…. to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist… He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these; experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort…
—Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Writings, 1984
Thomas Jefferson astutely recognized the danger of dependence on a foreign nation for essential goods and the importance of manufacturing for the preservation of our independence. For a young country with a nascent ...
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