Henry Charles Carey

Henry Charles Carey
Henry Charles Carey from a circa 1865 carte de visite photograph by Frederick Gutekunst
Born	(1793-12-15)15 December 1793 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	13 October 1879(1879-10-13) (aged 85)
Nationality	American
Field	Political economy
School or tradition	American School

Henry Charles Carey (December 15, 1793 – October 13, 1879) was a leading 19th-century economist of the American School of capitalism, and chief economic adviser to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Carey is best known for the book The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial (1851), which denigrates the "British System" of laissez faire free trade capitalism in comparison to the American System of developmental capitalism, which uses tariff protection and government intervention to encourage production and national self-sufficiency.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1793, Carey was the son of Mathew Carey (1760–1839), an influential economist, political reformer, editor, and publisher. Mathew Carey was born in Dublin, Ireland but emigrated to Philadelphia in 1784, where with the help of Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette he founded a publishing firm. Among his many writings was Essays on Political Economy (1822), one of the earliest American treatises favoring Alexander Hamilton's idea of protection and its use in the promotion of American industry.

In 1825, Carey succeeded his father in the publishing firm, which became Carey & Lea, attaining a leading position in America. In 1835, Carey co-founded the famous Franklin Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia.

Carey retired from business in 1838 while publishing his 4-volume treatise (1837–1840) Principles of Political Economy, which soon became the standard representation of the American school of economic thought, and was translated into Italian and Swedish, with some variance, dominating the U.S. economic system until 1973.