Born Losers
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Scott A. Sandage - Born Losers A History of Failure in America (2006) - libgen.lc
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- The Market Reformation
- A Reason in the Man I
On Hornor’s Dilemma The paradox of ambition hindered efforts to pass reform and re- lief bills through Congress. Then as now, hardhearted lawmakers declined “to feed a train of lazy dependents” based on sob stories from “the pencil of fiction.” The republic would survive without the likes of Joseph Hornor, whose problems were of their own making. “Part have failed, from causes beyond the control of hu- man power,” conceded an opponent in 1822, but “this latter class must be comparatively small.” How would society benefit by re- lieving “those who failed from an ignorance of their business, and the want of prudence and economy”? Ruin justly punished republican vices, which the New-York Commercial Advertiser lam- pooned in 1820: There is a cause, we needs must own, Why much distress and want are known: Extravagance—our country’s bane, Is spread o’er city, town, and plain: . . . To dress, to visit, and to play, To get in debt, and run away, Are common vices of the day. 23 Men in Joseph Hornor’s predicament were suspected of run- ning away not only from debt but also from moral responsibility, and this belief proved to be the most enduring obstacle to le- gal reform. The antebellum press lionized “the man who labors to pay his debts, instead of creeping out of his responsibilities through any small hole in the crevices of the law.” Canceling Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead 35 fairly contracted debts through the enactment of federal bank- ruptcy or insolvency laws would threaten sacred principles. One congressman insisted that to abrogate the rule of a gentleman’s word was “a price almost too great to be paid for the preservation of one generation of the human race.” Men who failed in the early republic faced not only volatile markets, but a moral vocabu- lary that could not make sense of new experience, guide conduct, or direct public policy. 24 Even ardent reformers conceded that bankruptcy laws voided only a debtor’s legal obligations, not his moral ones. “Not that the legislative authority can release a man from the moral or consci- entious obligation to fulfill his contract—that transcends all hu- man power,” Congressman John Sergeant assured other lawmak- ers in 1822. Congressional debates throughout the antebellum era reiterated the national regard for this ethic. “Let the moral obliga- tion remain, as it will, as strong as ever,” conceded the sponsor of a short-lived federal bankruptcy act in 1841. “It is the legal liability only which is touched.” If he prospered later, a legally bankrupt man bore the onus to “cancel the moral obligation” by paying his old debts “to the uttermost farthing.” 25 The fable of the conscientious debtor papered over a schism between the spirit of go-ahead and the cult of moral obligation. An entrepreneur who failed in the early nineteenth century faced inadequate state and federal laws, vengeful creditors, and forced idleness in debtor’s prison—and if he successfully ran this gantlet, there was still the matter of moral obligation. These conventions ignored or denied the impact of larger economic and cultural trends and reinforced a dogma that blamed failure on individual imprudence, iniquity, or inadequacy. On New Year’s Day 1820, a newspaper bard composed a bit of doggerel for a nation immobi- lized by bewilderment and indecision: Old “Uncle Sam,” in chasing bubbles, Has jump’d into a peck of troubles’ 36 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead Troubles, ’tis said, which sorely vex him, And which ’tis feared will much perplex him. 26 In such a maelstrom, Joseph Hornor tried to save himself in the panic of 1819. His letterbook showed how perplexing it was for even an honest man to see the right course. Having always re- lied “on the honour of Gentlemen,” on moral rather than legal obligation, Hornor had never sued another man for payment. “It is neither my habit nor my disposition to press those indebted to me,” he explained to a customer, “but when the Salvation of my Mercantile Character is at Stake there is no alternative.” Like someone who is traumatized and awakens suddenly gray-headed, Joseph Hornor turned modern overnight. He wrote bluntly to one debtor, “My friend, the days of sentiment have gone by with me and I would rather read your draft on a good house here for the amount of your account than any romance either in prose or poetry that this age has produced. . . . [T]he sinequa non is money—that is the one thing needful in my present situation and that I can not do without.” Only cash would redeem Hornor’s commercial manhood. 27 This was Hornor’s dilemma: aspire the new way, but atone the old way. To borrow his description of an associate, Hornor was “a man wrestling with fortune in behalf of justice.” Straining to do the right thing, he saw that he could not save both his property and his reputation. The initial panic settled into the hushed terror of being lost. Should he struggle on or admit defeat? Should he satisfy his creditors or support his family? His letters betrayed a sense of ethical disorientation as he toggled between frameworks for making economic decisions. He esteemed promises more than lawsuits, cherished “honour” but needed “money,” and at last for- sook “sentiment” for a “draft on a good house”—a check that could be cashed. Hornor’s letterbook recorded the economies of a man and of a nation evolving from standards of honor and promises to those of money and contracts. 28 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead 37 Joseph Hornor lost everything in the summer of 1821, when there remained no “reasonable hope that my embarrassments would be but temporary, that by struggling and privations I could get on without relinquishing my standing as a merchant.” Going on with a countersigner would have compounded his republican vices by entangling others. “To bring my immediate friends and connections into responsibility and danger . . . I never could for a moment consent to,” he wrote; “nothing will be withheld for my- self or family.” The formerly good provider suffered his wife and ten children to be turned out of their home at 63 Spruce Street in Philadelphia. Weeks later he vacated another symbol of manly autonomy: his letterbook. Surrendering it to the assignees who conducted the final disbursal, Hornor’s “wrestling with fortune” had come to defeat. He became a third party in the annals of his own wrecked ambitions, talked about and acted upon by others. 29 Hornor’s creditors permitted him to keep another volume be- cause it had no worth, and into it he inked the twist in his tale. For a quarter century, this sensitive soul had copied beautiful verses into a “commonplace book,” perhaps as a sanctuary from business worries. In these pages he composed an original ode to failure on 2 August 1821, two weeks after doing the right thing: But me, placed on Life’s middle stage Doom’d to review a downward path No pleasing visions now engage The victim of Misfortune’s wrath. . . . Shall I to gloomy fears resign My life, because its hues are faded? No—this exulting thought be mine Although depress’d I’m not degraded. Who could say whether the name Hornor tried so hard to save would ever again grace the pages of the Philadelphia city direc- tory? But as the decade passed, with help from his father, Joseph 38 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead Hornor settled old scores and regained his name. By 1829, he was back selling hardware at his old High Street stand. 30 Though Joseph Hornor’s story may have ended happily, it is for that no less revealing a tale of ethical disorientation in the age of go-ahead. In the 1830s, a freshly painted sign announced “Joseph P. Hornor & Son” soon after Henry Clay coined a sonorous phrase that caught on rapidly: the self-made man. Not long af- ter Hornor’s death in the 1840s, the Daguerreotype magazine en- dorsed the myth that all successful businessmen were self-made and had been tested by risk and adversity: “You must throw a man upon his own resources to bring him out,” it declared. Republican public usefulness evolved into the liberal virtue of self-made man- hood—the basis for the American gospel of success, the doctrine of achieved identity. But if the self-made man was the go-ahead spirit made flesh, where did this leave the unfortunate debtor? 31 The Market Reformation The panic of 1819 revealed a new article of American faith: there- after, the second coming of the goat-god would be ever at hand. Panic rose again, too soon and too often, in antebellum America. Red ink seemed to inspire prophets and pundits, who were never in short supply. Three weeks after Hornor sank in Philadelphia, New York merchant John Pintard preached in a letter, “Ameri- cans are an active restless people impatient of slow profits.” A for- mer imprisoned debtor and bankrupt himself (and all the more self-righteous for that), Pintard wrote that American habits “must undergo, not a reformation, but a complete revolution. A new race must arise on the broken fortunes of the present, who different[ly] educated may be content to plod & earn an honest living, to ac[c]umulate by slow degrees.” Two decades later, Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine made the same point: “Not to be content with slow and certain gains is characteristic of the American peo- ple.” Was discontent the old vice or the new leaf? Either way, Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead 39 doomsaying did not make Pan’s next visit any easier to bear, nor any less inevitable. 32 The panic of 1837 ended a decade of national prosperity that rested largely on credit and land speculation in the continued ab- sence of sound banking and currency systems. Andrew Jackson in 1829 became the first Democrat to become president, but to his public the old war hero was always “General Jackson.” During his two terms, this scrappy Tennessean waged a blood feud against banks, corporations, and money men whose privileges and schemes (he claimed) made life harder for common people. Old Hickory’s 1832 veto of recharter for the Second Bank of the United States and his 1833 transfer of federal accounts into re- gional depositories mortally wounded the “monster bank.” So be- gan a “full and fair experiment” to decentralize the already dis- jointed money system. In the summer of 1836, the U.S. Treasury issued the infamous “Specie Circular,” an attempt to curb frontier speculation by requiring buyers of public lands to pay in gold or silver. Inflation and overdependence on foreign capital spiraled as a result. A Jacksonian congressman coined the motto “Perish credit, perish commerce,” sending a message that financial casual- ties had no one else to blame for going too far, too fast. Jack- son’s hand-picked heir won the 1836 election. Taking the oath in March 1837, Martin Van Buren vowed to stay the course of “my illustrious predecessor.” The next month, panic erupted. Dry- goods merchant James Morris Whiton witnessed the chaos in Boston and wrote in his diary, “Every day a crowd gathered at the news room to see a list of New York failures the day before. The list would often contain 20 names. The regular questions of the day were ‘Is the mail arrived? Who failed yesterday?’” 33 Hard money grew so scarce that citizens began minting their own, many with comic vignettes and slogans. Copper “hard times tokens” circulated widely in lieu of pocket change and in favor of policy change. A penny tribute to Jackson was stamped “Perish Credit Perish Commerce” on heads and “My Experiment, My Currency, My Glory” on tails. A closer look at a coin bearing a 40 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead shipwreck revealed the vessel’s name: Experiment. Another ren- dered the “Executive Experiment” as a slow tortoise hauling a strongbox; on the reverse, a Democratic donkey galloped “In the Footsteps of My Illustrious Predecessor.” Likewise, satirical cur- rency changed hands as retail or wage scrip, despite public mis- trust of paper notes as an intangible and oft-counterfeited me- dium. Most whimsical bills or “shin plasters,” however, pulled nothing more than a wink from an empty purse. “Hickory Dol- lars” and sundry other denominations drew upon the “Rag Bank,” the “Rogo Vilo Dishonesto Associato,” the “Printer’s Bank,” the “Sucker Institution,” or the famous “Humbug Glory Bank.” Hard-times tokens and scrip made assets out of irony, giving real value to funny money while the genuine article remained scarce or worthless. But petty cash, as it were, could neither buy national recovery nor discount public fears of fraud and mendacity in com- merce. Bankruptcy and unemployment plagued the country until the mid-1840s, with individual and international consequences. “It was indeed said across the water,” a U.S. Circuit Court judge wrote, “that ‘the Yankee nation, from General Jackson to a shoe black, was a fraudulent bankrupt.’” 34 Voices of doom echoed in lyceums, churches, and political halls of the republic, wherein reckless ambition was garbling ancient moral conviction. Scattered heretics insisted that “a complete rev- olution” had already occurred and that another sort of reforma- tion loomed: a new ethics of capitalism. In 1841 in Hunt’s, legal writer Joshua Marsden Van Cott advocated federal passage of a “General Bankrupt Law.” The “political duty” to enforce con- tracts, he wrote, also entailed a utilitarian duty to annul con- tracts: “the good of the few must yield to the good of the many.” To enforce “mere moral obligations to pay money” served neither duty nor any utilitarian purpose, he insisted. In an 1842 essay for Hunt’s, another writer endeavored to debunk two harmful myths. First, wrote John N. Bellows, too many people believed that the creditor did a sort of favor for the debtor by selling now and al- lowing him to pay later. Bellows asserted that the creditor “is as Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead 41 much interested to sell as [debtors] are to buy” and thus “must bear his share of the risk” inherent to a credit economy. The sec- ond myth was that failure resulted from individual “laxity of prin- ciple, or, at least, some culpable carelessness.” Such myths gave rise to “Quixotic” standards of moral obligation, he wrote. For ex- ample, the fable of the conscientious debtor (who repays every cent) “substitutes a wild heroism” in place of fairness and good sense. This was a classical liberal answer to Hornor’s dilemma: ar- chaic idealism impeded progress and justice. Moral duty pushed to absurdity, Bellows argued, becomes “a kind of infatuation with honesty. It looks too much like praying in the market-place.” 35 Louder and more numerous voices roared back that the mar- ketplace needed more praying and less policy. The redoubtable Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s Thanksgiving sermon of 1850 (published the following year) dripped with sarcasm. “It is well that men have a half-dozen separate characters,” America’s best- known parson sneered. Beecher mocked the idea that one man could have “a social character, a political character, a religious character, and a professional character, and he may conduct him- self very differently in each.” He went on to ridicule the idea that “a man may be honorable in private, and yet dishonest in public affairs; a man may be a good neighbor and kind householder, yet a very trickster in traffic.” In this context, maxims of the Ben Franklin variety came under harsh scrutiny, especially “Honesty is the best policy.” An 1852 business manual clucked, “Honesty ought never to be named in the same category with policy.” Boston re- former Thomas Wentworth Higginson worried in 1853 that mer- chants knew no morality except this eminently bendable rule: “it is not always the best honesty which is the best policy.” Taken lit- erally, “the cunning maxim” debased honesty as a mere business ploy. Eminent commentators like Higginson (and Beecher) de- cried this “separation between the man and his profession, be- tween personal character and business character.” 36 The market revolution begged the question of a market refor- mation: a dual realignment of economic relations and the moral 42 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead and legal codes that gave them meaning. Even those who worked toward this goal tripped over it—as Daniel Webster did one eve- ning in 1837. Because of the panic, the Senate had stayed in ses- sion that Sunday. Webster was a man of legendary eloquence, but after a long day his guard came down with the gavel that banged adjournment. That night, he told a group of citizens, “There are no Sabbaths in revolutionary times.” This bit of impiety sparked a brief furor, albeit nothing the gentleman from Massachusetts could not smooth over. As a Whig, the party of progress and en- terprise, Webster advocated bankruptcy relief and banking re- form, which were repeatedly defeated by Jacksonian Democrats. The nonpartisan truth of his “sabbath” quip was its précis of a cul- tural stalemate: new morals had not accompanied new markets. By 1841, a hard-times token had lionized Webster and his mission with the legend “Credit—Current.” That year, he pushed an un- popular bankruptcy bill through Congress, only to see the law re- pealed two years later amid moral outcry against discharging con- tracted debts. Even the American Whig Review beheld the mess with ambivalence, admitting “Our virtues are the virtues of mer- chants, and not of men.” America aspired to the liberal virtues of the entrepreneur at the cost of republican manhood. Hornor’s di- lemma had become his nation’s, and not even the great Daniel Webster could talk his way out of it. 37 Going Bust in the Age of Go-Ahead 43 2 A Reason in the Man I n the winter of 1846, a young attorney subscribed to a seven- lecture series at the Lyceum in Worcester, Massachusetts. “I did not understand it,” wrote J. Henry Hill in his diary, after the third lecture. The opening address, “Montaigne the Sceptic,” fascinated him, and the second night, on Napoleon, was passable, but the discourse on Plato lost him. “I expected it would be full of the mystical and of course was not very much disappointed. I never very much relished the doctrines of abstractions, of entity, oneness, duality, &c.” Such “quiddities” had no relevance to Hill’s career as a bankruptcy lawyer—which was precisely why he at- tended all seven lectures. His diary alternated reviews of the lec- tures and complaints about his caseload. “Insolvent proceedings and insolvent records are completely the order of the day now,” he wrote between orations on Swedenborg and Shakespeare. Then came Goethe, who stirred up storm and stress. “It is after all the most difficult thing in the world for a young man to do, to fix upon the kind of business he will pursue through life,” Hill de- spaired. “No one can know what it is till they have passed through 44 the ordeal for themselves.” At twenty-seven, he hated lawyering and hated seeing “ruined fortunes & blighted hopes” across his desk every day. From where he sat, failure looked like an inner deficit as much as a monetary one, and his clients’ inadequacies aroused his own fears. Certain he had achieved “nothing at all,” he wrote, “I am more and more ashamed of myself every time I think of it.” 1 The diarist learned more than he imagined from attending “Mr. Emerson’s Lectures” in 1846, later published as Representa- tive Men (1849). Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Hill were un- common men, born in 1803 and 1818, respectively, though they had little in common with each other (much less with their fel- low Americans). At the same time, they were representative— unelected aldermen working for constituencies of ambitious and unfortunate men. The attorney and the philosopher spent their days drafting arguments about the perils of contemporary iden- tity—a matter of growing concern to men of every station. “A person needs to live one life in this world to know how to live,” Hill mused in his diary. “We want to learn [to] know ourselves & when learned it is too late to be of any avail to us.” Yet Emerson’s way to self-knowledge held no allure for him. “A man of books is to be pitied truly. I mean a man of nothing but books,” Hill wrote. “He finds in his library beautiful theories of life and codes of mo- rality & goodness, and as he goes out into the world he is sadly disappointed to find nothing of them there. He has learned the theory, but cannot find the practice & application.” Henry Hill lacked the philosophical apparatus of transcendentalism, but he did not need Emerson to teach him self-reliance. 2 While Hill practiced in his cluttered office and Emerson pon- dered in his airy library, both worked to reconcile the law of the marketplace and the moral basis of achievement. Each beheld failure and success as incarnations of self-reliance: the wages and taxes of individual effort and vision. Both upheld the law of achieved identity, yet vacillated about its ostensible corollary. In his own journal of 1842, Emerson scribbled a business maxim. A Reason in the Man 45 “The merchant evidently believes the State street proverb that nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune, and so in making money.” 3 The panic of 1837 popularized such cries of economic and polit- ical discord, and against this background, Emerson and Hill reas- sessed Joseph Hornor’s dilemma. What did self-reliance mean without personal responsibility, without the presumption of “a reason, in the man”? In 1846, a Boston merchant assured a lecture audience, “Failures that arise from inevitable misfortune alone, are not so numerous as they are generally supposed to be. In most cases insolvency is caused by mistakes that originate in personal character.” Like the Puritan sermons of old, commercial jeremi- ads beheld the panic as retribution upon a nation that had strayed from the path of righteousness. The evangelists and money- changers agreed for once. The rhetoric of moralists and business leaders quarantined failure like a plague. The whole community had sinned and must atone, but ruined men were the causes of pestilence, not its casualties. Theirs was a solitary affliction, con- tracted through individual error and excess; and it must be con- tained to avert further outbreaks. 4 Emerson’s “State street proverb” combined market logic and moral creed, both of which always presumed “a reason, in the man.” This alliance amounted to a powerful ideology, a canon of cultural beliefs and practices that shaped the ordeal and aftermath of economic loss: “nobody fails who ought not to fail.” Con- ventional wisdom is not official rhetoric, like presidential procla- mations or church doctrine. Yet “a reason, in the man” expressed potent cultural assumptions about failure. Resonances among personal meditation and public speech—Emerson’s lectures, Hill’s diary, commercial jeremiads—show how ideologies mature in a process of continuous flow. The ideology of failure was not just the bombast of preachers and senators, nor the gossip of neighbors and associates, nor the imagery of tabloids and bal- ladeers, nor the pain in diaries and family letters. The circulation 46 A Reason in the Man of ideas among such diverse communities and types of communi- cation defined failure within a matrix of achieved identity. “A rea- son, in the man” could make the difference between a temporary setback and a lifelong identity, in some cases. But which cases? Download 1.6 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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