I. An Economist at Work
Henry Charles Carey was known as an advocate of trade barriers and has devoted himself to the study of economic issues with his published work of Essay on the Rate of Wages as he accepted the British free trade doctrine of laissez-faire and at the same time rejected David Ricardo's doctrine of rent, and Thomas Malthus's doctrine of the continuous diminishing resources. Carey argued that the application of capital and human invention overcomes the limitations of infertile soils and further elaborated on his economic ideas in the publication of his
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1Internet Archive, Henry Charles Carey from the Web.
2Andrew Dawson, Reassessing Henry Carey (1739-1879): The Problems of Writing Political Economy in Nineteenth Century America
Principles of Economy stating that land obtains its value from the capital exhausted on it, and that the increase in the workers' wages than only on the returns of capital tends toward a progressive distribution of wealth among the society’s poorest classes. Carey worked his thoughts into a systematic body of doctrine with his publication of three volumes of his Principles of Political Economy. Carey became more devoted to his theories as the financial and economic depression that followed the 1837 panic were seen as urgent reasons for the continuous advocacy of protection and against free trade. Carey’s 1848 book of the Past, Present, and Future became influential making Carey a regular contributor to the New York Tribune wherein a correspondence with leading political figures was established on major economic and finance issues.
Carey's The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing & Commercial in 1851 attacked on British economic doctrines d...
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...hose less arable.”3 Malthus and Ricardo both conformed to this assertion as the “oligarchical mindset of their imperial masters – steal the most valuable things first.”4 Carey in response elaborated on how the settlers of the American continent developed first the least fertile land and through human creativity itnessed by such technological most valuable things first – Carey developed in detail how the settlers of the American continent in fact developed the least fertile first and through human creativity such as the technological innovations some of which were the steam engines, drainage, canals, and agricultural implements greatly advanced over the Europeans’ production per acre of farm land.
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3E. Peshine Smith, A Manual of Political Economy, Henry Carey Baird, Philadelphia, 1872, p. 16.
4Smith, A Manual of Political Economy, p.16.
In the article White states, “Agriculture was the chief source of wealth during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Commerce was second (principally the re-export of colonial tobacco, sugar, and Indian cotton) while manufacturing may have been in a temporary decline in terms of relative importance. Smith wrote before the mechanization of the cotton industry, the growth of the factory system, and the large accumulations of capital via the joint stock company.” A joint stock company is a company whose stock is owned jointly by the shareholders; capitalism. Trade tends to be the main importance of smith’s novel. On the
Alan Taylor has written the book, William Cooper's Town so affluent in texture and implicative insinuation that it is arduous to do it justice in any brief review. His work defies simple categorization as it moves in a seamless manner between William Cooper's world and that of his novelist son. Taylor deserves the highest accolade for availing us to rethink the nature of the historians art while conveying us to a particular frontier of the early American republic.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (London: 1776), 190-91, 235-37.
In a nutshell, it can be argued that in the event of serious economic developments, various people and groups held different views of what exactly a wealthy society should be. It is crystal clear that Andrew Carnegie and William Graham Sumner held same view on wealth accumulation whereas Henry George strongly advocated for policies that would enhance equality.
William Graham Sumner came from a hard working family. He grew up in the environment where he was taught to respect Protestant economic virtues. Hard work and efficiently utilizing money leads to the result in success. After reading, Illustration of Political Economy written by Harriet Marti he became aware of the wage fund doctrine, and other theories associated with that. His understanding of capital, labor, money and trade were based upon the book, Illustration of Political Economy. He published books like Earth hunger, The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over, The Forgotten Man, Folkways and others. His intellectual ideas were passed through the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism.
Smith, Adam. 1981 [1776]. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Press.
Roark, James L. et al., eds. The American Promise: A Compact, Vol. I: To 1877. 3rd edition. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Ed. Edwin Cannan. 1904 ed. London: Methuen, 1776. Library of Economics and Liberty. Web. 4 May 2014. .
Burke, Edmund. Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation. London: J. Dodsley, 1769.
Smith, Adam. “Of the Principle of the Commercial or Mercantile System.” A World Of Ideas. Ed. Lee Jacobus. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 195-205.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 4th Edition. Edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. 1776. Reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Bendix, Richard. "Aspects of Economic Rationality in the West." Max Weber. New York: Anchor Books, 1962, pp. 49-79
John Maynard Keynes classical approach to economics and the business cycle has dominated society, especially the United States. His idea was that government intervention was necessary in a properly functioning economy. One economic author, John Edward King, claimed of the theory that:
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
Harcourt, G.C. (1969). “Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital”. Journal of Economic Literature, 7, pp. 369-405.