Alexander Hamilton is truly the founding father of American Manufacturing. In 1794 he became the nation’s first Secretary of Treasury under George Washington. Hamilton, a Federalist, believed the Federal Government had responsibility for defense and the economic welfare of the nation. In fact, he saw them as interrelated and symbiotic. Unfortunately, neither political party today functions as a Hamiltonian advocate of American manufacturing. As an officer on General Washington’s staff, Hamilton saw battles lost for lack of American manufacturing capability. A true American conservative, Hamilton remains in “no man’s land” today because of his support of a national bank. Hamilton, however, realized that agrarian America lacked a means to supply capital to business. Private banks can perform that function today but then western cities lacked banks to grow industry. Hamilton believed (like Adam Smith) that defense industries needed tariff protection as well. Hamilton envisioned a manufacturing nation and that economic warfare would be part of America’s future. Hamilton’s founding ideas would be embodied in Abe Lincoln’s protectionist policy that dominated America for 80 years and ushered America into its Golden Era of Industry, science, and invention. Hamilton was always denounced by the Jeffersonians, Jacksonians, Democrats, and today by Republicans, but his economic ideas, especially support for a protective tariff and a national bank, were promoted by the Whig Party and after the 1850s by the newly created Republican Party, which hailed him as the nation's greatest Secretary of the Treasury.
See William McKinley: The Apostle of Protectionism by Quentin R. Skrabec
See my Wall Street J quote http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575418680197041878.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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