?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"AMERICA'S MAGNA CARTA FOR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT" HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. Hamilton begins his research for his seminal Report on Manufactures. Contemporary secretarial copy. 2 pages on one sheet, 13 x 8 1/4 inches; minor edge wear, short separations at folds. In 1/2 morocco folding case. Treasury Department, 22 June 1791
Alexander Hamilton's 1791 Report on Manufactures was a founding document of American economic policy. It has been called "America's Magna Carta for industrial development" (Humphrey, Economic History of the United States, page 156). This is the letter in which Hamilton launched his research. Hamilton, as Secretary of Treasury, writes to one of his federal supervisors of revenue, John Singer Dexter (1754-1844) of Rhode Island, who had served as an assistant adjutant to Washington in the Revolution. Hamilton writes, in part: "Having been directed by the House of Representatives to report a plan for promoting manufactures in the United States, I am desirous of obtaining as accurate information as possible of the actual state of manufactures in the several states. . . . I request therefore that you will give me as accurate information as it shall be in your power to obtain of the manufactures of every kind carried on within the limits of your district . . . of the degree of maturity they have obtained--of the quantities periodically made--of the prices at which they are sold--of their respective qualities--of the impediments, if any, under which they labour." Five months later, Hamilton would release his Report on the Subject of Manufactures.
