Biography
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 protectionism, protection and its use in the promotion of American industry. 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. Carey retired from business in 1838 while publishing his 4-volume treatise (1837–1840) ''Principles of Political Economy'', which soon became the standard representation of the American school of economic thought, and was translated into Italian language, Italian and Swedish language, Swedish, with some variance, dominating the U.S. economic system until 1973. He died at his home in Philadelphia on October 13, 1879.Work
''The Principles of Social Science''
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. He bases its economy on Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Colbert system, system protecting manufactures helping farms with roads. He rejected the Thomas Malthus, 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. His position relates to the antithesis of wealth and value. Carey held that land in industrial life is an instrument of production formed by human labour. A product's value was due to the labour expended on it in the past (measured by the labour necessary under existing conditions to bring new land to the same stage of productiveness). He studied the occupation and Land reclamation, reclamation of land with peculiar advantage as an American, for whom the traditions of first settlement were living and fresh, and before whose eyes the process was indeed still going on. The difficulties of adapting a primitive soil to the work of yielding organic products for human use can be lightly estimated only by an inhabitant of a country long under cultivation. Carey believed that the overcoming of these difficulties by arduous and continued effort entitles the first occupier of land to his property in the soil. Its present value forms a very small proportion of the cost expended on it, because it represents only what would be required, with the science and appliances of our time, to bring the land from its primitive into its present state. Thus, property in land is only a form of invested capital, a quantity of labour or the fruits of labour permanently incorporated with the soil. The owner of this capital is compensated, as any other capitalist, by a share of the produce. The owner is not rewarded for what is done by the powers of nature, and society is in no sense defrauded by his sole possession. The so-called David Ricardo, Ricardian theory of rent is a speculative fancy, contradicted by all experience. Unlike what the theory supposes, cultivation does not begin with the best soils and move progressively towards poorer soils. The light and dry higher land is cultivated first; only when population becomes dense and capital accumulates is low-lying land attacked and brought into occupation. Low-lying land is more fertile but also has morasses, inundations and miasmas. Rent as a proportion of the produce sinks, like all interest on capital, but increases as an absolute amount. The share of the labourer increases both as a proportion and an absolute amount. Thus, the interests of these different social classes are in harmony. But, Carey proceeded to say, in order that this harmonious progress may be realized, what is taken from the land must be given back to it. All the produce derived from the land is part of it, and must be restored to avoid its exhaustion. Hence the producer and the consumer must be close to each other; the products must not be exported to a foreign country in exchange for its manufactures, and thus go to enrich as manure a foreign soil. In immediate exchange value, the landowner may gain by such exportation, but the productive powers of the land will suffer.''The Way to Outdo England Without Fighting Her''
In March 1865, Carey published a series of letters to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Schuyler Colfax, entitled "The Way to Outdo England Without Fighting Her". In these letters, Carey advocated the continuance of Abraham Lincoln's United States Note, Greenbacks policy of debt-free, government-issued money as a way of freeing America's economy from United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British Capitalism, capitalists, who sought to control America's wealth. He also suggested raising the reserve requirements on private banks up to 50%. Here are some excerpts from Carey's work, which history shows fell upon deaf ears, as the subsequent Long Depression of 1873–96 plagued America with financial panics because of the inability of the National Banking System to provide the public with all the currency it needed:Honors & Legacy
Carey, who had set out as an earnest advocate of free trade, ultimately arrived at the doctrine of protectionism, protection: the coordinating power in society must intervene to prevent private advantage from working public mischief. He attributed his conversion on this question to his observation of the effects of liberal and protective tariffs respectively on American prosperity. This observation, he says, threw him back on theory, and led him to see that intervention might be necessary to remove (as he phrases it) the obstacles to the progress of younger communities created by the action of older and wealthier nations. Carey elected to prestigious societies during his lifetime: * Elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1833 * Elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1863 * Elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1868Publications
Carey's publications included: * ''iarchive:essayonrateofwag00careiala/page/n6, Essay on the Rate of Wages'', Philadelphia, 1835. * ''iarchive:principlesofpoli00care/page/n6, Principles of Political Economy'', Philadelphia, 1837-40 (3 volumes). *References
; Attribution *Further reading
* Elder, WilliamExternal links
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Carey, Henry Charles 1793 births 1879 deaths Scientists from Philadelphia American people of Irish descent Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 19th-century American economists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Economists from Pennsylvania