Reconstruction: industrial, financial, and political. Letters to the Hon. Henry Wilson, senator from Massachusetts

Letter First

In the recent Address at Saratoga your hearers were told that you were " accustomed to take hopeful views of public affairs ;" that "during the darkest hours of the war" you had had "faith in the country, faith in our democratic institutions," and had "never doubted the result;" that, "since the close of the war," we had had "trials quite as severe," but you had "never had any doubt" that that result was "to be a great and united nation." Continuing on in the same direction, you spoke as follows: —

"We have passed through a bloody struggle. I am among those who believe that it was inevitable — that it was one of the great wars of the human family. It was a struggle on this continent between the democratic ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the system of human bondage, and in such a contest there could be no doubt of the resulv. We who stood by our country, and the cause of liberty, justice, and humanity, have triumphed. We have triumphed at a fearful cost. We are proud and strong; we have lifted the country \oward the heavens; we are a greater people than ever before. We have destroyed human bondage ; we have subjugated and conquered a brave and heroic portion of the country, and now the great work is done, I am for welcoming them back with warm and generous greetings, trusting that the causes of all our troubles have passed away forever, and that hereafter in the future we shall be friends and brothers as we were in the morning of the Republic."

The anticipations here presented are most pleasant and agreeable, and gladly would I accept them as likely to be realized were it possible for me so to do. That I do not, is duo to the plain and simple fact that sad experience is now teaching the farming and mining States that for them the only "result" thus far recently achieved has been that of a change of masters, Massachusetts having, so far as regards matqrial interests generally, taken the place of South Carolina, and Kew England at largo, in reference to some of high importance, that of the States so recently in rebellion. Power has gone from the extreme South to the extreme North, and the sectionalism of to-day is likely, as I think, to prove quite as injurious as has already proved that of the past.

This, I pray you, my dear sir, to believe, is said in no unfriendly spirit. No one more than I respects the great mass of the people of Massachusetts. Few have given more full expression to their admiration of the estimable qualities by which New England people generally are so much distinguished. It is because of my respect for them, because of my desire for their continued happiness aud prosperity, that I desire now, through you, to ask consideration of the facts, that they now exercise a poHtical power wholly disproportioned to their numbers; that the State in which I reside, with hco Senators, has a population nearly equal to that of New England with tioeh-e Senators; that, as a consequence, the Senate, as regards economical questions generally, is now in frequent conflict with the House; that the day is at hand when there will be a dozen States, each one of which will outnumber all New England ; that abolition of slavery has removed the difSculties which so long had stood in the way of union between the Centre and the South ; that of all the States there are none that, for that reason, should so studiously as your own avoid suspicion of improper use of power; that to enable the East to maintain its present political position there is needed a most discreet, most careful, most magnanimous exercise thereof; and that, for want of that care, for want of that discretion, for want of that magnanimity, the Union is to-day, in my belief, more endangered than it had beeu in the years by which the war had been immediately preceded.

That you will now believe this I do not at all expect. Neither did I expect Mr. Dallas to believe me when, less than ten years since, in answer to a question as to when the Capitol would be completed, I told him that it would be "just about the time when the Union would be dissolved." "Nothing," as I then added, "could stand against a system which, like that of the tariff of 1846, made Liverpool the centre of exchange among ourselves aud with the world at large, and made of our railroads mere conduits to be used for carrying to Britain the soil of the country in the form of wheat, corn, tobacco, and cotton. It would," as I continued, "ruin any country of the world." Of this he did not then believe a single word. Nevertheless, two years afterwards, when too late, he did believe it. So, as I fear, will it be with your constituents and yourself. They will believe nothing of the danger until the ruin shall have come, as, without a change of policy, come it must, and before the close of the next decade.

An enlightened foreigner, one who had had abundant opportunities for studying our people, said of them, but a few years since, that "none so soon forgot yesterda}'." Nothing was ever more truly said. Rarely, if ever, do we study the past. We never, in any manner, in our public affairs, profit by experience, whether our own or that of others. 13e the question before us what it may.

great or small, it is treated precisely as if none such had, here or elsewhere, ever before arisen; and hence it is that our movements so much resemble those of a blind giant, daily forced to look for advice to the one-eyed dwarfs by whom we are surrounded. Were it otherwise — could our people. North and South, East and West, but be persuaded to study a very little of their oivn history — could it, do you think, be made to pay for Britain to employ so many of her people, Irish and English, Christian and Hebrew, in the work of teaching them the advantage to be derived from maintaining and increasing their dependence upon a country whose movements were becoming daily more irregular and uncertain ; . whose power for self direction was diminishing with each succeeding year ; one that to-day had not, outside of this Union, a friend on earth ; one that had already passed its zenith, and for the reason that the societary ruin by which she was surrounded was in the direct ratio of the reliance of others on her friendship? Seeking evidence of this, let me beg you to look to Ireland, the land of "popular famines;" to Turkey, with which she has for centuries been in close free trade alliance ; to Portugal, once the most valuable of her customers ; to India, in which the millions who formerly were occupied in the cotton manufacture, are now "festering in compulsory idleness;" to China, brought to a state of anarchy by means of wars made for maintaining the illicit opium trade; to Japan, likely, according to Earl Grey, soon to be reduced to the condition in which China now exists ; to Australia, now little more than a great sheep walk, whose occupants, in default of any market for their products, are now again converting their flocks into tallow ; to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, both abounding in coal and ores, while compelled to import all the iron they use; and finally, to Canada, whose population has for the past few years been steadily passing to the land of the stars and stripes, seeking there the protection denied to them at home. Look where you may, you will find prosperity to exist ^'?^ the inverse ratio of the connection with Britain. Look even to France and see that loss of position before the world has gone hand in hand with her adoption of the British system. Seeking evidence of these decaying tendencies, you may with advantage turn to the last Edinburgh Eeview, finding therein a proposition for military alliance between the two countries as the only mode of preventing further loss of caste.

Britain has been long engaged in building an inverted pyramid; but at no period has her progress in that direction been so rapid as within the last twenty years, the free trade period. The important class of small landholders so much admired by Adam Smith — that class which so long had constituted the right arm of British strength — has now almost entirely disappeared, half of the land of England being owned by 150 men, and half of that of Scotland by a single dozen. So, too, is it in regard to all industrial pursuits, a perpetual series of crises having crushed out the smaller and more useful men, and all the processes of mining and manufacture having passed into the hands of the few whose vast fortunes had enabled them to profit by the ruin of the lesser men by whom they had been surrounded. In consequence of this it is, that. British society daily more and more exhibits the phenomena of squalid poverty side by side with enormous wealth ; precisely the state of things that, under the free trade and pro-slavery policy, had, before the war, obtained throughout the Cotton States. To these latter it brought the weakness that has recently been so well exhibited. To the former it has brought the decay of influence that has, on a recent occasion, led a reflecting British writer to say to his countrymen that "the counsels which Lord Stanley is said to be pressing both at Berlin and Paris, count for about as much as if they came from the cabinet of Sweden or Portugal ;" than which nothing could be more true — Britain having no longer a place in the European system. To enable her to maintain a place anywhere she must break up this Union, and to the consciousness of this has been due the fact that, with the exception of the mere laboring class, nearly the whole body of the British people has exhibited itself before the world as advocate of a system which has human slavery for its corner-stone, and as ready to make any sacrifice of honor or of conscience, public or private, that might be needed for securing its permanent establishment. Thus far she has failed ; but, having now before her only the choice between, on the one hand, the disruption of our Union, and, on the other, her own descent from the position she so long has occupied, we may be quite assured that no effort will be spared that may seem to tend towards accomplishment of the former.

To prevent this would be an easy task could our people but be persuaded to study a very little of the past, with a view to an understanding of the present, and to preparation for the future. That you at least, my dear sir, may be induced so to do, I propose in another letter to present for your consideration a brief view of the mode by which preparation had before the war been made for accomplishment of the ruin from which we so recently have escaped, meantime remaining, with great regard,

Yours, truly,

HENRY C. CAREY.

Hon. Henry Wilson. /

Philadelphu, Aug. 20, 1867. ^ ^

Letter Second

Before prescribing for removal of fever the skilful physician seeks to ascertain why it exists, varying his treatment with variation in the cause discovered. The quack treats all fevers alike, and kills his patients. What is true with regard to physical evil is equally so with reference to social disease, it being essential that we understand the ultimate cause of error before we write the prescription for its cure. In the case now before us you charge all our recent troubles to the existence of slavery, but your Address furnishes no answer to the previous question, Whrj had it been that slavery had so rapidly grown in poiver'} Studying the matter more carefully you will, I think, find that, like the fever, slavery had been the mere symptom, and that if you would now prevent its recurrence, if you would really and permanently establish human freedom, you must begin by eradicating the cause, just as you would remove trouble of the head by treatment of the stomach. In no other way can permanent reconstruction be secured. Of that you may rest assured.

That you, my dear sir, may arrive at a proper understanding of the ultimate cause of our recent troubles, look around you la Massachusetts and satisfy yourself that it has been precisely as pursuits have been more and more diversified, precisely as competition for the purchase of labor has increased, that the weak have been rising to a level with the strong, that the woman has been coming more near to an equality with the man, the man himself more and more acquiring the power of self-direction. Look again, and see that diversification of employment has always grown most rapidly in periods of protection against the working of the British monopoly system, and that then it has always been that the capitalist has been obliged to seek the laborer. Look then further, and see that it has been in periods of British free trade, so-called, but really monopoly, that the laborer has lost the power of self-direction and has been obliged to seek the capitalist, and then determine for yourself which has in the North proved thQ road to freedom.

Turn next south, and see that slavery had grown in power just as the land had become more and more monopolized, as the little proprietors more and more disappeared from the stage, as the laborer everywhere found himself more and more compelled to limit himself to the single pursuit of raising raw material for the supply of distant markets, the proper work of the barbarian and the slave.

and of those alone. That done, you will, as I think, better understand why it has been that freedom had tended upward in all that portion of the country that had accepted the idea of protection, and downward in those that had resisted it. There is but one road to freedom, peace, and harmony, and that is found in such diversification of pursuits as leads to enlargement of domestic commerce, and stimulation of the societary circulation.

British policy looks to arrest of tlie circulation of the world by means of compelling all raw material produced to pass through its little workshop. It is a monopoly system, and therefore it is that poverty, disease, and famine, all of which unite for the production of slavery, are chronic diseases in every country wholly subjected to British influence.

Therefore, too, has it been that British agents have been always in such close alliance with the slave-holding aristocracy of the South ; and that, throughout the late war, British public opinion has been so nearly universally on the side of the men who have publicly proclaimed that slavery was to be regarded as the proper corner-stone of all free institutions.

British free trade, industrial monopoly, and human slavery, travel together, and the man who undertakes the work of reconstruction without having first satisfied himself that such is certainly the fact, will find that he has been building on shifting sands, and must fail to produce an edifice that will be permanent. So believing, and seeing in your Address nothing that indicates a proper appreciation of the fact that it is to a diversification of our pursuits, alone, we are to look for permanent establishment of human freedom and national independence, for permanent reconstruction of the Union, I am led to ask you to accompany me in an examination of the real causes of the rebellion that is proposed now to make. Let these be ascertained, and you may then safely proceed in the great work in which you are so actively engaged, but not before. Without this you will be prescribing for permanent dissolution, and not for reconstruction.

Within the last half century, compelled thereto by the general ruin that has in each and every case resulted from permitting the advocates of pro-slavery and British monopoly ideas to dictate our course of action, we have three times sought to establish domestic commerce and thus to achieve a real independence. In each of these the country almost at once revived, commerce became active, labor came again into demand, and prosperity reigned •tliroughout the land. Throughout each and every of them, however, British money has been lavishly aj)plied to the work of teaching the vast advantage to be derived from coming again under the British yoke ; from again submitting to be compelled to make all our exchanges with the world at large in a single, distant, and diminutive market ; and from thus uniting with British traders in the work of preventing the growth of human freedom. As a consequence of these teachings, and of the constant stimulation in that direction by the advocates of human slavery as it existed in this western world, the tariffs of 1828 and 1S42 were allowed an existence of less than five years each, the general result having been, that of the last five and forty years by which the war had l)een preceded, there had been less than ten in which our ])o]icy had tended in the direction of human freedom and national independence.

Brief as had been the existence of the first of these tariffs its close found the country so far advanced in the right direction that the foreign debt, public and private, had been entirely discharged. Nevertheless, but seven years of the then re-established British monopoly system with its perpetually-recurring financial crises; its destruction of internal commerce; its annihilation of confidence; and its paralyzing effects in destroying the demand for labor; sufficed for plunging the country more deeply in debt than it ever before had been, and for making us more than ever dependent upon the chances and changes of a market tliat, more than any other, is governed by men who find their advantage in bringing about those sudden upward and downward movements by means of which they are themselves enriched, their humble dependents throughout the world being meanwhile ruined. The end in view is trading despotism, of all despotisms the most degrading to the unfortunate beings subjected to it. The name by which it is generally known is that of British free-trade — a freedom that carries with it slavery in the various forms of war, poverty, famine, and pestilence, and for emancipation from which, as has so well been proved in Ireland, its unfortunate subjects can find but a single road — that one which terminates at the grave. Of all, it is the meanest, most selfish, most soul-destroying; yet are its advocates among ourselves found among those who most profess a belief in human freedom.

Under the tariff of 1842 we resumed the road towards independence, commencing discharge of the heavy obligations incurred in the seven years of the monopoly system, and so rapid was our progress in that direction that but a single decade would have been required for the attainment of perfect emancipation. That, however, did not suit the admirers of, and believers' in, human slavery, either at home or abroad. The system was to be broken down, and to that end our farmers were assured that if they would but consent to re-establish Liverpool in its old position of centre of the Union, at which the farmer of Illinois should make all his exchanges with his neighbor of Tennessee, our grain exports would speedily count by hundreds, if not even by thou sands, of millions of dollars. The ridiculous absurdity of all such calculations now exhibits itself in the fact, that our average export to Britain of wheat and flour, for the last ten years, has been but the equivalent of little more than 10,000,000 cwts., or 10,000,000 bushels. It is, however, the business of British agents — that for which they are so well paid — to deceive and cheat our people. Should you desire new evidence to this effect, look, I pray you, to tbe fact, that the British Free-Trade League, which holds its meetings in New Tork, and which is supported by contributions of British traders, has just now refused the offer of their American opponents to institute a free discussion, by means of which all might be enabled to see both sides of the question. No journal in foreign pay ever, by any chance, permits its subscribers to see the argument in favor of industrial independence. No American journalist would hesitate for a moment to enter into any arrangement by means of which all should be enabled to see the argument pro and con on this important subject.

From the date of the re-establishment in 1846 of the British monopoly system we went steadily forward destroying the domestic commerce, increasing our dependence on Liverpool as a place of exchange with all the world, and augmenting our foreign debt, until all at once the inevitable result was reached — that of dissolution of the Union. That no other could have been arrived at will, as 1 think, be clearly obvious to you when you shall have studied the facts that will now be given.

Under the free-trade system, with its constantly increasing dependence on the most unstable and irregular market of the world, proper development of the abounding mineral wealth of the Central States was entirely impossible. As a consequence of this, nearly the whole increase of Northern population was forced to seek the prairie lands of the Northwest and West, there to employ themselves in tearing out the soil and exporting it, in the form of wheat or corn, to markets of the East, home or foreign ; and thus, as far as in their power lay, increasing competition for the sale of food, and of all other raw materials they had to sell, while increasing competition for the •purchase of iron, and all the commodities they had need to buy — that being the especial object of the monopoly system established by Britain, and now given to the world as tending to the promotion of freedom of commerce. As a further consequence, the Slave States of the Centre, unable to develop and mine their numerous and abounding ores, were compelled to send their people south; and thus did we, from day to day, increase the weight and power of the extreme North and the extreme South, while depopulating and weakening the Centre.

That you may fully understand the effects of this, and how it had been that secession had gradually become not only possible but inevitable, I pray you now to take up a railroad map of the Union, and mark the fact that all our great roads are merely spohes of a wheel ivhose huh is found in Liverpool. Those of them which have most tended to acquire strength and weight are those which have found their terminations north of Pennsylvania, and south of Virginia. With each and every stage of movement in that direction it became more and more impracticable that the two extremes could hold together, until at length they parted company in 1861. That such was the tendency of the British monopoly system, and that such must certainly be the result, had long been clearly obvioa?; to me, when, less than ten years since, I told Mr. Dallas, then in London, that dissolution of the Union would come about the time when the Capitol should be completed. In this I erred, the building being not even yet quite finished. Whether or not, when it shall be so, it will be the Capitol of all the existing States, is very doubtful. Without a decided change of policy it certainly will not, the centrifugal force of the system now advocated by Massachusetts being too great to defy resistance.

What is it, my dear sir, that now so closely binds together the New England States ? Is it not their networh of roads. Could they now by any possibility be torn asunder ? Certainly not. Could there be any difficulty in accomplishing this were there but two great parallel roads leading through Boston and Portland to Liverpool ? Not in the least. Sectionalism would then be as rife in New England as it has been throughout the extreme south and extreme north. Mr. Lincoln saw clearly that the Mississippi was the cross-tie that had held the Union together, and therefore did he urge the making of another through. the hills, recommending a road that should pass through Kentucky and East Tennessee. Congress refused the little aid that had been asked for, yet did it never hesitate at granting enormous quantities of land in aid of roads across the continent. So long as our legislation on all economic subjects shall continue to be sectional in its tendencies it is wholly vain to hope for permanent reconstruction. Had Mr. Lincoln's advice been taken, Kentucky would now, in all probability, be a republican State.

Having thus shown the sectional and pro-slavery tendencies of the British monopoly system, I propose now to ask your attention to the manner in which construction has been elsewhere accomplished, believing that when this shall have been properly understood there will be less difficulty about measures of reconstruction. I remain yours, &c.,

HENRY C. CAREY.

Hon. Henry Wilson.

Philadelphia, Aug., 1867.

Letter Third

Ten years since I expressed the belief that Germany, whose " national sin for the last two centuries," according to Chevalier Bunsen, " had been poverty, the condition of all classes, with few exceptions" — Germany, which thirty years before had been held to be immensely overpopulated — then already stood " first in Europe in point of intellectual development," and was " advancing in the physical and moral condition of her people with a rapidity exceeding that of any other portion of the Eastern hemisphere."

Since then, an empire has been constructed embracing a ]iopulation little short of 40,000,000, among whom education is universal ; with a system of communications not excelled by that of any other country, with the exception of those provided for the very dense populations and limited territories of England and of Belgium; with an internal commerce as perfectly organized as any in the world, and growing from day to day with extraordinary rapidity ; with a markef on the land for nearly all its products, and, as a necessary consequence, with an agricultural population that grows daily in both intelligence and power ; with a mercantile marine that now numbers more than 10,000 vessels ; with a public treasury so well provided that not only has the late war left no debt behiud, but that it has been at once enabled to make large additions to the provision for public education ;* and with private treasuries so well supplied as to enable her people not only with their own means to build their own furnaces and factories and construct their own roads, but also to furnish hundreds of millions to the improvident people of America, to be by them applied to the making of roads in a country the abundance of whose natural resources should long since have placed it in the position of money lender, rather than that now occupied of general money borrower.

The course of things on the two sides of the Atlantic has thus, as we see, been entirely different. On the one side there has been

* " Shocked as the Chamber was at the extent of the Budget, yet the Liberal party received with applause the auuouneeuient that a half million thalers was expended in order tp increase the salaries of the teachers in the public schools. 200,000 thalers were devoted especially to the teachers of primary schools, a small sum, it will be said, for the teachers of a uatiou of twenty millions ; but the sum, in relation to the end proposed, is not so email as it at lirst sight seems. The primary schools are exclusively connected with the communities, and must be tolerably well maintained by the latter. And this sum is appropriated only to those communities which are too poor to pay the teachers sufficiently." — Tribune CorresjioitJ.nce.

a quiet and peaceful movement that has ended in constnictio7i. On the other a constant series of f^uds, that has resulted in a need for reconstruction. Why it is that results so widely different have been obtained I propose now to show you.

Five and thirty years since, Germany and the American Union exhibited states of things directly antagonistic, the one to the other. The first was divided and disturbed, its internal commerce in every way embarrassed, its people and its various governments very poor, and with little hope in the future except that which resulted from the fact that negotiations were then on foot for the formation of a Customs Union, which shortly after was accomplished. In the other everything was different, the internal commerce having been more active than had ever before been known, the public treasury filled to overfiowing, the national debt on the eve of extinction, and capital so much abounding as to make demand, for the opening of mines, the building of houses and mills, and the construction of roads, for all the labor power of a people that then numbered thirteen millions.

The cause of these remarkable differences was to be found in the facts, that, up to that time, Germany had wholly failed to adopt such measures of co-ordination as were needed for establishing rapidity of circulation among the 30,000,000, of which her society was then composed ; whereas Congress had, four years before, and for the first time, adopted measures having for their object development of all the powers, physical, mental, or moral, of its population, all the wealth of its soil, and all the wonderful mineral deposits by which that soil was known to be underlaid. The one had failed to bring together the producer and consumer of food and wool, and had remained dependent upon traders in distant markets. The other had decided that such dependence should, at no distant time, come to an end ; that producers and consumers should be brought together ; and there had thence already resulted an activity of circulation and an improvement in physical and moral condition, the like of which had never before been known to be accomplished in so brief a period.