Mathew Carey and the Depression of 1820

Extract

In these turbulent times when economists and business men alike find it difficult to solve the business depression which has descended on our complex civilization, it is refreshing to turn to the early economic tracts which were published in this country, and to contemplate the relatively simple panaceas which were advanced by their authors for a correction of the evils of the time. Again, it a consolation to turn the pages of history and realize that we are not suffering from any unique “disease.” In fact in 1820 the outlook was quite as dark as it is today. The productive industry of from sixty to eighty thousand people was destroyed. The cotton planters had suffered a loss of approximately eight million dollars in profits, and the merchants, eleven and a half million dollars, by the fall in cotton prices. Flour was selling at such a low figure that the farmers had but a meagre return for their efforts. The fall in tobacco prices “spread distress and desolation in the state of Virginia,” and South Carolina had lost her chief export market, that for indigo, which product had constituted about a third of her exports.