Today in History-- Death of Henry C. Carey, October 13 1879. Lincoln's leading Anti-Slavery Economist Whom You've Never Heard Of

 "To British free trade it is, as I have shown, that we stand indebted for the present Civil War. Had our legislation been of the kind which was needed for giving effect to the Declaration of Independence, that great hill region of the South, one of the richest, if not absolutely the richest in the world, would long since have been filled with furnaces and factories, the labourers within which would have been free men, and women, white and black, and the several portions of the Union would been linked together by hooks of steel that would have set at defiance every effort of the "wealthy capitalists" of England for bringing about a separation. Such, however and most unhappily, was not our course of operation." 

--letter from Henry C. Carey to Schuyler Colfax, "How to Outdo England" Jan 9, 1865

Henry C. Carey,  (December 15, 1793 – October 13, 1879) was the leading^[1] 19th-century economist of the American School of capitalism, and chief economic adviser to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Carey is best known for the book The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial (1851), which denigrates the "British System" of laissez faire free trade capitalism in comparison to the American System of developmental capitalism, which uses tariff protection and government intervention to encourage production and national self-sufficiency.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1793, Carey was the son of Mathew Carey (1760–1839), an influential economist, political reformer, editor, and publisher. Mathew Carey was born in Dublin, Ireland but emigrated to Philadelphia in 1784, where with the help of Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette he founded a publishing firm. Among his many writings was Essays on Political Economy (1822), one of the earliest American treatises favoring Alexander Hamilton's idea of protection and its use in the promotion of American industry.^[2]

In 1825, Carey succeeded his father in the publishing firm, which became Carey & Lea, attaining a leading position in America. In 1835, Carey co-founded the famous Franklin Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia.^[2]

--Wikipedia

Mathew Carey, Henry's father, was the actual protegee of Benjamin Franklin, and was a key figure in continuing his legacy of Scientific pursuits, civic improvements, high standards for public education, (the opposite of the privatized system promoted by Betsy DeVos today) the promotion of the Arts, and the development of steam power and rail. Additionally, as the inheritor of Franklin's print shop, he published the leading scientific, philosophical and literary journals and books of the day. When German Scientist and Naturalist Wilhelm von Humboldt surveyed South and Central America, he came to Philadelphia to have Carey print the first accurate maps of Brazil and its Amazon River System.  

He was also co-founder of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, in conjunction with Matthias Baldwin, the founder of Baldwin Locomotive who produced the rail cars for the Pennsylvania railroad, and exported them to America's new Allies in Russia and later Japan. (picture below of a Baldwin Engine at Franklin Institute)

Mathew Carey, as an Irish immigrant and student of Franklin, understood more than most the malignant and destructive "Free Trade" policies of the British Empire System. He fought this ideology and their murderous propagandists such as Adam Smith, and Thomas Malthus, who were the paid apologists for genocidal Colonial policies imposed on Ireland, India, and throughout the British dominions. He was at the center of the ongoing fight against the anti-industrial Plantation based economic policies of the British allied Slaveowners of the South, and the evil system whose Cotton based "cash crop" economy served the purposes of our historic adversaries in London. He was the key figure in fighting for the "American System" of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, whose policies of a National Bank, Protective Tariffs, and Internal Improvements, became the standard of Kentucky's Henry Clay, his political protegee Abraham Lincoln, and later, Lincoln's top economic advisor, his Son, Henry. 

In a previous article written by me on the legacy of Alexander Hamilton, I make the point that had Hamilton not been murdered by traitor and British Spy, Aaron Burr, he would have been President, changing the course of the entire 19th Century. The system of Slavery would have been ended far sooner, and the Civil War never been. The quote at the top from Henry C. Carey alludes to that, and is absolutely valid. 

 

more from Wikipedia--

"Carey's first large work on political economy was preceded and followed by many smaller volumes on wages, the credit system, interest, slavery, copyright, etc.; and in 1858–1859 he gathered the fruits of his lifelong labours into The Principles of Social Science, in three volumes. Principles is a comprehensive and mature exposition of his views. In it, Carey sought to show that there exists, independently of human wills, a natural system of economic laws, which is essentially beneficent and spontaneously increases prosperity of the whole community, and especially of the working classes, except when it is impeded by the ignorance or perversity of humankind.^[2] He bases its economy on Colbert system, system protecting manufactures helping farms with roads.

He rejected the Malthusian doctrine of population, maintaining that the only situation in which the means of subsistence will determine population growth is one in which a given society is not introducing new technologies or not adopting forward-thinking governmental policy. Population regulated itself in every well-governed society, but its pressure on subsistence characterized the lower stages of civilization. Carey denied as the universal truth, for all stages of cultivation, of the law of diminishing returns from land".

One of the most important concepts developed by Henry Carey was in his work, "The Harmony of Interests", in which he overturned the axioms of both British unfettered Free Market Capitalism, and its false dichotomy with the Marxist dialectical materialists, by arguing that there is no inherent conflict between capital and labor. He argued that the so-called "class war" was an artificial creation, a division through which Oligarchical systems maintained their grip on wealth through manufactured social conflict. He showed how a nation governed by the principles of a self-governing Democratic Republic could develop policies in the common interest of all. These policies would be consistent with the Constitution's Preamble, and the "General Welfare" clause. 

Carey knew, as did Lincoln, that the United States had to put an end to Slavery and all of its political and economic manifestations. He understood and fought for the idea that the Plantation System of the Southern States was the continuing legacy of the British Empire System which had imposed its murderous policies on a good part of the world, through their Opium trading British East India Company in India and China. The Empire thrived on exploiting cheap labor and slaves, and extracting raw materials and agricultural commodities. 

Carey knew as well that Britain had a Fifth column in the US, which was committed to perpetuating slavery, and maintaining their relationship with the British. It was this knowledge which informed Carey and Lincoln to break the grip of British linked financiers in Wall Street over the currency and credit of the US. Lincoln, like his mentors Henry Clay and Mathew Carey favored a National Bank, but due to the exigencies of the War, didn't have the political leverage or time to create one, so he brought in Henry Carey as his advisor. It was Carey who advised Lincoln on his creation of the "Greenback" dollar, a special issue of currency earmarked for making credit available for the necessary agricultural and manufactured goods production needed to support the war effort. 

One question which should come to the mind of the reader is, "why have I not heard of this man"? I would say to you that one of our problems today is that that the interest in History has lessened, due to the popular culture "Zeitgeist" of "living in the moment."  Secondly, the wealthy Oligarchs who endow our Universities and Academia find the work of Carey inconvenient, and have actively sought to underplay or suppress his work. So, they will choose to back the right wing Chicago School instead and promote Adam Smith, in opposition to Carey, along with think tanks and others among their favored bastions of neo-conservative monetarism. "Why would they need to do that"?, one might ask. 

Start with the idea that there is an Oligarchy, which has as its motivation maintaining its wealth and power. Assume that one of their main strategies for doing that, is to fabricate and manipulate social conflict for purposes of division and control. That is, and has been the main tactic of Oligarchs throughout history, has it not?. Well, in recent history, the so-called conflict between working class, and Capitalists, between Free Market economics and Marxist Socialism, has been one of those contrived conflicts which has been used to create false dichotomies in our social, economic and educational policies. Consider this idea, and think of the variety of ways in which Americans have been played, if true.

Henry Carey's philosophy and policies, based on the concept of "Harmony of Interests" destroys this false dichotomy, and breaks up the Oligarchy's great game. Rather than give it short shrift, I will write more about this in the future, but nevertheless today, I wanted to commemorate a great and historical individual whose ideas we desperately need today, ideas which saved the Nation once, and can do it again.