I've just finished reading Rich Lowry's new book, Lincoln Unbound, and as someone who
has read a lot of books on Lincoln, I happily commend it to you.
The book's rather long subtitle is "How an Ambitious
Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream – and How We Can Do It Again."
As the dust jacket puts it:
Lincoln lived the American Dream
and succeeded in opening a way to it for others. He saw in the nation's
founding documents the unchanging foundation of an endlessly dynamic society.
He embraced the market and the amazing transportation and communications revolutions
beginning to take hold.
At the end of his enjoyable book, Mr. Lowry takes what he
understands to be Lincoln's philosophical dispositions and policy perspectives
and suggests how they might be applied to address today's problems. This is an
interesting, thought-provoking exercise, but you'll have to get the book to see
whether or not you agree.
For today, I just want to comment on how Lincoln's thoughts
concerning what he called "free labor" relate closely – indeed, are
integral – to a proper understanding of our free enterprise system and property
rights and to what the Declaration of Independence refers to as the
"unalienable Rights" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
While Lincoln could not have anticipated Labor Day as it has evolved today, I want
to suggest that his own understanding of "labor" ought to have a special
resonance as we think about the meaning of this Labor Day.
As Lincoln's thinking evolved, and especially by the time of
the Lincoln - Douglas debates, Lincoln increasingly based his argument against the
abomination of slavery on his understanding of the meaning of the natural
rights secured, in his view, by the Declaration of Independence. But long
before rising to national prominence for his stand against human bondage,
Lincoln had espoused, over and over again, his belief that an individual should
reap the reward of his own labor.
As Mr. Lowry points out, in 1847 Lincoln wrote that "each
individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit
of his labor." Or, as he put it in a more colloquial Lincolnism: "I
always thought the man that made the corn should eat the corn."
Lincoln's views concerning free labor – and the
Declaration's affirmation of the natural right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness – were grounded in the Founders' understanding and
acceptance of John Locke's work, with which they were intimately familiar and
often relied upon. In his famous Second
Treatise of Government, Locke put it this way:
[E]very man has a property in his own person: this no
body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his
hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the
state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with,
and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
Note
the explicit way that Locke linked an individual's own labor to his property
interest.
Following
Locke, James Madison, the principal drafter of our Constitution, declared that
individuals possess property rights "in their actual possessions, in the
labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of
time which ought to relieve their Fatigues and soothe their cares."
In his
opposition to slavery, but also in a more universal sense, Lincoln repeatedly articulated
the Lockean view that all individuals, of whatever race or creed, possess a
natural right to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, to make those fruits their
own property.
Moreover,
Lincoln understood that the intertwining of free labor and property rights was essential
to securing and maintaining the liberty espoused by the Declaration of
Independence and guaranteed by the Constitution – and that free labor,
individual initiative, and property rights are essential elements of the American
free enterprise system.
Finally, in extolling the virtue of labor and
property, Lincoln frequently admonished those who would set one man or class
against another. As he put it in 1864 in his reply to the New York Workingmen's
Democratic Republican Association:
Property is the fruit of
labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some
should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just
encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull
down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for
himself….
As early as 1847 Lincoln had expressed the same
thought this way:
[I]t has so happened in all
ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have without labour,
enjoyed a large proportion of the
fruits. This is wrong and should not continue. To [secure] each labourer the
whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object
of any good government.
To my mind, it is always timely to consider
Lincoln. And as Labor Day approaches, it is especially timely – and useful – to
consider Lincoln's views on free labor, and to contemplate the inextricably intertwined
nature of labor, property rights, individual freedom, and the American free
enterprise system which Lincoln championed.
Whether you are working this Labor Day, or merely
contemplating Lincoln's thoughts on labor, my best wishes for an enjoyable
Labor Day weekend.
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