In the following report to Congress, Alexander Hamilton, President
Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, sets forth the advantages of a
manufacturing system, and he forecasts the changes which later came with
the growth of industry. Compare Hamilton's report to Jefferson's
views outlined in his "Importance of Agriculture".
The expediency of encouraging manufactures in the United States... appears at this time to be generally admitted. The embarrassments which have obstructed the progress of our external trade, have led to serious reflections on the necessity of enlarging the sphere of our domestic commerce.... [Other nations regulations against our agricultural produce] beget an earnest desire that a more extensive demand for that surplus may be created at home...
[Both the manufacturer and the farmer] furnishes a certain portion of produce of his labor to the other, and each destroys a corresponding portion of the produce of the labor of the other. In the meantime, the maintenance of two citizens, instead of one, is going on; the State has two members instead of one; and they, together, consume twice the value of what is produced from the land....
It may be inferred that manufacturing establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society, but that they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be without those establishments....
[Increasing manufacturing encourages all of the following benefits]....
1. As to the division of labor
It has justly been observed, that there is scarcely any thing
of greater moment in the economy of a nation than the proper division
of labor. The separation of occupations causes each to be carried
to a much greater perfection.... This arises principally from...
the greater skill and dexterity naturally resulting from a constant
and undivided application to a single object....
2. As to an extension of the use of machinery...
The employment of machinery... is an artificial force brought
in aid of the natural force of man; and, to all the purposes of labor,
is an increase of hands, an accession of strength.... May it not,
therefore, be fairly inferred, that those occupations which give greatest
scope to the use of this auxiliary, contribute most to the general
stock of industrious effort, and, in consequence to the general product
of industry....
3. As to additional employment of classes of the community not originally
engaged in the particular business...
[Manufacturing institutions] afford occasional and extra employment
to industrious individuals and families, who are willing to devote...
[their leisure time] as a resource for multiplying their acquisitions
or their enjoyments. The husbandman himself experiences a new source
of profit and support from the increased industry of his wife and
daughters, invited and stimulated by the demands of the neighboring
manufactories....
Women and children are rendered more useful, and the latter more
early useful, by manufacturing establishments....
4. As to the promotion of emigration from foreign countries...
[Many] would probably flock from Europe to the United States
to pursue their own trades and professions....
5. As to the furnishing greater scope for the diversity of talents and
dispositions, which discriminate men from each other...
There is, in the genius... of this country, a particular aptitude
for mechanic improvements, it would operate as a forcible reason
for giving opportunities to the exercise of that species of talent,
by the propagation of manufactures.
6. As to the affording of a more ample and various field for enterprise
The spirit of enterprise... must necessarily be contracted and
expanded in proportion to the simplicity or variety of the occupations
and productions which are to be found in a society. It must
be less in a nation of mere cultivators than in a nation of cultivators
and merchants; less in a nation of cultivators and merchants, than
in a nation of cultivators, artificers and merchants.
7. As to the creating... and securing... a more steady demand for the
surplus produce of the soil...
[This] is the principle means by which the establishment of manufactures
contributes to an augmentation of produce or revenue of a country,
and has an immediate and direct relation to the prosperity of agriculture.
It is evident that the exertions of the husbandman will be steady
or fluctuating, vigorous or feeble, in proportion to... he adequateness
or inadequateness, of the markets on which he must depend....
This idea of an extensive domestic market for the surplus produce
of the soil, is of the first consequence. It is, of all things,
that which most effectually conduces to a flourishing state of agriculture....
[it will] cause the lands which were in cultivation to be better improved
and more productive....
The foregoing considerations seem sufficient to establish, as general
propositions, that it is the interest of nations to diversify the industrious
pursuits of the individuals who compose them; that the establishment of
manufactures is calculated not only to increase the general stock of useful
and productive labor, but to improve the state of agriculture in particular,
certainly to advance the interests of those who are engaged in it....