19. Chapter XIX: That Almost All The Americans Follow Industrial
Callings
Agriculture is, perhaps, of all the useful arts that which
improves most slowly amongst democratic nations. Frequently,
indeed, it would seem to be stationary, because other arts are
making rapid strides towards perfection. On the other hand,
almost all the tastes and habits which the equality of condition
engenders naturally lead men to commercial and industrial
occupations.
Suppose an active, enlightened, and free man, enjoying a
competency, but full of desires: he is too poor to live in
idleness; he is rich enough to feel himself protected from the
immediate fear of want, and he thinks how he can better his
condition. This man has conceived a taste for physical
gratifications, which thousands of his fellow-men indulge in
around him; he has himself begun to enjoy these pleasures, and he
is eager to increase his means of satisfying these tastes more
completely. But life is slipping away, time is urgent -to what
is he to turn? The cultivation of the ground promises an almost
certain result to his exertions, but a slow one; men are not
enriched by it without patience and toil. Agriculture is
therefore only suited to those who have already large,
superfluous wealth, or to those whose penury bids them only seek
a bare subsistence. The choice of such a man as we have supposed
is soon made; he sells his plot of ground, leaves his dwelling,
and embarks in some hazardous but lucrative calling. Democratic
communities abound in men of this kind; and in proportion as the
equality of conditions becomes greater, their multitude
increases. Thus democracy not only swells the number of
workingmen, but it leads men to prefer one kind of labor to
another; and whilst it diverts them from agriculture, it
encourages their taste for commerce and manufactures.
[4]
This spirit may be observed even amongst the richest members
of the community. In democratic countries, however opulent a man
is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his
fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father
was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.
Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by
the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their
attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the
readiest and most powerful means of success. In this respect
they share the instincts of the poor, without feeling the same
necessities; say rather, they feel the most imperious of all
necessities, that of not sinking in the world.
In aristocracies the rich are at the same time those who
govern. The attention which they unceasingly devote to important
public affairs diverts them from the lesser cares which trade and
manufactures demand. If the will of an individual happens,
nevertheless, to turn his attention to business, the will of the
body to which he belongs will immediately debar him from pursuing
it; for however men may declaim against the rule of numbers, they
cannot wholly escape their sway; and even amongst those
aristocratic bodies which most obstinately refuse to acknowledge
the rights of the majority of the nation, a private majority is
formed which governs the rest. [5]
This, however, strikes me as an exceptional and transitory
circumstance. When wealth is become the only symbol of
aristocracy, it is very difficult for the wealthy to maintain
sole possession of political power, to the exclusion of all other
men. The aristocracy of birth and pure democracy are at the two
extremes of the social and political state of nations: between
them moneyed aristocracy finds its place. The latter
approximates to the aristocracy of birth by conferring great
privileges on a small number of persons; it so far belongs to the
democratic element, that these privileges may be successively
acquired by all. It frequently forms a natural transition
between these two conditions of society, and it is difficult to
say whether it closes the reign of aristocratic institutions, or
whether it already opens the new era of democracy.]
In democratic countries, where money does not lead those who
possess it to political power, but often removes them from it,
the rich do not know how to spend their leisure. They are driven
into active life by the inquietude and the greatness of their
desires, by the extent of their resources, and by the taste for
what is extraordinary, which is almost always felt by those who
rise, by whatsoever means, above the crowd. Trade is the only
road open to them. In democracies nothing is more great or more
brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public,
and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic
passions are directed towards it. Neither their own prejudices,
nor those of anybody else, can prevent the rich from devoting
themselves to it. The wealthy members of democracies never form
a body which has manners and regulations of its own; the opinions
peculiar to their class do not restrain them, and the common
opinions of their country urge them on. Moreover, as all the
large fortunes which are to be met with in a democratic community
are of commercial growth, many generations must succeed each
other before their possessors can have entirely laid aside their
habits of business.
Circumscribed within the narrow space which politics leave
them, rich men in democracies eagerly embark in commercial
enterprise: there they can extend and employ their natural
advantages; and indeed it is even by the boldness and the
magnitude of their industrial speculations that we may measure
the slight esteem in which productive industry would have been
held by them, if they had been born amidst an aristocracy.
A similar observation is likewise applicable to all men
living in democracies, whether they be poor or rich. Those who
live in the midst of democratic fluctuations have always before
their eyes the phantom of chance; and they end by liking all
undertakings in which chance plays a part. They are therefore
all led to engage in commerce, not only for the sake of the
profit it holds out to them, but for the love of the constant
excitement occasioned by that pursuit.
The United States of America have only been emancipated for
half a century [in 1840] from the state of colonial dependence in
which they stood to Great Britain; the number of large fortunes
there is small, and capital is still scarce. Yet no people in
the world has made such rapid progress in trade and manufactures
as the Americans: they constitute at the present day the second
maritime nation in the world; and although their manufactures
have to struggle with almost insurmountable natural impediments,
they are not prevented from making great and daily advances. In
the United States the greatest undertakings and speculations are
executed without difficulty, because the whole population is
engaged in productive industry, and because the poorest as well
as the most opulent members of the commonwealth are ready to
combine their efforts for these purposes. The consequence is,
that a stranger is constantly amazed by the immense public works
executed by a nation which contains, so to speak, no rich men.
The Americans arrived but as yesterday on the territory which
they inhabit, and they have already changed the whole order of
nature for their own advantage. They have joined the Hudson to
the Mississippi, and made the Atlantic Ocean communicate with the
Gulf of Mexico, across a continent of more than five hundred
leagues in extent which separates the two seas. The longest
railroads which have been constructed up to the present time are
in America. But what most astonishes me in the United States, is
not so much the marvellous grandeur of some undertakings, as the
innumerable multitude of small ones. Almost all the farmers of
the United States combine some trade with agriculture; most of
them make agriculture itself a trade. It seldom happens that an
American farmer settles for good upon the land which he occupies:
especially in the districts of the Far West he brings land into
tillage in order to sell it again, and not to farm it: he builds
a farmhouse on the speculation that, as the state of the country
will soon be changed by the increase of population, a good price
will be gotten for it. Every year a swarm of the inhabitants of
the North arrive in the Southern States, and settle in the parts
where the cotton plant and the sugar-cane grow. These men
cultivate the soil in order to make it produce in a few years
enough to enrich them; and they already look forward to the time
when they may return home to enjoy the competency thus acquired.
Thus the Americans carry their business-like qualities into
agriculture; and their trading passions are displayed in that as
in their other pursuits.
The Americans make immense progress in productive industry,
because they all devote themselves to it at once; and for this
same reason they are exposed to very unexpected and formidable
embarrassments. As they are all engaged in commerce, their
commercial affairs are affected by such various and complex
causes that it is impossible to foresee what difficulties may
arise. As they are all more or less engaged in productive
industry, at the least shock given to business all private
fortunes are put in jeopardy at the same time, and the State is
shaken. I believe that the return of these commercial panics is
an endemic disease of the democratic nations of our age. It may
be rendered less dangerous, but it cannot be cured; because it
does not originate in accidental circumstances, but in the
temperament of these nations.
[4]
It has often been remarked that manufacturers and
mercantile men are inordinately addicted to physical
gratifications, and this has been attributed to commerce and
manufactures; but that is, I apprehend, to take the effect for
the cause. The taste for physical gratifications is not imparted
to men by commerce or manufactures, but it is rather this taste
which leads men to embark in commerce and manufactures, as a
means by which they hope to satisfy themselves more promptly and
more completely. If commerce and manufactures increase the
desire of well-being, it is because every passion gathers
strength in proportion as it is cultivated, and is increased by
all the efforts made to satiate it. All the causes which make
the love of worldly welfare predominate in the heart of man are
favorable to the growth of commerce and manufactures. Equality
of conditions is one of those causes; it encourages trade, not
directly by giving men a taste for business, but indirectly by
strengthening and expanding in their minds a taste for
prosperity.
[5]
Some aristocracies, however, have devoted themselves
eagerly to commerce, and have cultivated manufactures with
success. The history of the world might furnish several
conspicuous examples. But, generally speaking, it may be
affirmed that the aristocratic principle is not favorable to the
growth of trade and manufactures. Moneyed aristocracies are the
only exception to the rule. Amongst such aristocracies there are
hardly any desires which do not require wealth to satisfy them;
the love of riches becomes, so to speak, the high road of human
passions, which is crossed by or connected with all lesser
tracks. The love of money and the thirst for that distinction
which attaches to power, are then so closely intermixed in the
same souls, that it becomes difficult to discover whether men
grow covetous from ambition, or whether they are ambitious from
covetousness. This is the case in England, where men seek to get
rich in order to arrive at distinction, and seek distinctions as
a manifestation of their wealth. The mind is then seized by both
ends, and hurried into trade and manufactures, which are the
shortest roads that lead to opulence.