480
PARTISAN REVIEW
rich merchant-planter, Lincoln a hack-tracking conciliator, and where,
in
the entire 460 pages, not a single cherry twig blooms or rail is split
by
(hand-forged, patriot-wielded) axe.
The Triumph of American Capitalism
is an interpretative economic
history of the United States to 1900. The settlement of the Americas is
understood as an offshoot in the growth of European mercantile capital–
ism, and Hacker therefore hegins with a brief sketch of the early develop·
ment of European capitalism. He concentrates his focus, naturally, on Eng–
land, which, following the Puritan revolution, organized the colonies
under the Mercantilist System as dependent feeders of the home merchants,
shippers, bankers and early industrialists. This blocked the independent
development of the native mercantile capitalism in the thirteen colonies
which were, besides, treated as poor relations in the larger British overseas
family. The yoke was thrown off, and United States mercantile capitalism
began a new advance under the political structure of a sovereign nation.
United States capitalism, Hacker insists, remained primarily mercan–
tile rather than industrial until the Civil War. By 1860 the southern
planter economy was up against a wall at the same time that northern
mercantile capitalism and its leaders were pretty well played out and
unable to complete the transition to an industrial basis proper. New forces,
politically organized in the Republican party, took over, drove through
the shift to industrial capitalism, and conquered state power through the
Civil War. Then followed the hounding rise of United States industrial
capitalism to a climax at the end of the century. The percentage figures of
industrial growth between 1850 and 1880 should once again caution social–
ists against "proving the superiority of socialist economy" by even the
claimed figures of the Soviet Five-Year Plans.
It seems discourteous to make complaints about a hook conceived
along such lines. Let well enough alone, we might easily conclude.
If
this
were the way that schools taught pupils the history of their country, there
would he enough cause for rejoicing. But Hacker, by his own approach
and by what others expect of him, asks more than comparison with the
history-hook choice of Kiwanis clubs and Elwood school boards.
For this reason, I feel compelled to wonder: just what is the point of
this hook? why is it appearing just now? And I have trouble finding
answers.
The book is not, to any considerable extent, a work of original scholar·
ship. As indication: there is a dearth of reference to primary source mate·
rial, and at least 90 references to secondary sources. Incidentally, I do
not myself see the excuse for a historian's so often adding to his own
interpretative opinion of events a repetition in the form of an interpreta–
tive opinion of some other historian. Constant quotations preceded by
such phrases as "In the words of W. R. Scott,'' "In the words of Professor
Nettels," "To quote Samuel Flagg Bemis," "Carter Goodrich and Sol Davi–
son ... conclude very properly," "The Negro historian, W. E. B. Du Bois,
wisely says," ... All this appeal to authority instead of evidence leaves
a rather medieval after-taste.
