As to the third item, or article of wages, the comparison certainly turns against the United States, though, as before observed, not in so great a degree as commonly supposed.
The fourth item is alike applicable to the foreign and to the domestic manufacture. It is, indeed, more properly a result than a particular to be compared.
But, with respect to all the remaining items they are alone applicable to the foreign manufacture, and, in the strictest sense, extraordinaries, constituting a sum of extra charge on the foreign fabrics, which can not be estimated at less than from 15 to 30 per cent on the cost of it at the manufactory.
This sum of extra charge may confidently be regarded as more than a counterpoise for the real difference in the price of labor, and is a satisfactory proof that manufactures may prosper in defiance of it in the United States.
To the general allegation, connected with the circumstances of scarcity of hands and dearness of labor, that extensive manufactures can only grow out of a redundant or full population, it will be sufficient to answer generally that the fact has been otherwise. That the situation alleged to be an essential condition of success has not been that of several nations at periods when they had already attained to maturity in a variety of manufactures.
The supposed want of capital for the prosecution of manufactures in the United States is the most, indefinite of the objections which are usually opposed to it.
It is very difficult to pronounce anything precise concerning the real extent of the moneyed capital of a country, and still more concerning the proportion which it bears to the objects that invite the employment of capital. It is not less difficult to pronounce how far the effect of any given quantity of money, as capital, or in other words, as a medium for circulating the industry and property of a nation, may be increased by the very circumstance of the additional motion which is given to it by new objects of employment. That effect, like the momentum of descending bodies, may not improperly be represented as in a compound ratio to mass and velocity. It seems pretty certain, that a given sum of money, in a situation in which the quick impulses of commercial activity were little felt, would appear inadequate to the circulation of as great a quantity of industry and property as in one in which their full influence was experienced.
It is not obvious why the same objection might not as well be made to external commerce as to manufactures, since it is manifest that our immense tracts of land, occupied and unoccupied, are capable of giving employment to more capital than is actually bestowed upon them . It is certain that the United States offer a vast field for the advantageous employment of capital; but it does not follow that there will not be found in one way or another a sufficient fund for the successful prosecution of any species of industry which is likely to prove truly beneficial.
The following considerations are of a nature to remove all inquietude on the score of want of capital:
The introduction of banks, as has been shown on another occasion, has a powerful tendency to extend the active capital of a country. Experience of the utility of these institutions is multiplying them in
