Adam Smith: The Invisible Founding Father

 

The documentary that starts this article, written and narrated by Donald L. Miller, professor of History at Lafayette University, explains some interesting but lesser-known facts about the United States' early economic development.

Adam Smith could be considered an "invisible" Founding Father of the United States economic system. Although Smith never visited the British colonies that proclaimed their independence the same year he published The Wealth of Nations, the seeds of the system he described had already traveled with the early settlers in the form of entrepreneurial capitalism. 

These are some interesting facts that Professor Miller points out:

• During its first 100 years, in the period between 1801 (Jefferson) and 1901 (Theodore Roosevelt), the United States population grew from 7 to 77 million, and the territory quintupled to the West and South.

• The first American factory was established by Moses Brown in 1789 using a water mill to power looms in  Pawtucket Falls, Rhode Island. A few months later, they acquired a patent to use a 32-spin loom to expand. Facing problems with the new technology, they hired a British partner, Samuel Slater, who had worked with the system in Britain. The factory employed mostly women and children from what continued to be a rural community. Men kept working as farmers, and women and children earned extra income working in barns turned into factories. What would be called today illegal child labor was in fact a bonus for the new employees, who already toiled 70 hours a week in rural labor much harder and exacting to the body that working on looms inside the barns.
• Hamilton was strongly in favor of the urban capitalistic model. Jefferson preferred the agrarian version of the part-time farm/factories, farmers/workers.
• At the time "child labor" was normal, particularly in farming, where having as many children as possible was a competitive advantage over hiring (and paying for) hands outside the owning family,
• The westward expansion between 1801 and 1901 went hand-in-hand with the entrepreneurial capitalist model embraced by all parties. 
• Business-financed channels and railroads connected the East Cost, NY transatlantic trade with the Great Lakes and prairie land beyond the Appalaches. \

The "invisible hand" of the growing markets and free enterprise created a century of prosperity and growth, making Adam Smith an "invisible" founding father.