let's share

A week ago, I posted an excerpt from Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization, Versus British Free Trade. Letters in Reply to the London Times, by Henry C. Carey. Philadelphia, Collins, 1876. Though Carey today is rarely mentioned in economics textbooks, he was the leading USA economist of the mid-nineteenth century, a staunch protectionist who was probably the single greatest proponent of what was then called the American School of Political Economy.

If I may repeat part of what I posted last week: American protectionism was much more than simply a rejection of the concept of comparative advantage. Michael Hudson explains in the Preface to his 2010 book America’s Protectionist Takeoff: The Neglected American School of Political Economy:

The protectionist doctrine that shaped America's industry and agriculture... went beyond the narrow boundaries of today's economics discipline by deeming public policy and technology central to economic theorizing, not "exogenous." Analyzing what was needed to increase productivity, the American School emphasized that wages and prices had to be high enough to sustain rising living and educational standards for labor, and investment in rising energy mobilization by capital."

But the American School even went beyond that. Carey and other American School economists always kept in view the ultimate goal of economic policies: the establishment and enhancement of civilization. And unlike the competing British School of Adams, Ricardo, and Mill, a central element of the American School was morality. Note the heavy tone of scorn and sarcasm Carey uses in his fifth letter to the editors of the Times of London, as he reviews the British opium trade and its disastrous consequences for China.