Capitalist Economics Samuel A Chambers 2 Full Chapter
Capitalist Economics Samuel A Chambers 2 Full Chapter
Capitalist Economics Samuel A Chambers 2 Full Chapter
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Capitalist Economics
Capitalist Economics
S A M U E L A . C HA M B E R S
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197556887.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
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To my students,
who have taught me more than they know
Contents
Preface ix
PA RT I —E C O N OM IC S I N H I ST O RY
PA RT I I — C
A P I TA L I S T E C O N OM IC R E L AT IO N S
4. Money 65
5. Commodities 81
6. Profit 95
PA RT I I I — C
A P I TA L I S T E C O N OM IC F O R C E S
We are currently living through a period of history that calls into ques-
tion and places at stake the very meaning of both “economics” and
“capitalism.” This has happened before.
From the beginning of World War I (1914) to the end of World War
II (1945), economics was remade by history itself. What John Maynard
Keynes called the “classical school” of economics—as taught to him
by Alfred Marshall, the author of the first great economics textbook—
rested on the principle that markets were naturally occurring, self-
regulating, and always moving toward an equilibrium. Economics
could therefore not directly create political conflict, and economic
downturns should be dealt with mainly through patience. While
Keynes himself famously challenged the entire classical paradigm in
his General Theory (1936), far and away the most important work of
economics published in the twentieth century, the most damning cri-
tique of classical economics came not from Keynes but from the events
of history—two global wars and one global economic depression.
By the end of World War II, Marshall’s Principles of Economics
(1890) was not just out of date at more than a half century of age, it was
completely out of touch and inappropriate for a world that had been
entirely transformed. In both Britain and the United States, Keynes’s
utterly unorthodox approaches to monetary policy (including infla-
tion/deflation), taxation, debt, trade, and economic growth had effec-
tively transformed economic policy, and by any measures such policies
had been a resounding success. When American President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt first experimented with Keynesian ideas, as a des-
perate measure to bring America out of the Depression, the results
were impressive: GDP grew at 10.8, 8.9, and 12.9 percent in 1934, 1935,
and 1936, respectively. When, at the start of his second term in office,
Roosevelt switched course, cut spending, and balanced the budget,
the US economy fell back into depression. And finally, when the war
x Preface
year. While Tarshis had a long career at Stanford and then at univer-
sities back in his home country of Canada, he never made a mark on
economics, but instead became a footnote in economic history. And
aside from the handful who happened to take introductory economics
courses in 1947, very few students read his textbook.
At the very moment that Tarshis’s publisher was abandoning his
book, Paul Samuelson published his own textbook, which perfectly
“slipped in to fill the teaching void left by the Tarshis text” (Carter
2020: 377). Samuelson’s parsimoniously named Economics (1948)
would go on to become not just the most enduring, widely read, and
financially successful economics textbook of all time, but arguably
the single most successful textbook in any field. Over a span of four
decades, Samuelson solo-authored 12 editions of the book; seven
more editions (19 in total) were then coauthored by Samuelson and
William Nordhaus; the 2009 edition of the book remains in print and
widely used in the classroom today. Since 1961, each and every edi-
tion of Economics has sold a minimum of 300,000 copies, with total
sales surpassing four million. Paul Samuelson is described today on his
Wikipedia page as “the most influential economist of the later twen-
tieth century.” While his research surely contributes to that status,
Samuelson himself emphasized the importance of the textbook. In a
famous, though perhaps apocryphal, quote, he boasted, “I don’t care
who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can
write its economics textbooks” (quoted in Carter 2020: 378).
❂❂❂❂
on) social, political, and cultural changes. Another will be to grasp that
economic forces never operate in a vacuum: they are always competing
with or complementing those other forces—forces of law, forces of so-
ciety, and even forces of nature.
This is not a “textbook” as we usually understand that term. It has
fewer chapters, fewer pages, fewer graphs and charts, and no study
guides, built-in quizzes, or any of the other “options and features” that
usually constitute textbooks today and help to justify their exorbitant
prices. But it is an introductory text designed to help both students and
general readers make sense of something quite fundamental to all of
our lives: capitalist economics.
And while the historical contexts prove quite distinct, it’s probably
fair to say that I came to write this book for many of the same reasons
that Tarshis and Samuelson wrote theirs. Like them (and like all of
you) I have recently lived through an extraordinary historical period
in which, to use a phrase that Keynes himself coined, the “conventional
wisdom” in both economics and politics has been completely shaken.
Like them, I have spent about a decade and a half studying, learning,
and exploring both new and old ideas that, when combined, can pro-
vide a sharper and more useful picture of both political economy in ge-
neral and capitalist economics in particular. As was the case for Tarshis
and Samuelson in their time, the current disciplinary textbooks are no
longer fit for purpose.
We need to start over, but we do not need to start from scratch. This
book draws from a wide range of sources in the history of economic
thought, political theory, history and anthropology, synthesizing them
in a simpler, clearer overview of capitalist economics. With the goals
of clarity, parsimony, and readability paramount, the main body of the
text does not cite even a fraction of those sources. Readers who just
want to understand the ideas can focus their attention here. Readers
who want to know where the ideas come from, to engage with them
more deeply or at higher levels of sophistication, or to explore avenues
of investigation of their own should spend time consulting the Sources
and Further Reading section at the end of the book.
The implied reader of the book is . . . anyone and everyone. No spe-
cific prior knowledge is presumed. I worked out the ideas of the book
over 14 years of teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level
xvi Preface
emerged at a particular time and place in history. Then, from this basis
the book explores fundamental economic relations and forces in great
depth, providing the reader with both a deeper understanding of how
these forces operate and a set of tools they can use to make sense of
concrete phenomena.
Introduction: What Is Economics?
Capitalist Economics. Samuel A. Chambers, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197556887.003.0001
2 Capitalist Economics
Money
No one can deny the force of hunger. When your stomach growls,
when you have depleted your store of calories, your body’s phys-
ical need to eat is indisputable. However, hunger itself is not an eco-
nomic force. Regardless of whether we call it biological, physiological,
or simply a “natural” force, we need not invoke economic relations in
order to make sense out of the human need to eat.
But how do we go about satisfying our hunger? If we happen to find
food ready to hand, located in the pantry or the refrigerator, then all we
have to do is prepare it and eat. And what if the pantry is bare and the
fridge is empty? We could try to grow food in our backyard, but that is
impractical at best and impossible at worst; in any case, it would take
too long to satisfy our hunger now. Therefore the standard answer is
obvious: we go to the store, or to a restaurant, or (if we live in a trendy
place) to the nearby food truck.1 More obvious still, when we get there
we will need to present the clerk or the waiter with money in order
to obtain the food. To satisfy our need for food we must first acquire
money; this means that before obtaining our ultimate goal (food), we
have an intermediate goal (money).
Your need for money is not natural. You cannot eat money, so there is
no way it can directly satisfy your hunger. Money is economic. The fact
that you need money in order to overcome hunger explains nothing
about you as an individual; it has nothing to do with the nature of your
hunger or with the fact that calories from food will satisfy that hunger.
Rather, the fact that you need money in order to eat tells you many sig-
nificant things about the society you live in and the characterization of
“food” in that society. It reveals that society as one in which relations
to food are mediated by money. Most importantly, a relation medi-
ated by money is always an economic relation. Therefore, given the
society you live in, satisfying your hunger proves to be economic, not
because eating is itself economic but because in the world you inhabit
Introduction: What Is Economics? 3
Price
The economic is not only a type of relation, but also a force that acts
on us from outside. We can attempt to alter or thwart this force, but we
can never control it directly. We encounter this force (and feel it as ex-
ternal) whenever we buy and sell. If you decide to satisfy your hunger
by going to the store to buy bread, peanut butter, and jelly, you will find
when you get there that you have no say in the pricing of those items;
the prices of all three are written on labels affixed to the items and the
shelves. Your choices appear to be confined to the following: pay the
price, pick another item to buy, or go home hungry.
There is of course one other very significant option: steal the food.
This alternative is usually ruled out in our heads—and is therefore
excluded from the choices listed in the previous paragraph—because
there are laws against theft, laws that establish and protect rights of pro-
perty. We often think of these laws as separate from economic forces
and relations, but even this seemingly silly example demonstrates just
the opposite: such laws are crucial preconditions for economic rela-
tions. Market prices and market transactions are not fixed or given
(not forces of nature), but rather contingent and dependent on a social
order that establishes, and defends through force, contractual and legal
relations.
If we restrict ourselves for heuristic purposes to the analysis of price
as an economic force, we see that the price is given to us. We have no
choice about it. This logic applies to the case of selling just as much as
4 Capitalist Economics
to buying. It does not matter how much you paid for (or how much
you love) your PlayStation console and the many games you are sel-
ling with it; when it comes time to list it on eBay or craigslist, the price
you receive for it is only as high as someone is willing to pay. It may
have taken you months of work to grow tomatoes in your backyard,
but if you decide to sell them, the price is the price. People living in the
US and much of Europe who tried to sell their houses after the Great
Recession had to confront this reality directly and in painful terms: the
fact that they paid $400,000 for their house in 2006 and then spent
$75,000 to update it in 2007 meant nothing whatsoever when they
tried to sell it in 2010—it was only worth $250,000.
Prices are determined not by individuals, and not even by groups
of individuals acting consciously to set prices; rather, prices are de-
termined by multiple economic forces that are beyond the control
of any individual or group. We can call these “market forces” or the
“laws” of supply and demand; all that matters at this point is that we see
those forces as external, as powerful, and as beyond the realm of direct
human choice. Prices are economic.
Profit
and with highly specified variables. For now we emphasize the fol-
lowing root point: no matter where you find yourself in society, profit
will matter to you because it will directly affect your ability to acquire
the sums of money that you need to live.
This book will continually emphasize and illustrate the following cen-
tral point: economic forces and relations do not, and cannot, exist sep-
arately or independently of other forces and relations in society. This
means we cannot build up a study of economicus as if we were in a lab-
oratory, sealed off from the outside world. Perhaps the study of mathe-
matics and chemistry can begin with elemental particles (numbers and
elements). But the elemental particles of economic forces and relations
do not exist in nature or in a vacuum; they only exist in a concrete so-
ciety. Economic relations are not natural relations: they are historical
relations that can never be excised or isolated from social, political,
cultural, and many other relations.
In searching for their own elemental particle—something to rival
chemical elements, or the biological cell—economics textbooks typ-
ically begin with some combination of three main notions: economic
goods (commodities), scarcity, and choice. The standard story then
goes like this: the world is naturally populated with scarce commod-
ities, and economics is the scientific study of how those commodities
are allocated efficiently through individual choice.
To repeat: this is not a textbook in economics. Nor is it a point-by-
point internal critique of the discipline of economics, which is not to
say that it is not critical of mainstream economics, but that the main
point of this book is to help you understand the world (not to tell you
what’s wrong with an academic field of study). For these reasons, our
exploration of and engagement with economicus will mostly ignore the
tenets of twenty-first-century economics, either in textbook cases or
more sophisticated forms. However, in order to clarify the nature of
the journey you will take in the course of this book, it is worth briefly
specifying the problems with such attempts to place economics on the
foundation of natural or universal “elemental particles.” This will help
Introduction: What Is Economics? 7
goals. Economics long ago borrowed the term efficiency from the
discipline of physics, wherein efficiency is a simple formula: en-
ergy output/energy input. For example, we can easily compare
the efficiency of two light bulbs: whichever one has the highest
ratio of output (light) relative to input (electricity)—easily meas-
ured in lumens per watt—is the most efficient. In economics,
the general idea of “efficiency” is that we could compare two
different “economies” on the basis of which one produced the
most output (commodities) relative to its inputs (natural re-
sources, technical capacities, labor-hours, etc.). And more than
this, the economics textbooks claim that economics is the sci-
ence of maximizing this type of efficiency. But there are at least
two huge problems with this approach, both of which you will
learn about in detail in this book. First, it is not at all clear how
“maximizing economic output” would be a good goal for a so-
ciety to pursue; do we really want to produce “as many shoes
as possible” regardless of the number of people in the country?
Second, any measure of efficiency requires consistent, stan-
dardized measures of input and output, but economic output is
often quantified in terms of money, which is not a fixed standard
(5 watts is always 5 watts, but $5 can buy more or less at var-
ious times). Finally, even if we could solve these problems, we
would have to deal with the fact that there is nothing inherent to
economic relations or economic forces that necessarily leads to
maximizing output or minimizing input. Quite to the contrary,
as you will see, not all economic forces and relations are the
same: economic forces under feudalism were radically different
than those under capitalism. And under capitalism the inherent
trajectory of capitalist economic forces is to maximize profits,
not “efficiency.” Moreover, there is absolutely no reason to be-
lieve that more profit creates more efficiency. Overall, given the
difficulty of even defining what an “efficient” economic system
would be, it turns out that the standard texts are not really saying
anything when they say the word “efficiency.”
4. Choice is not uniquely economic.
Some textbooks simplify the definition of economics by skip-
ping the idea of scarce commodities and just saying “economics
Introduction: What Is Economics? 9
Notes
2. Arguably even the most elemental particles of natural science must them-
selves be understood as imbricated with other types of forces. This issue lies
far beyond the scope of this book, but it raises an important point of em-
phasis: in rejecting the idea that the economic is “natural,” we are not by
any means claiming that it is somehow unnatural or separate from mate-
rial or physical realities. Indeed, as we will see most clearly in Chapter 2,
relations of production and distribution can only be grasped as material,
physical relations, and they are thus utterly bound up with nature—and in
that sense thoroughly “natural.” But in the history of economic thought, the
idea of a “natural force” has often been used to distinguish forces and rela-
tions within a social order from those that putatively lie beyond it—forces
that are thought somehow to completely and necessarily determine all so-
cietal outcomes. It is this final idea that we will reject thoroughly and resist
consistently.
PART I
EC ONOMIC S I N HISTORY
create new economic forces and relations. For example, political revo-
lution can directly and radically alter the very terms of economics—for
example, a democratic revolution that outlaws titles of nobility can ut-
terly undo (literally erase) a key economic category.
Bringing into clear view the concept of a social order located within
history will help us to focus our study of economic forces and relations,
starting in Chapter 2. There we will demonstrate the following: given
that economic forces are part of a larger social order, the most impor-
tant dimension of economics proves to be not “exchange” but “produc-
tion.” Looking across broad swaths of history, we can see that the first
thing that distinguishes one economic order from another is not the ex-
istence of markets for trading goods (we find those almost everywhere
in history) but rather the nature and type of system of production of
goods and services. Exchange remains crucially important, but it must
always be understood in relation to production.
Chapter 2 will make the case for the “primacy of production” to any
understanding of economics, and it will do so by providing a clearer
sense of how societies can be radically different from one another be-
cause they have distinct “modes of production.” As our first opportu-
nity to analyze market exchange in detail—to break it down into its
essential components—this chapter will provide one of the central
lessons of the entire book: markets can be used for different purposes
and therefore the mere existence of markets does not tell us much
about the nature of a society. In particular, the presence of markets will
not distinguish capitalist societies from noncapitalist ones. But if capi-
talism is not “free markets” then how do we determine the existence of
“capitalism” in the first place?
Part I culminates in Chapter 3, which responds to this fundamental
question of capitalism by first answering a prior set of questions: Where
and how does a capitalist social order first emerge historically? The an-
swer depends on analyzing and making sense of the complex rela-
tionship between global markets for exchange, on the one hand, and
societal systems of production, on the other. We will see that growth
in a particular use of markets (a capitalist use) led to the possibility
(but not the inevitability) of a transformation of production. Only that
latter transformation, which occurs in England in the sixteenth cen-
tury, gives us the first appearance of a capitalist social order.
ECONOMICS IN HISTORY 17
With this original coming into being of capitalism, we can see for
the first time what a capitalist social order looks like, which finally
gives us the ability to define capitalism. It also sets up everything else
that happens in the book. Only against this historical background of
the appearance of capitalism as a unique social order can we then turn
in Parts II and III to a more fine-grained analysis of the structures,
principles, and general “rules” of capitalism. That is, the subject of this
book, the study of capitalist economics, applies only to capitalist social
orders. Part I therefore serves as our foundation.
1
Social Orders and
Economic Relations
Robinsonades
Capitalist Economics. Samuel A. Chambers, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197556887.003.0002
20 Capitalist Economics
Aside from the clue provided by use of the now-archaic word “truck”
(a synonym for barter and exchange), it might be hard to tell that these
quotations are separated by 240 years. The first is the opening lines
from the second chapter of The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith’s
canonical text in classical political economy; the second is the third of
ten principles of economics in the first chapter of Gregory Mankiw’s
Principles of Microeconomics (2016) textbook. A clear and central focus
on human individual actors and their fundamental, systematic char-
acteristics unites these disparate texts across almost a quarter millen-
nium of history. Put simply, both texts start with the inherent nature of
the individual and build an abstract account of economics from that
foundation. Here is their logic: given that the individual has a natural
inclination to barter and exchange, economic relations can be logically
derived directly from the individual. In general, economic forces are
natural; in particular, economics has its foundation in human nature.
Overall, economic forces can be understood as emerging from the nat-
ural actions, choices, and inclinations of (rational) human beings. This
approach serves to link the study of economics to the study of modern
politics: both ground their projects on the concept of a “state of nature,”
a place outside of time and history where we can observe the true, nat-
ural tendencies of humans. In politics, state-of-nature theorists tell us
that humans are naturally free and equal; in economics, state-of-nature
theorists tell us that human beings naturally exchange, maximize
benefits, and “think at the margin.”
There’s just one problem with this story. It’s based on fiction, on
fairytale, on myth; it’s utterly made up. To be clear, the mistake is not
merely that the story is false, that there never was such a time in which
humans lived in such a state. The mistake is that the story of a state of
nature posits an isolated and ahistorical human being with supposedly
natural characteristics, when such an individual, to the limited extent
that he or she exists, actually only comes to be at a very particular time
and place within a very peculiar type of society.
Social Orders and Economic Relations 21
Social Orders
At first glance, our starting point looks less solid than the one
suggested by Smith and Mankiw. By beginning with the autono-
mous individual thought to be endowed with universal characteris-
tics (the propensity to exchange, the rationality to calculate costs and
benefits), they are able to set history aside completely. Nonetheless,
as we saw, their solid ground proved shaky when we noticed a literary
myth underlying it. The specifically historical nature of the literary
genre of the Robinsonade belies the purportedly universal claims of
the textbooks.
Social Orders and Economic Relations 23
Almost everyone can identify the Achilles’ heel of linear causal expla-
nation. It is the problematic question “which comes first,” and we see it
in everyday discourse expressed in terms of “the chicken and the egg
problem” or the mantra that “correlation is not causation.” The basic
point is simple: we frequently observe simultaneous changes in two
distinct phenomena. But the linear causal model of explanation only
explains anything if we can (a) isolate one phenomenon, (b) show that its
changes are primary and independent (thus making it the independent
variable), and (c) articulate the causal mechanism by which this inde-
pendent variable directly causes changes in the dependent variable.
To explain economic forces and relations, and to understand eco-
nomic changes as they occur in history, our overarching approach in
26 Capitalist Economics
1. G ↑→ Pg ↓
It is absolutely true that most of the time (not always) when the
quantity of a good available for purchase increases, its price will
tend to go down. But it is important to be clear that this relation-
ship between quantity and price is not an intrinsic property of
the good itself. For example, there is nothing within the chem-
ical structure or other physical properties of a loaf of bread to
indicate that either (a) there are more loaves of bread available
or (b) its price must be lower. The price depends on human
actions (what individuals and groups do), which itself depends
on a broader social context (what’s going on). The price of goods
tends to go down with increases in supply because the sellers
of the goods find that potential buyers were already buying as
much bread as they wanted; in order to induce those buyers to
buy more (or nonbuyers to become buyers), the sellers must
compete with one another by lowering the price. So the change
does not come about intrinsically; it depends entirely on the
changes in relations between sellers and buyers. Here then we
provide a deeper explanation of the relationship established by
the causal/linear model.
Perhaps more significantly, however, we cannot always (and
simply) begin with a change in quantity. We have to ask: Why
did the producers of bread (the large bread manufacturers, the
artisan bakers, etc.) bake more bread? Changes in the quantity
of goods do not happen randomly. Contrary to the assumptions
of the linear/causal model, changes in quantity are never really
exogenous. They do not come from “outside” the system of ec-
onomic forces and relations; quite the opposite, those changes
are themselves spurred or provoked within the system. If the
quantity of loaves of bread increases, then to understand the
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place. I was convinced that the greatest calamity that ever befell the
benighted nations of the ancient world was in their having passed
away without a knowledge of the actual existence of Duluth; that
their fabled Atlantis, never seen save by the hallowed vision of the
inspired poesy, was, in fact, but another name for Duluth; that the
golden orchard of the Hesperides, was but a poetical synonym for the
beer-gardens in the vicinity of Duluth. I was certain that Herodotus
had died a miserable death, because in all his travels and with all his
geographical research he had never heard of Duluth. I knew that if
the immortal spirit of Homer could look down from another heaven
than that created by his own celestial genius upon the long lines of
pilgrims from every nation of the earth to the gushing fountain of
poesy opened by the touch of his magic wand, if he could be
permitted to behold the vast assemblage of grand and glorious
productions of the lyric art called into being by his own inspired
strains, he would weep tears of bitter anguish that, instead of
lavishing all the stores of his mighty genius upon the fall of Illion, it
had not been his more blessed lot to crystalize in deathless song the
rising glories of Duluth. Yes, sir, had it not been for this map, kindly
furnished me by the legislature of Minnesota, I might have gone
down to my obscure and humble grave in an agony of despair,
because I could nowhere find Duluth. Had such been my melancholy
fate, I have no doubt that with the last feeble pulsation of my
breaking heart, with the last faint exhalation of my fleeting breath, I
should have whispered, “Where is Duluth?”
But, thanks to the beneficence of that band of ministering angels
who have their bright abodes in the far-off capital of Minnesota, just
as the agony of my anxiety was about to culminate in the frenzy of
despair, this blessed map was placed in my hands; and as I unfolded
it a resplendent scene of ineffable glory opened before me, such as I
imagined burst upon the enraptured vision of the wandering peri
through the opening gates of Paradise. There, there, for the first
time, my enchanted eye rested upon the ravishing word, “Duluth!”
This map, sir, is intended, as it appears from its title, to illustrate the
position of Duluth in the United States; but if gentlemen will
examine it, I think they will concur with me in the opinion, that it is
far too modest in its pretensions. It not only illustrates the position
of Duluth in the United States, but exhibits its relations with all
created things. It even goes further than this. It hits the shadowy vale
of futurity, and affords us a view of the golden prospects of Duluth
far along the dim vista of ages yet to come.
If gentlemen will examine it, they will find Duluth not only in the
center of the map, but represented in the center of a series of
concentric circles one hundred miles apart, and some of them as
much as four thousand miles in diameter, embracing alike, in their
tremendous sweep the fragrant savannas of the sunlit South and the
eternal solitudes of snow that mantle the ice-bound North. How
these circles were produced is perhaps one of those primordial
mysteries that the most skilled paleologist will never be able to
explain. But the fact is, sir, Duluth is pre-eminently a central point,
for I am told by gentlemen who have been so reckless of their own
personal safety as to venture away into those awful regions where
Duluth is supposed to be, that it is so exactly in the center of the
visible universe that the sky comes down at precisely the same
distance all around it.
I find, by reference to this map, that Duluth is situated somewhere
near the western end of Lake Superior, but as there is no dot or other
mark indicating its exact location, I am unable to say whether it is
actually confined to any particular spot, or whether “it is just lying
around there loose.” I really cannot tell whether it is one of those
ethereal creations of intellectual frostwork, more intangible than the
rose-tinted clouds of a summer sunset; one of those airy exhalations
of the speculator’s brain which, I am told, are very flitting in the form
of towns and cities along those lines of railroad, built with
government subsidies, luring the unwary settler as the mirage of the
desert lures the famishing traveler on, and ever on, until it fades
away in the darkening horizon; or whether it is a real, bona fide,
substantial city, all “staked off,” with the lots marked with their
owners’ names, like that proud commercial metropolis recently
discovered on the desirable shores of San Domingo. But, however
that may be, I am satisfied Duluth is there, or thereabouts, for I see it
stated here on the map that it is exactly thirty-nine hundred and
ninety miles from Liverpool, though I have no doubt, for the sake of
convenience, it will be moved back ten miles, so as to make the
distance an even four thousand.
Then, sir, there is the climate of Duluth, unquestionably the most
salubrious and delightful to be found anywhere on the Lord’s earth.
Now, I have always been under the impression, as I presume other
gentlemen have, that in the region around Lake Superior it was cold
enough for at least nine months in the year to freeze the smoke-stack
off a locomotive. But I see it represented on this map that Duluth is
situated exactly half way between the latitudes of Paris and Venice,
so that gentlemen who have inhaled the exhilarating air of the one,
or basked in the golden sunlight of the other, may see at a glance that
Duluth must be the place of untold delight, a terrestrial paradise,
fanned by the balmy zephyrs of an eternal spring, clothed in the
gorgeous sheen of ever blooming flowers, and vocal with the silvery
melody of nature’s choicest songsters. In fact sir, since I have seen
this map, I have no doubt that Byron was vainly endeavoring to
convey some faint conception of the delicious charms of Duluth
when his poetic soul gushed forth, in the rippling strains of that
beautiful rhapsody—
“Know ye the land of the cedar and the vine,
Whence the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,
Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;
Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie?”
Sir, the great conflict now raging in the Old World has presented a
phenomenon in military science unprecedented in the annals of
mankind, a phenomenon that has reversed all the traditions of the
past as it has disappointed all the expectations of the present. A great
and warlike people, renowned alike for their skill and valor, have
been swept away before the triumphant advance of an inferior foe,
like autumn stubble before a hurricane of fire. For aught I know the
next flash of electric fire that simmers along the ocean cable may tell
us that Paris, with every fibre quivering with the agony of impotent
despair, writhes beneath the conquering heel of her loathed invader.
Ere another moon shall wax and wane, the brightest star in the
galaxy of nations may fall from the zenith of her glory never to rise
again. Ere the modest violets of early spring shall ope their
beauteous eyes, the genius of civilization may chant the wailing
requiem of the proudest nationality the world has ever seen, as she
scatters her withered and tear-moistened lilies o’er the bloody tomb
of butchered France. But, sir, I wish to ask if you honestly and
candidly believe that the Dutch would have overrun the French in
that kind of style if General Sheridan had not gone over there, and
told King William and Von Moltke how he had managed to whip the
Piegan Indians.
And here, sir, recurring to this map, I find in the immediate
vicinity of the Piegans “vast herds of buffalo” and “immense fields of
rich wheat lands.” [Here the hammer fell.]
[Many cries: “Go on!” “go on!”]
The Speaker—Is there any objection to the gentleman from
Kentucky continuing his remarks? The chair hears none. The
gentleman will proceed.
Mr. Knott—I was remarking, sir, upon these vast “wheat fields”
represented on this map in the immediate neighborhood of the
buffaloes and Piegans, and was about to say that the idea of there
being these immense wheat fields in the very heart of a wilderness,
hundreds and hundreds of miles beyond the utmost verge of
civilization, may appear to some gentlemen as rather incongruous, as
rather too great a strain on the “blankets” of veracity. But to my mind
there is no difficulty in the matter whatever. The phenomenon is very
easily accounted for. It is evident, sir, that the Piegans sowed that
wheat there and ploughed it in with buffalo bulls. Now, sir, this
fortunate combination of buffaloes and Piegans, considering their
relative positions to each other and to Duluth, as they are arranged
on this map, satisfies me that Duluth is destined to be the best
market of the world. Here, you will observe, (pointing to the map),
are the buffaloes, directly between the Piegans and Duluth; and here,
right on the road to Duluth, are the Creeks. Now, sir, when the
buffaloes are sufficiently fat from grazing on those immense wheat
fields, you see it will be the easiest thing in the world for the Piegans
to drive them on down, stay all night with their friends, the Creeks,
and go into Duluth in the morning. I think I see them, now, sir, a vast
herd of buffaloes, with their heads down, their eyes glaring, their
nostrils dilated, their tongues out, and their tails curled over their
backs, tearing along toward Duluth, with about a thousand Piegans
on their grass-bellied ponies, yelling at their heels! On they come!
And as they sweep past the Creeks, they join in the chase, and away
they all go, yelling, bellowing, ripping and tearing along, amid clouds
of dust, until the last buffalo is safely penned in the stock-yards at
Duluth.
Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours, and expatiate with
rapture upon the gorgeous prospects of Duluth, as depicted upon this
map. But human life is too short, and the time of this house far too
valuable to allow me to linger longer upon this delightful theme. I
think every gentleman upon this floor is as well satisfied as I am that
Duluth is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the
universe and that this road should be built at once. I am fully
persuaded that no patriotic representative of the American people,
who has a proper appreciation of the associated glories of Duluth and
the St. Croix, will hesitate a moment that every able-bodied female in
the land, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, who is in favor
of “woman’s rights,” should be drafted and set to work upon this
great work without delay. Nevertheless, sir, it grieves my very soul to
be compelled to say that I cannot vote for the grant of lands provided
for in this bill.
Ah, sir, you can have no conception of the poignancy of my
anguish that I am deprived of that blessed privilege! There are two
insuperable obstacles in the way. In the first place my constituents,
for whom I am acting here, have no more interest in this road than
they have in the great question of culinary taste now, perhaps,
agitating the public mind of Dominica, as to whether the illustrious
commissioners, who recently left this capital for that free and
enlightened republic, would be better fricasseed, boiled, or roasted,
and, in the second place, these lands, which I am asked to give away,
alas, are not mine to bestow! My relation to them is simply that of
trustee to an express trust. And shall I ever betray that trust? Never,
sir! Rather perish Duluth! Perish the paragon of cities! Rather let the
freezing cyclones of the bleak northwest bury it forever beneath the
eddying sands of the raging St. Croix.
Henry Carey’s Speech on the Rates of
Interest.