CONVERSATIONS ON JEFFERSON AND JEFFERSONIAN POLITICS

Jefferson and the Laboring Classes

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George Gori

Could you point me to some quotes by Jefferson favoring the working class or as he called them the "laboring class"?

June 24, 2001

Eyler Coates

Jefferson always indicated respect for the laboring man, as in:
"In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar." --Thomas Jefferson: Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786. ME 17:8

He recognized the real business of society as the labor of ordinary people:

"How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object -- the happiness of man -- to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests." --Thomas Jefferson to Ellen W. Coolidge, 1825. ME 18:341

The purpose of government was to protect people and their rights to the fruits of their labor:
"Here... will be preserved a model of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will." --Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, 1815. ME 14:237

An excess of government tends to deprive the workman of the fruits of his labor:
"I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it." --Thomas Jefferson to William Ludlow, 1824. ME 16:75

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1802. ME 10:342

Of course, Jefferson honored above all labor the farmer:
"An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or political." --Thomas Jefferson: Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786. ME 17:91

"Agriculture... is the first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect." --Thomas Jefferson to David Williams, 1803. ME 10:429

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:229

Without doubt, the life of mankind centers around work, and protecting the working man in his labor goes to the heart of what government and society are all about. Ayn Rand, in seeing the capitalist as the super-hero, does not seem to understand that it is the workman at every level that is the foundation for a free society and the reason for its existence.

June 25, 2001

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