They fetch and carry between the other classes. These are distributors;
they are the Merchants. Under this name I include the whole class who
live by buying and selling, and not merely those conventionally called
merchants, to distinguish them from small dealers. This term comprises
traders behind counters and traders behind desks; traders neither behind
counters nor desks.
There are various grades of merchants. They might be classed and
symbolized according as they use a basket, a wheelbarrow, a cart, a
stall, a booth, a shop, a warehouse, counting-room, or bank. Still all
are the same thing--men who live by buying and selling. A ship is only a
large basket, a warehouse, a costly stall. Your peddler is a small
merchant going round from house to house with his basket to mediate
between persons; your merchant only a great peddler sending round from
land to land with his ships to mediate between nations. The Israelitish
woman who sits behind a bench in her stall on the Rialto at Venice,
changing gold into silver and copper, or loaning money to him who leaves
hat, coat, and other collaterals in pledge, is a small banker. The
Israelitish man who sits at Frankfort on the Maine, changes drafts into
specie, and lends millions to men who leave in pledge a mortgage on the
States of the Church, Austria or Russia--is a pawnbroker and
money-changer on a large scale. By this arithmetic, for present
convenience, all grades of merchants are reduced to one
denomination--men who live by buying and selling.
All these four classes run into one another. The same man may belong to
all at the same time. All are needed. At home a merchant is a mediator
to go between the producer and the manufacturer; between both and the
consumer. On a large scale he is the mediator who goes between
continents, between producing and manufacturing States, between both and
consuming countries. The calling is founded in the state of society, as
that in a compromise between man's permanent nature and transient
condition. So long as there are producers and consumers, there must be
distributors. The value of the calling depends on its importance; its
usefulness is the measure of its respectability. The most useful calling
must be the noblest. If it is difficult, demanding great ability and
self-sacrifice, it is yet more noble. A useless calling is disgraceful;
one that injures mankind--infamous. Tried by this standard, the
producers seem nobler than the distributors; they than the mere
consumers. This may not be the popular judgment now, but must one day
become so, for mankind is slowly learning to judge by the natural law
published by Jesus--that he who would be greatest of all, must be most
effectively the servant of all.
There are some who do not seem to belong to any of the active classes,
who are yet producers, manufacturers, and distributors by their head,
more than their hand; men who have fertile heads, producers,
manufacturers, and distributors of thought, active in the most creative
way. Here, however, the common rule is inverted: the producers are
few--men of genius; the manufacturers many--men of talent; the
distributors--men of tact, men who remember, and talk with tongue or
pen, their name is legion. I will not stop to distribute them into their
classes, but return to the merchant.
The calling of the merchant acquires a new importance in modern times.
Once nations were cooped up, each in its own country and language. Then
war was the only mediator between them. They met but on the
battle-field, or in solemn embassies to treat for peace. Now trade is
the mediator. They meet on the exchange. To the merchant, no man who can
trade is a foreigner. His wares prove him a citizen. Gold and silver are
cosmopolitan. Once, in some of the old governments, the magistrates
swore, "I will be evil-minded towards the people, and will devise
against them the worst thing I can." Now they swear to keep the laws
which the people have made. Once the great question was, How large is
the standing army? Now, What is the amount of the national earnings?
Statesmen ask less about the ships of the line, than about the ships of
trade. They fear an over-importation oftener than a war, and settle
their difficulties in gold and silver, not as before with iron. All
ancient states were military; the modern mercantile. War is getting out
of favor as property increases and men get their eyes open. Once every
man feared death, captivity, or at least robbery in war; now the worst
fear is of bankruptcy and pauperism.
This is a wonderful change. Look at some of the signs thereof. Once
castles and forts were the finest buildings; now exchanges, shops,
custom-houses, and banks. Once men built a Chinese wall to keep out the
strangers--for stranger and foe were the same; now men build railroads
and steamships to bring them in. England was once a strong-hold of
robbers, her four seas but so many castle-moats; now she is a great
harbor with four ship-channels. Once her chief must be a bold, cunning
fighter; now a good steward and financier. Not to strike a hard blow,
but to make a good bargain is the thing. Formerly the most enterprising
and hopeful young men sought fame and fortune in deeds of arms; now an
army is only a common sewer, and most of those who go to the war, if
they never return, "have left their country for their country's good."
In days gone by, constructive art could build nothing better than
hanging gardens, and the pyramids--foolishly sublime; now it makes
docks, canals, iron roads and magnetic telegraphs. Saint Louis, in his
old age, got up a crusade, and saw his soldiers die of the fever at
Tunis; now the King of the French sets up a factory, and will clothe his
people in his own cottons and woollens. The old Douglas and Percy were
clad in iron, and harried the land on both sides of the Tweed; their
descendants now are civil-suited men who keep the peace. No girl
trembles, though "All the blue bonnets are over the border." The warrior
has become a shopkeeper.
"Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt;
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings."
Of merchants there are three classes.
I. Merchant-producers, who deal in labor applied to the direct creation
of new material. They buy labor and land, to sell them in corn, cotton,
coal, timber, salt, and iron.
II. Merchant-manufacturers, who deal in labor applied to transforming
that material. They buy labor, wool, cotton, silk, water-privileges and
steam-power, to sell them all in finished cloth.
III. Merchant-traders, who simply distribute the article raised or
manufactured. These three divisions I shall speak of as one body.
Property is accumulated labor; wealth or riches a great deal of
accumulated labor. As a general rule, merchants are the only men who
become what we call rich. There are exceptions, but they are rare, and
do not affect the remarks which are to follow. It is seldom that a man
becomes rich by his own labor employed in producing or manufacturing. It
is only by using other men's labor that any one becomes rich. A man's
hands will give him sustenance, not affluence. In the present condition
of society this is unavoidable; I do not say in a normal condition, but
in the present condition.
* * * * *
Here in America the position of this class is the most powerful and
commanding in society. They own most of the property of the nation. The
wealthy men are of this class; in practical skill, administrative
talent, in power to make use of the labor of other men, they surpass all
others. Now, wealth is power, and skill is power--both to a degree
unknown before. This skill and wealth are more powerful with us than any
other people, for there is no privileged caste, priest, king, or noble,
to balance against them. The strong hand has given way to the able and
accomplished head. Once head armor was worn on the outside, and of
brass, now it is internal and of brains.
To this class belongs the power both of skill and of wealth, and all the
advantages which they bring. It was never so before in the whole history
of man. It is more so in the United States than in any other place. I
know the high position of the merchants in Venice, Pisa, Florence,
Nuremberg and Basel, in the middle ages and since. Those cities were
gardens in a wilderness, but a fringe of soldiers hung round their
turreted walls; the trader was dependent on the fighter, and though
their merchants became princes, they were yet indebted to the sword, and
not entirely to their calling, for defence. Their palaces were half
castles, and their ships full of armed men. Besides those were little
States. Here the merchant's power is wholly in his gold and skill. Rome
is the city of priests; Vienna for nobles; Berlin for scholars; the
American cities for merchants. In Italy the roads are poor, the
banking-houses humble; the cots of the laborer mean and bare, but
churches and palaces are beautiful and rich. God is painted as a pope.
Generally in Europe, the clergy, the soldiers, and the nobles are the
controlling class. The finest works of art belong to them, represent
them, and have come from the corporation of priests, or the corporation
of fighters. Here a new era is getting symbolized in our works of art.
They are banks, exchanges, custom-houses, factories, railroads. These
come of the corporation of merchants; trade is the great thing. Nobody
tries to secure the favor of the army or navy--but of the merchants.
Once there was a permanent class of fighters. Their influence was
supreme. They had the power of strong arms, of disciplined valor, and
carried all before them. They made the law and broke it. Men complained,
grumbling in their beard, but got no redress. They it was that possessed
the wealth of the land. The producer, the manufacturer, the distributor
could not get rich: only the soldier, the armed thief, the robber. With
wealth they got its power; by practice gained knowledge, and so the
power thereof; or, when that failed, bought it of the clergy, the only
class possessing literary and scientific skill. They made their calling
"noble," and founded the aristocracy of soldiers. Young men of talent
took to arms. Trade was despised and labor was menial. Their science is
at this day the science of kings. When graziers travel they look at
cattle; weavers at factories; philanthropists at hospitals; dandies at
their equals and coadjutors; and kings at armies. Those fighters made
the world think that soldiers were our first men, and murder of their
brothers the noblest craft in the world; the only honorable and manly
calling. The butcher of swine and oxen was counted vulgar--the butcher
of men and women great and honorable. Foolish men of the past think so
now; hence their terror at orations against war; hence their admiration
for a red coat; their zeal for some symbol of blood in their family
arms; hence their ambition for military titles when abroad. Most foolish
men are more proud of their ambiguous Norman ancestor who fought at the
battle of Hastings--or fought not--than of all the honest mechanics and
farmers who have since ripened on the family tree. The day of the
soldiers is well-nigh over. The calling brings low wages and no honor.
It opens with us no field for ambition. A passage of arms is a passage
that leads to nothing. That class did their duty at that time. They
founded the aristocracy of soldiers--their symbol the sword. Mankind
would not stop there. Then came a milder age and established the
aristocracy of birth--its symbol the cradle, for the only merit of that
sort of nobility, and so its only distinction, is to have been born. But
mankind who stopped not at the sword, delays but little longer at the
cradle; leaping forward it founds a third order of nobility, the
aristocracy of gold, its symbol the purse. We have got no further on.
Shall we stop there? There comes a to-morrow after every to-day, and no
child of time is just like the last. The aristocracy of gold has faults
enough, no doubt, this feudalism of the nineteenth century. But it is
the best thing of its kind we have had yet; the wisest, the most human.
We are going forward and not back. God only knows when we shall stop,
and where. Surely not now, nor here.
Now the merchants in America occupy the place which was once held by the
fighters and next by the nobles. In our country we have balanced into
harmony the centripetal power of the government, and the centrifugal
power of the people: so have national unity of action, and individual
variety of action--personal freedom. Therefore a vast amount of talent
is active here which lies latent in other countries, because that
harmony is not established there. Here the army and navy offer few
inducements to able and aspiring young men. They are fled to as the last
resort of the desperate, or else sought for their traditional glory, not
their present value. In Europe, the army, the navy, the parliament or
the court, the church and the learned professions offer brilliant prizes
to ambitious men. Thither flock the able and the daring. Here such men
go into trade. It is better for a man to have set up a mill than to have
won a battle. I deny not the exceptions. I speak only of the general
rule. Commerce and manufactures offer the most brilliant
rewards--wealth, and all it brings. Accordingly the ablest men go into
the class of merchants. The strongest men in Boston, taken as a body,
are not lawyers, doctors, clergymen, book-wrights, but merchants. I deny
not the presence of distinguished ability in each of those professions;
I am now again only speaking of the general rule. I deny not the
presence of very weak men, exceedingly weak in this class; their money
their only source of power.
The merchants then are the prominent class; the most respectable, the
most powerful. They know their power, but are not yet fully aware of
their formidable and noble position at the head of the nation. Hence
they are often ashamed of their calling; while their calling is the
source of their wealth, their knowledge, and their power, and should be
their boast and their glory. You see signs of this ignorance and this
shame: there must not be shops under your Athenaeum, it would not be in
good taste; you may store tobacco, cider, rum, under the churches, out
of sight, you must have no shop there; it would be vulgar. It is not
thought needful, perhaps not proper, for the merchant's wife and
daughter to understand business, it would not be becoming. Many are
ashamed of their calling, and, becoming rich, paint on the doors of
their coach, and engrave on their seal, some lion, griffin, or unicorn,
with partisans and maces to suit; arms they have no right to, perhaps
have stolen out of some book of heraldry. No man paints thereon a box of
sugar, or figs, or candles couchant; a bale of cotton rampant; an axe, a
lapstone, or a shoe hammer saltant. Yet these would be noble, and
Christian withal. The fighters gloried in their horrid craft, and so
made it pass for noble, but with us a great many men would be thought
"the tenth transmitter of a foolish face," rather than honest artists of
their own fortune; prouder of being born than of having lived never so
manfully.
In virtue of its strength and position, this class is the controlling
one in politics. It mainly enacts the laws of this State and the nation;
makes them serve its turn. Acting consciously or without consciousness,
it buys up legislators when they are in the market; breeds them when the
market is bare. It can manufacture governors, senators, judges, to suit
its purposes, as easily as it can make cotton cloth. It pays them money
and honors; pays them for doing its work, not another's. It is fairly
and faithfully represented by them. Our popular legislators are made in
its image; represent its wisdom, foresight, patriotism and conscience.
Your Congress is its mirror.
This class is the controlling one in the churches, none the less, for
with us fortunately the churches have no existence independent of the
wealth and knowledge of the people. In the same way it buys up the
clergymen, hunting them out all over the land; the clergymen who will do
its work, putting them in comfortable places. It drives off such as
interfere with its work, saying, "Go starve, you and your children!" It
raises or manufactures others to suit its taste.
The merchants build mainly the churches, endow theological schools; they
furnish the material sinews of the church. Hence the metropolitan
churches are in general as much commercial as the shops.
* * * * *
Now from this position, there come certain peculiar temptations. One is
to an extravagant desire of wealth. They see that money is power, the
most condensed and flexible form thereof. It is always ready; it will
turn any way. They see that it gives advantages to their children which
nothing else will give. The poor man's son, however well born,
struggling for a superior education, obtains his culture at a monstrous
cost; with the sacrifice of pleasure, comfort, the joys of youth, often
of eyesight and health. He must do two men's work at once--learn and
teach at the same time. He learns all by his soul, nothing from his
circumstances. If he have not an iron body as well as an iron head, he
dies in that experiment of the cross. The land is full of poor men who
have attained a superior culture, but carry a crippled body through all
their life. The rich man's son needs not that terrible trial. He learns
from his circumstances, not his soul. The air about him contains a
diffused element of thought. He learns without knowing it. Colleges open
their doors; accomplished teachers stand ready; science and art, music
and literature, come at the rich man's call. All the outward means of
educating, refining, elevating a child, are to be had for money, and for
money alone.
Then, too, wealth gives men a social position, which nothing else save
the rarest genius can obtain, and which that, in the majority of cases
lacking the commercial conscience, is sure not to get. Many men prize
this social rank above every thing else, even above justice and a life
unstained.
Since it thus gives power, culture for one's children, and a
distinguished social position, rank amongst men, for the man and his
child after him, there is a temptation to regard money as the great
object of life, not a means but an end; the thing a man is to get even
at the risk of getting nothing else. It "answereth all things." Here and
there you find a man who has got nothing else. Men say of such an one,
"He is worth a million!" There is a terrible sarcasm in common speech,
which all do not see. He is "worth a million," and that is all; not
worth truth, goodness, piety; not worth a man. I must say, I cannot but
think there are many such amongst us. Most rich men, I am told, have
mainly gained wealth by skill, foresight, industry, economy, by
honorable painstaking, not by trick. It may be so. I hope it is. Still
there is a temptation to count wealth the object of life--the thing to
be had if they have nothing else.
The next temptation is to think any means justifiable which lead to that
end,--the temptation to fraud, deceit, to lying in its various forms,
active and passive; the temptation to abuse the power of this natural
strength, or acquired position, to tyrannize over the weak, to get and
not give an equivalent for what they get. If a man get from the world
more than he gives an equivalent for, to that extent he is a beggar and
gets charity, or a thief and steals; at any rate, the rest of the world
is so much the poorer for him. The temptation to fraud of this sort, in
some of its many forms, is very great. I do not believe that all trade
must be gambling or trickery, the merchant a knave or a gambler. I know
some men say so. But I do not believe it. I know it is not so now; all
actual trade, and profitable too, is not knavery. I know some become
rich by deceit. I cannot but think these are the exceptions; that the
most successful have had the average honesty and benevolence, with more
than the average industry, foresight, prudence and skill. A man foresees
future wants of his fellows, and provides for them; sees new resources
hitherto undeveloped, anticipates new habits and wants; turns wood,
stone, iron, coal, rivers and mountains to human use, and honestly earns
what he takes. I am told, by some of their number, that the merchants of
this place rank high as men of integrity and honor, above mean cunning,
but enterprising, industrious and far-sighted. In comparison with some
other places, I suppose it is true. Still I must admit the temptation to
fraud is a great one; that it is often yielded to. Few go to a great
extreme of deceit--they are known and exposed: but many to a
considerable degree. He that makes haste to be rich is seldom innocent.
Young men say it is hard to be honest; to do by others as you would wish
them to do by you. I know it need not be so. Would not a reputation for
uprightness and truth be a good capital for any man, old or young?
This class owns the machinery of society, in great measure,--the ships,
factories, shops, water privileges, houses and the like. This brings
into their employment large masses of working men, with no capital but
muscles or skill. The law leaves the employed at the employer's mercy.
Perhaps this is unavoidable. One wishes to sell his work dear, the other
to get it cheap as he can. It seems to me no law can regulate this
matter, only conscience, reason, the Christianity of the two parties.
One class is strong, the other weak. In all encounters of these two, on
the field of battle, or in the market-place, we know the result: the
weaker is driven to the wall. When the earthen and iron vessel strike
together, we know beforehand which will go to pieces. The weaker class
can seldom tell their tale, so their story gets often suppressed in the
world's literature, and told only in outbreaks and revolutions. Still
the bold men who wrote the Bible, Old Testament and New, have told
truths on this theme which others dared not tell--terrible words which
it will take ages of Christianity to expunge from the world's memory.