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workshops are as much our fellow laborers , as if they were automata
wrought by some Maelzel in the form ofmen, and made capable ofwalking ,
moving, and working, of felling the forest or cultivating the fields. "
Labor , Webster agreed, was the source of value . But, dilating on the
advantages of man's "non-consumer," mechanical "fellow-laborer," Web–
ster expanded value-creating labor to include "the labor of the ox, and the
horse, " and the machine. Obscuring the distinctive character of human
production, he rationalized the rise of the factory system and the sale of
alienated labor power on which it depended . Creating automata in the
image of laboring men, Webster turned men into machines. His politics
too , Thoreau charged, eliminated human responsibility . American indus–
try "can make a man with its black arts, " wrote Thoreau, sufficient for the
"funeral" tasks of political obedience. "Wooden men can perhaps be
manufactured that will serve the purpose as well ."
The machines of the practical materialist, touted as undemanding
servants of the self-made man, actually sanctified hierarchy . The romant ic,
monster-slaying hero did so as well. A mass of equal individuals , lacking
special human bonds to one another , were united by their allegiance to the
leader. Imprisoned in market and factory relations, they experienced the
hero's achievements vicariously. In these ways, as in others, the self-made
image helped turn America away from class and class conflict , and toward
hierarchy and mass .
This sanctification of hierarchy , under conditions of Civil War and
industrializing capitalism, was, as Eric Foner and George Fredrickson have
shown, the legacy of the self-made ideal . Its largely false promises of
independence and mobility located blame for failure finally in the self, not
in society. "If any continue through life in the condition of the hired
laborer," said Lincoln, "it is not the fault of the system , but because of
either a dependent nature which prefers it , or improvidence, folly , or
singular misfortune. " Moreover, it was all too easy for the antiinstitutional
urge to transform itself into an institutional apotheosis which paralyzed
individual will. Failing to generate a world congenial to autarchic fantasies ,
the antiinstitutional reformer absorbed himself into a resanctified state
instead . He replaced the imperial self with institutional aggrandizement.
