Report on Manufactures
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The Report on Manufactures is a report written by the 1st U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton to Congress in 1792 recommending economic policies to stimulate the new republic and make it independent from British manufacturing still controlled by King George III. He saw a significant danger in being tied to foreign nations across the ocean by trade. He wasn't against trade, but he saw it as a problem if the U.S. was getting all of a single resource from overseas or purchasing defense items overseas. Hamilton believed that manufacturing was superior to agriculture alone (Thomas Jefferson advocated this opposite system until his later years).
Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" laid forth economic principles, rooted in both the Mercantilist System of Elizabeth I's England and the practices of Jean-Baptiste Colbert who was economic advisor to Louis XIV of France. His theories in the "Report" would later be incorporated into "American System" by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and his Whig Party. They form the basis for the American School of economics.
Abraham Lincoln who called himself a "Henry Clay tariff Whig" during his early years would later make the principles outlined in the "Report" and furthered by Clay as cornerstones, together with opposition to the institution and expansion of slavery, of the fledgling Republican Party.
Written by Alexander Hamilton in 1792, it among other advice advised tariffs to:
- protect American infant industry
- raise revenue
- encouraged the spirit of enterprise
- encourage growth by building roads and canals
- grow the infant United States into a manufacturing power.
Hamilton reasoned that the tariff, bounties, subsidies to industry, regulation of trade, and so forth would not only provide employment opportunities and promote immigration into the young United States, but it would also expand the applications of technology and science for all quarters including agriculture.
[edit] Opposition to the Report on Manufactures
Leading opponents of Alexander Hamilton's economic plan were Thomas Jefferson (until later years) and his Democratic-Republican Party.
