic Mind, 2, 799.
28. H. C. Carey, The Unity of Law; As Exhibited in the Relations of Physical, Social, Mental, and Moral Science (Philadelphia : Henry Carey Baird, 1872), x.
29. Rubin, History of Economic Thought, 330.
30. Carey, Past, Present and Future, esp. 1-17, 109-10. On other occasions Carey seems to be saying that Britain privileged manufacturing over agriculture because of the false theories of Ricardo and Malthus. See his The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign (Philadelphia : A. Hart, 1853), 405-9.
31. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 282.
32. Carey, Past, Present and Future, 129. Emphasis in the original.
33. Prophets of Prosperity., 98.
34. Conkin, 283.
35. Conkin believes that Carey's discovery was “ little more than a useful heuristic devise to support his underlying assumptions of natural fecundity and unlimited economies of scale ” (283). But he misses the significance of the new theory: Carey's project was to predict increased material abundance and to finally exorcise landlordism through a convincing destruction of British claims to free trade but without endangering the other assumptions of laissez-faire.
36. Carey also insisted that all forms of waste product (animal, human or industrial) needed returning to the land where it originated international trade broke the manure chain and so robbed native soils of their nutrients. (Carey, Past, Present and Future, 437-38.) Carey's advice was simplicity itself end international trade American manure for Americans. We have not seen Carey's ideas being taken up by the environmental movement.
37. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy cited in Rodney J. Morrison, “Henry C. Carey and American Economic Development,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 5 (Winter 1968), 137 and n. Morrison fails to see the point Mill is making.
38. Karl Marx, “ Bastiat and Carey” (written in 1857), Grundrisse (London: Penguin, 1973), 885-86.
39. Fetter, “Early History of Political Economy in the United States,” 55; Eiselen, Pennsylvania Protectionism, 80-81. Some years after the Civil War, Carey's close friend William Kelley spoke to Bismarck on the issue of the tariff, “William D. Kelley,” Iron Age, 45:16 (Jan. 1890), 101.
40. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Capital, 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 912; Carey, Slave Trade, 381-82.
41. A. K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia : John C. Winston, 1905), 248.
42. Carey, Past, Present and Future, 272.
43. Carey, Slave Trade, 368.
44. Carey, Unity of Law, 236, 239, 252-53, 258-59, 260, 262, 304-5, 310.
45. Prophets of Prosperity., 254-6.
46. Prophets of Prosperity…, 260, 328, 342.
47. Marx, “ Bastiat and Carey,” 884. Also see note 1. Elsewhere Marx describes Carey as “ a man with such an atrocious lack of the critical faculty, and such spurious erudition. ” Capital, 1, 706.
48. Robert Ellis Thompson, Hard Times and What to Learn From Them: A Plain Talk with the Working People (Philadelphia : Edward Stern & Co., 1877), 17.
49. Prophets of Prosperity…, 17.
50. Robert P. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1959), 209-10.
51. “Labor and Capital,” Fincher's Trades’ Review (20 June 1863), 10.
52. Public Ledger, 13 Sept. 1888; Journal of United Labor, 13 Sept. 1888, 2.
53. Public Ledger, 16 Aug. 1888; Public Ledger, 13 Sept. 1888.
54. Journal of United Labor, 8 (6 Aug. 1887), 2.
55. Fetter, “Early History of Political Economy in the United States,” 56.
56. Levermore, “Carey and His Social System,” 572.
57. Robert Ellis Thompson et al., The Centenary of the Birth of Henry C. Carey, LL.D. : Appropriate Tributes to His Life and Work (Pamphlet with front cover missing N.p.: n.p., 1893).
58. George Winston Smith, Henry C. Carey and American Sectional Conflict (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951), 115; Levermore, 573.
59. Henry C. Baird, “The Centenary of the Birth of Henry C. Carey,” Manufacturer, 6 (9 Dec. 1893), 5-6. Baird continued the ideas of Carey into the 1890s often repeating phrases of the master. He received a warm welcome in the pages of the Manufacturer becoming an honorary member of the Manufacturers’ Club in 1890.
60. For the connections between Carey and shipbuilding and textile machinery see : Charles H. Cramp, “ Carey's Vespers,” Typescript, 11 Nov. 1908, Edward Carey Gardiner Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Alexander Del Mar, “Henry C. Carey's Round Table,” Gunton's Magazine, 13 (Aug. 1897), 99; Green, Carey, 36-37.