THE PIONEERS OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY. 



BY G. S. CALLENDER. 



[Guy Stevens Callender, professor of political economy in Yale university; born 

 Hart's Grove, O., Nov. 9, 1865; prepared for college at New Lynn institute; graduated 

 from Oberlin, 1891, and Harvard, 1893, with graduate work at Harvard; instructor 

 in economics Wells college, 1895-96; and in Harvard, 1897-1900; professor of eco- 

 nomics in Bowdoin college, 1900-03, and since then in Yale university. The follow- 

 ing article is published by special arrangement with the Quarterly Journal of 

 Economics to which he is a contributor:] 



It is a commonplace observation that the last century 

 witnessed everywhere a great extension of the activities of the 

 state into the field of industry. Americans are not accus- 

 tomed to think of their own country as taking a very promi- 

 nent part in this movement, much less as having ever occupied 

 a leading position in it. To them, as to the rest of the world, 

 America is the land of private enterprise par excellence; the 

 place where " state interference" has played the smallest 

 part, and individual enterprise has been given the largest 

 scope, in industrial affairs; and it is commonly assumed that 

 this was always so. It is true that even in colonial times the 

 American people displayed an energy in their economic life 

 which Burke declared was equalled by " neither the perse- 

 verance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dex- 

 terous and firm sagacity of English enterprise." It is true, 

 also, that for more than fifty years the federal government 

 was in the hands of a party that professed to be afraid of 

 strong government, that abolished the internal revenue sys- 

 tem because it interfered too much with the private affairs 

 of the citizens, and made the payment of the national debt a 

 leading feature of its policy, lest its existence should breed 

 extravagance and corruption in the government. Neverthe- 

 less, it is a fact that this country was one of the first to exhibit 

 this modern tendency to extend the activity of the state into 

 industry. And it advanced so rapidly and so far along this 

 line that it became for a time almost as prominent an ex- 

 ample of it as the Australian colonies are in our own time. 



