Hamilton and Coxe agreed on most issues: using machines, dividing manufacturing tasks among laborers, devising new methods capital investment, finding new markets for agricultural output and increasing economic opportunity. They differed significantly on one issue. Hamilton’s focus was finance while Coxe emphasized protection of industry. Hamilton regarded maintaining trade with Britain as crucial for the excise taxes that funded America’s public debt. Coxe, favored protective tariffs that Hamilton feared would result in retaliation by Great Britain ending the excise taxes as a source of funding. Based on his experiences in Ireland, Carey was in agreement with Coxe, protective tariffs were of utmost importance.[1]   Six years before the Report on Manufactures, Carey favored tariffs and bounties, with protection taking precedence over bounties.[2]

Hamilton also differed from Coxe and Carey the role craftsmen should play developing American manufactures. Hamilton favored wealthy merchants and speculators. Carey and Coxe thought development of manufacturing was better suited to craftsmen who knew the mechanics of their trade.[3]

Before joining Hamilton and the Department of Treasury, Coxe devised a scheme creating a town dedicated to manufacturing sponsored by the government. Coxe had even recruited an industrial spy sending him to Britain to replicate textile machinery, but his agent failed to uncover any secrets of British technology.[4]

In April 1791, after completing his first draft of the Report on Manufactures for Hamilton, Coxe put the finishing touches on a “Plan for a Manufacturing Society.” He sent it to Hamilton. He duplicitously dispatched a copy to Jefferson. Coxe’s plan was confidential, and potentially divisive. It gave Jefferson advance notice of the scheme for a manufacturing town to be located somewhere in New Jersey. Jefferson did not reply to Coxe.[5]

Hamilton enthusiastically supported the plan. Prospectus in hand, he left for New York. He recruited wealthy investors to contribute $100 a share, raising $500,000 to create the Society of Useful Manufactures. Hamilton’s pitch appealed to private gain rather than the public good. He persuaded his friend, the speculator William Duer to join the Society. Duer became its governor. The Society was based in Paterson, New Jersey.[6]

Despite recruiting a British weaver who came to the United States bringing coveted secrets of British textile machinery, the scheme soon began to unravel. In the aftermath of a panic in the first quarter of 1792, William Duer and several other directors of the Society went bankrupt. Duer had dipped into the Society’s funds misappropriating them for personal gain in a speculation scheme. The remaining directors still barely afloat, failed to recover funds overseen by Duer, who was in debtor’s prison and unable to account for them.[7]

Baffled, the directors asked Hamilton to rescue the Society, but by this time, Hamilton and Jefferson were waging war in the press, including Carey’s American Museum. George Logan writing as “A Farmer” lashed out at the scheme. He said it favored the aristocracy at the expense of equality of free men. Carey reprinted Logan’s attack, originally published in the National Gazette.[8]

Alexander Hamilton (1757?-1804) outlined his ideas for American manufactures in his “Report on Manufactures” which Carey published in the American Museum. Tench Coxe provided the research for Hamilton’s report.

William Duer (1743-1799) was a speculator and friend of Alexander Hamilton. He misappropriate funds from the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures leading to the demise of Hamilton’s scheme.

George Logan (1753-1821) was prominent as a politician. He lashed out at Hamilton’s scheme for the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. He wrote it favored the aristocracy at the expense of free men.

[Hamilton] and his friends in New-York have procured[ed] one of the most unjust and arbitrary laws to be enacted …A law granting to a few wealthy men the exclusive jurisdiction of six miles square, and a variety of unconstitutional privileges, highly injurious to the citizens of [New Jersey]…Will it not, by fostering an inequality of fortune, prove the destruction of the equality of rights, and tend strongly to an aristocracy?”

                                                               George Logan [9]

“The origin and design of the New-Jersey manufacturing society has been frequently misunderstood and misrepresented…one of the great objections to manufactures in the united states, was the want of money… an union of many individuals was the only mode that could be adopted; and as there was supposed to be some risque, it was certainly a prudent method…the subscribers were to apply for an incorporation…”

                                                              Tench Coxe [10]

Coxe defended his scheme and Hamilton’s economic policies, and Carey printed them firsthand in the Museum. Hamilton’s battle with Jefferson, along with Duer’s behavior, destroyed public confidence in Coxe’s grand plan for a manufacturing metropolis. By 1796, the project had failed, and Coxe had quarreled with Hamilton.[11]

TRANSITION TO PUBLISHER | Aftermath of the Report on Manufactures

[1]Jacob E. Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton, and the Encouragement of American Manufactures,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, V. 24 N. 2 (April, 1967) 375-380.

[2] Stephen Meardon, “’A Reciprocity of Advantages’: Carey, Hamilton, and the American Protective Doctrine” V. 11 N. 3 (Fall, 2013) 449.

[3] See Andrew Shankman “’A New Thing on Earth’ Alexander Hamilton, Pro-Manufacturing Republicans, and the Democratization of American Political Economy,” Journal of the Early Republic, V. 23 N. 3 (Autumn, 2003) 323-352 for a discussion of class issues in the development of domestic manufacturing.

[4] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 380.

[5] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 384.

[6] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 385.

[7] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 381-2, 390.

[8] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 391.

[9] [George Logan] A Farmer, pseud. “Letters to the yeomanry of the united states, Letter II, ” American Museum, V. 12 N. 3 (September, 1792) 162-3.

[10][ Tench Coxe,] A Freeman, pseud. “Observations on the preceding letters, Letter II, ”American Museum, V. 12 N. 4 (October, 1792) 220.

[11] Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton,” 391.