Alexander Hamilton

“ To affirm that the labor of the manufacturer is unproductive because he consumes as much of the produce of land as he adds value to the raw material which he manufactures, is not better founded, than it would be to affirm that the labor of the farmer, which furnishes materials to the manufacturer, is unproductive because he consumes an equal value of manufactured articles. Each furnishes a certain portion of the produce of his labor to the other, and each destroys a correspondent portion of the produce of the labor of the other. ”

“ It is a truth, as important as it is agreeable, and one to which it is not easy to imagine exceptions, that everything tending to establish substantial and permanent order in the affairs of a country, to increase the total mass of industry and opulence, is ultimately beneficial to every part of it. On the credit of this great truth an acquiescence may safely be accorded from every quarter to all institutions and arrangements which promise a confirmation of public order and an augmentation of national resource. ”

“ If one nation were in a condition to supply manufactured articles, on better terms than another, that other might find an abundant indemnification in a superior capacity to furnish the produce of the soil. And a free exchange, mutually beneficial, of the commodities which each was able to supply, on the best terms, might be carried on between them, supporting, in full vigor, the industry of each. ”

“ And though it should be true that, in settled countries, the diversification of industry is conducive to an increase in the productive powers of labor, and to an augmentation of revenue and capital; yet it is scarcely conceivable that there can be anything of so solid and permanent advantage to an uncultivated and unpeopled country, as to convert its waste into cultivated and inhabited districts. If the revenue, in the meantime, should be less, the capital, in the event, must be greater. ”

“ There may be a plethora in the political as in the natural body; there may be a state of things in which any such artificial capital is unnecessary. The debt, too, may be swelled to such a size as that the greatest part of it may cease to be useful as capital, serving only to pamper the dissipation of idle and dissolute individuals; as that the sum required to pay the interest upon it may become oppressive and beyond the means which a government can employ consistently with its tranquility to raise them ”

“ Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense. ”

“ In the time of a war which should either involve ourselves or another nation possessing a considerable share of our foreign trade, the charges on the transportation of our commodities, bulky as most of them are, could hardly fail to prove a grievous burden to the farmer while obliged to depend in so great a degree, as he now does, upon foreign markets for the vent of the surplus of his labor.
As far as the prosperity of the fisheries of the United States is impeded by the want of an adequate market, there arises another special reason for desiring the extension of manufactures. ”

“ There is no purpose to which public money can be more beneficially applied than to the acquisition of a new and useful branch of industry, no consideration more valuable than a permanent addition to the general stock of productive labor. ”

“ It is not less difficult to pronounce how far the effect of any given quantity of money, as capital, or in other words, as a medium for circulating the industry and property of a nation, may be increased by the very circumstance of the additional motion which is given to it by new objects of employment. ”

“ If the system of perfect liberty to industry and commerce were the prevailing system of nations, the arguments which dissuade a country, in the predicament of the United States, from the zealous pursuit of manufactures, would doubtless have great force. ”

“ It is very conceivable that the labor of man alone laid out upon a work requiring great skill and art to bring it to perfection may be more productive in value than the labor of nature and man combined when directed toward more simple operations and objects; ”

“ The superiority antecedently enjoyed by nations who have preoccupied and perfected a branch of industry constitutes a more formidable obstacle than either of those which have been mentioned, to the introduction of the same branch into a country in which it did not exist before. To maintain between the recent establishments of one country and the long-matured establishments of another country a competition upon equal terms, both as to quality and price, is in most cases impracticable. ”

“ The force of moneyed capital which has been displayed in Great Britain and the height to which every species of industry has grown up under it defy a solution from the quantity of coin which that Kingdom has ever possessed. ”

“ In such a position of things the United States can not exchange with Europe on equal terms; and the want of reciprocity would render them the victim of a system which should induce them to confine their views to agriculture and refrain from manufactures. A constant and increasing necessity on their part for the commodities of Europe and only a partial and occasional demand for their own in return could not but expose them to a state of impoverishment, compared with the opulence to which their political and natural advantages authorize them to aspire. ”

“ And where it does not happen to suit the party who is to receive, to accept a transfer of stock, the party who is to pay is never at a loss to find, elsewhere, a purchaser of his stock, who will furnish him, in lieu of it, with the coin of which he stands in need.
Hence, in a sound and settled state of public funds, a man possessed of a sum in them, can embrace any scheme of business which offers, with as much confidence as if he were possessed of an equal sum in coin. ”

“ Arbitrary taxes, under which denomination are comprised all those that leave the quantum of the tax to be raised on each person to the discretion of certain officers, are as contrary to the genius of liberty as to the maxims of industry. ”

“ But though a funded debt is not, in the first instance, an absolute increase of capital or an augmentation of real wealth, yet by serving as a new power in the operations of industry it has, within certain bounds, a tendency to increase the real wealth of a community, in like manner as money borrowed by a thrifty farmer, to be laid out in the improvement of his farm, may in the end add to his stock of real riches. ”

“ But, while there are circumstances sufficiently strong to authorize a considerable degree of reliance on the aid of foreign capital, toward the attainment or the object in view, it is satisfactory to have good grounds of assurance, that there are domestic resources, of themselves adequate to it. It happens that there is a species of capital, actually existing with the United States, which relieves from all inquietude, on the score of want of capital. This is the funded debt. ”

“ Whatever room there may be for an expectation that the industry of a people, under the direction of private interests, will, upon equal terms, find out the most beneficial employment for itself, there is none for a reliance that it will struggle against the force of unequal terms, or will of itself surmount all the adventitious barriers to a successful competition, which may have been erected, either by the advantages naturally acquired from practice and previous possession of the ground or by those which may have sprung from positive regulations and an artificial policy. ”

“ Labor bestowed upon the cultivation of land produces enough not only to replace all the necessary expenses incurred in the business and to maintain the persons who are employed in it, but to afford, together with the ordinary profit on the stock or capital of the farmer, a net surplus or rent for the proprietor or landlord of the soil. ”

“ That the annual produce of the land and labor of a country can only be increased in two ways—by some improvement in the productive powers of the useful labor which actually exists within it, or by some increase in the quantity of such labor. That, with regard to the first, the labor of artificers being capable of greater subdivision and simplicity of operation than that of cultivators, it is susceptible, in a proportionately greater degree of improvement in its productive powers, whether to be derived from an accession of skill or from the application of ingenious machinery ”

“ Considering how fast and how much the progress of new settlements in the United States must increase the surplus produce of the soil, and weighing seriously the tendency of the system which prevails among most of the commercial nations of Europe, whatever dependence may be placed upon the force of natural circumstances to counteract the effects of an artificial policy, there appear strong reasons to regard the foreign demand for that surplus as too uncertain a reliance and to desire a substitute for it in an extensive domestic market. ”

“ The United States already, in a great measure, supply themselves with nails and spikes. They are able and ought certainly to do it entirely. The first and most laborious operation in this manufacture is performed by water mills, and of the persons afterwards employed, a great proportion are boys, whose early habits of industry are of importance to the community, to the present support of their families, and to their own future comfort. It is not less curious than true that, in certain parts of the country, the making of nails is an occasional family manufacture. ”

“ It is for the nations whose regulations are alluded to to judge for themselves whether by aiming at too much they do not lose more than they gain. It is for the United States to consider by what means they can render themselves least dependent on the combinations, right or wrong, of foreign policy. ”

“ The Exemption of the Materials of Manufacture From Duty.
The policy of that exemption, as a general rule, particularly in reference to new establishments, is obvious. It can hardly ever be advisable to add the obstructions of fiscal burdens to the difficulties which naturally embarrass a new manufacture; and where it is matured and in condition to become an object of revenue, it is, generally speaking, better than the fabric, than the material, should be the subject of taxation. ”

“ It is not obvious why the same objection might not as well be made to external commerce as to manufactures, since it is manifest that our immense tracts of land, occupied and unoccupied, are capable of giving employment to more capital than is actually bestowed upon them . It is certain that the United States offer a vast field for the advantageous employment of capital; but it does not follow that there will not be found in one way or another a sufficient fund for the successful prosecution of any species of industry which is likely to prove truly beneficial. ”