FROM THE SECOND SPEECH ON THE SUB-TREASURY, DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF
THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 12th OF MARCH, 1838.
Now, Mr. President, what I understand by the credit system is, that
which thus connects labor and capital, by giving to labor the use of
capital. In other words, intelligence, good character, and good morals
bestow on those who have not capital a power, a trust, a confidence,
which enables them to obtain it, and to employ it usefully for
themselves and others. These active men of business build their hopes of
success on their attentiveness, their economy, and their integrity. A
wider theatre for useful activity is under their feet, and around them,
than was ever open to the young and enterprising generations of men, on
any other spot enlightened by the sun. Before them is the ocean. Every
thing in that direction invites them to efforts of enterprise and
industry in the pursuits of commerce and the fisheries. Around them, on
all hands, are thriving and prosperous manufactures, an improving
agriculture, and the daily presentation of new objects of internal
improvement; while behind them is almost half a continent of the richest
land, at the cheapest prices, under healthful climates, and washed by
the most magnificent rivers that on any part of the globe pay their
homage to the sea. In the midst of all these glowing and glorious
prospects, they are neither restrained by ignorance, nor smitten down by
the penury of personal circumstances. They are not compelled to
contemplate, in hopelessness and despair, all the advantages thus
bestowed on their condition by Providence. Capital they may have little
or none, but CREDIT supplies its place; not as the refuge of the
prodigal and the reckless; not as gratifying present wants with the
certainty of future absolute ruin; but as the genius of honorable trust
and confidence; as the blessing voluntarily offered to good character
and to good conduct as the beneficent agent, which assists honesty and
enterprise in obtaining comfort and independence.
Mr. President, take away this credit, and what remains? I do not ask
what remains to the few, but to the many? Take away this system of
credit, and then tell me what is left for labor and industry, but mere
manual toil and daily drudgery? If we adopt a system that withdraws
capital from active employment, do we not diminish the rate of wages? If
we curtail the general business of society, does not every laboring man
find his condition grow daily worse? In the politics of the day, Sir, we
hear much said about divorcing the government from the banks; but when
we abolish credit, we shall divorce labor from capital; and depend upon
it, Sir, when we divorce labor from capital, capital is hoarded, and
labor starves.
The declaration so often quoted, that "all who trade on borrowed capital
ought to break," is the most aristocratic sentiment ever uttered in this
country. It is a sentiment which, if carried out by political
arrangement, would condemn the great majority of mankind to the
perpetual condition of mere day-laborers. It tends to take away from
them all that solace and hope which arise from possessing something
which they can call their own. A man loves his own; it is fit and
natural that he should do so; and he will love his country and its
institutions, if he have some stake in that country, although it be but
a very small part of the general mass of property. If it be but a
cottage, an acre, a garden, its possession raises him, gives him
self-respect, and strengthens his attachment to his native land. It is
our happy condition, by the blessing of Providence, that almost every
man of sound health, industrious habits, and good morals, can ordinarily
attain, at least, to this degree of comfort and respectability; and it
is a result devoutly to be wished, both for its individual and its
general consequences.
But even to this degree of acquisition that credit of which I have
already said so much is highly important, since its general effect is to
raise the price of wages, and render industry productive. There is no
condition so low, if it be attended with industry and economy, that it
is not benefited by credit, as any one will find, if he will examine and
follow out its operations.
Sir, if there be any aristocrats in Massachusetts, the people are all
aristocrats; because I do not believe there is on earth, in a highly
civilized society, a greater equality in the condition of men than
exists there. If there be a man in the State who maintains what is
called an equipage, has servants in livery, or drives four horses in his
coach, I am not acquainted with him. On the other hand, there are few
who are not able to carry their wives and daughters to church in some
decent conveyance. It is no matter of regret or sorrow to us that few
are very rich; but it is our pride and glory that few are very poor. It
is our still higher pride, and our just boast, as I think, that all her
citizens possess means of intelligence and education, and that, of all
her productions, she reckons among the very chiefest those which spring
from the culture of the mind and the heart.
Mr. President, one of the most striking characteristics of this age in
the extraordinary progress which it has witnessed in popular knowledge.
A new and powerful impulse has been acting in the social system of late,
producing this effect in a most remarkable degree. In morals, in
politics, in art, in literature, there is a vast accession to the number
of readers and to the number of proficients. The present state of
popular knowledge is not the result of a slow and uniform progress,
proceeding through a lapse of years, with the same regular degree of
motion. It is evidently the result of some new causes, brought into
powerful action, and producing their consequences rapidly and
strikingly. What, Sir, are these causes?
This is not an occasion, Sir, for discussing such a question at length;
allow me to say, however, that the improved state of popular knowledge
is but the necessary result of the improved condition of the great mass
of the people. Knowledge is not one of our merely physical wants. Life
may be sustained without it. But, in order to live, men must be fed and
clothed and sheltered; and in a state of things in which one's whole
labor can do no more than procure clothes, food, and shelter, he can
have no time nor means for mental improvement. Knowledge, therefore, is
not attained, and cannot be attained, till there is some degree of
respite from daily manual toil and never-ending drudgery. Whenever a
less degree of labor will produce the absolute necessaries of life, then
there come leisure and means both to teach and to learn.
If this great and wonderful extension of popular knowledge be the result
of an improved condition, it may, in the next place, well be asked, What
are the causes which have thus suddenly produced that great improvement?
How is it that the means of food, clothing, and shelter are now so much
more cheaply and abundantly procured than formerly? Sir, the main cause
I take to be the progress of scientific art, or a new extension of the
application of science to art. This it is which has so much
distinguished the last half-century in Europe and in America, and its
effects are everywhere visible, and especially among us. Man has found
new allies and auxiliaries in the powers of nature and in the inventions
of mechanism.
The general doctrine of political economy is, that wealth consists in
whatever is useful or convenient to man, and that labor is the producing
cause of all this wealth. This is very true. But, then, what is labor?
In the sense of political writers, and in common language, it means
human industry; in a philosophical view, it may receive a much more
comprehensive meaning. It is not, in that view, human toil only, the
mere action of thews and muscles; but it is any active agency which,
working upon the materials with which the world is supplied, brings
forth products useful or convenient to man. The materials of wealth are
in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
Labor obtains these materials, works upon them, and fashions them to
human use. Now it has been the object of scientific art, or of the
application of science to art, to increase this active agency, to
augment its power, by creating millions of laborers in the form of
machines all but automatic, all to be diligently employed and kept at
work by the force of natural powers. To this end these natural powers,
principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken
into human employment. Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the
mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and
workshops, are but so many laborers. They are usually denominated
labor-_saving_ machines, but it would be more just to call them
labor-_doing_ machines. They are made to be active agents; to have
motion, and to produce effect; and though without intelligence, they are
guided by laws of science, which are exact and perfect, and they produce
results, therefore, in general, more accurate than the human hand is
capable of producing. When we look upon one of these, we behold a mute
fellow-laborer, of immense power, of mathematical exactness, and of
ever-during and unwearied effort. And while he is thus a most skilful
and productive laborer, he is a non-consumer, at least beyond the wants
of his mechanical being. He is not clamorous for food, raiment, or
shelter, and makes no demands for the expenses of education. The eating
and drinking, the reading and writing, and the clothes-wearing world,
are benefited by the labors of these co-operatives, in the same way as
if Providence had provided for their service millions of beings, like
ourselves in external appearance, able to labor and to toil, and yet
requiring little or nothing for their own consumption or subsistence; or
rather, as if Providence had created a race of giants, each of whom,
demanding no more for his support and consumption than a common laborer,
should yet be able to perform the work of a hundred.
Now, Sir, turn back to the Massachusetts tables of production, and you
will see that it is these automatic allies and co-operators, and these
powers of nature, thus employed and placed under human direction, which
have come, with such prodigious effect, to man's aid, in the great
business of procuring the means of living, of comfort, and of wealth,
and which have so swollen the products of her skilful industry. Look at
these tables once more, Sir, and you will see the effects of labor,
united with and acting upon capital. Look yet again, and you will see
that credit, mutual trust, prompt and punctual dealings, and commercial
confidence, are all mixed up as indispensable elements in the general
system.
I will ask you to look yet once more, Sir, and you will perceive that
general competence, great equality in human condition, a degree of
popular knowledge and intelligence nowhere surpassed, if anywhere
equalled, the prevalence of good moral sentiment, and extraordinary
general prosperity, are the result of the whole. Sir, I have done with
Massachusetts. I do not praise the old "Bay State" of the Revolution; I
only present her as she is.
Mr. President, such is the state of things actually existing in the
country, and of which I have now given you a sample. And yet there are
persons who constantly clamor against this state of things. They call it
aristocracy. They excite the poor to make war upon the rich, while in
truth they know not who are either rich or poor. They complain of
oppression, speculation, and the pernicious influence of accumulated
wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and all
the means by which small capitals become united, in order to produce
important and beneficial results. They carry on a mad hostility against
all established institutions. They would choke up the fountains of
industry, and dry all its streams.
In a country of unbounded liberty, they clamor against oppression. In a
country of perfect equality, they would move heaven and earth against
privilege and monopoly. In a country where property is more equally
divided than anywhere else, they rend the air with the shouting of
agrarian doctrines. In a country where the wages of labor are high
beyond all parallel, and where lands are cheap, and the means of living
low, they would teach the laborer that he is but an oppressed slave.
Sir, what can such men want? What do they mean? They can want nothing,
Sir, but to enjoy the fruits of other men's labor. They can mean nothing
but disturbance and disorder, the diffusion of corrupt principles, and
the destruction of the moral sentiments and moral habits of society. A
licentiousness of feeling and of action is sometimes produced by
prosperity itself. Men cannot always resist the temptation to which they
are exposed by the very abundance of the bounties of Providence, and the
very happiness of their own condition; as the steed, full of the
pasture, will sometimes throw himself against its enclosures, break away
from its confinement, and, feeling now free from needless restraint,
betake himself to the moors and barrens, where want, erelong, brings him
to his senses, and starvation and death close his career.