1799 - Commerce

Commerce

The world's first general income tax bill passes Parliament January 9 and produces revenue of £6 million for the year. Introduced by Britain's prime minister William Pitt as a war measure, the law exempts incomes below £60 but levies a standard rate of 10 percent (2s per pound sterling) on incomes over £200, taxes incomes of £60 to £199 at reduced rates, allows deductions for children, life insurance premiums, repairs to property, and tithes, and will raise £175 million before it is allowed to lapse in 1815 (see 1802).

Parliament passes the Combination Act, making trade unionism illegal in Britain; it will pass a second such act next year, and the laws will not be repealed until 1824. Together with the various amendments that will be added, they will make any workingman who collaborates with another to gain a wage rise or a decrease in working hours, or who solicits anyone else to quit work, or who objects to working with any other workingman subject to a 3-year jail sentence or to 2 months' hard labor. Defendants may be forced to testify against each other, appeal is extremely difficult, and anyone who contributes to the expenses of a workingman convicted under the new laws makes himself subject to a fine.

Welsh industrialist Robert Owen, 28, marries the daughter of Scottish industrialist David Dale, 60, and becomes manager and co-owner of Dale's cotton mill in England's Lancashire. He determines "to make arrangements to supersede the evil conditions [of the millhands] . . . by good conditions" (see 1806).

The Dutch East India Company dissolves as its charter expires after 198 years in which stockholders have received annual dividends averaging 18 percent. Mincing Lane, London, becomes the spice-trading center of the world.

Frankfurt-born London bill broker Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 21, establishes a firm that will survive into the 21st century as N. M. Rothschild & Sons. He settled last year at Manchester as a textile merchant, will gain a position in society by marrying a daughter of Levi Barent Cohen in 1806, and although brusque and off-handed in manner will come to dominate the London exchanges (see 1812).

The first British savings bank opens at Wendover, Buckinghamshire, where clergyman Joseph Smith has acted on the suggestion of Jeremy Bentham (see 1765; first American savings bank, 1816).

Pennsylvania rebel John Fries, 48, leads an armed force of more than 120 German-born landowners against tax assessors to protest the federal property tax levied last year in connection with the undeclared war with France. Failure to pay the tax may result in forfeiture of property, which may be sold, and a Philadelphia judge has issued warrants for the arrest of some landowners who have defied the laws. Fries has raised men in two counties north of Philadelphia to protest. They force a federal marshal to release prisoners held at Bethlehem, no shots are fired, and the mob is dispersed without incident, but President Adams orders federal troops into the area, they arrest Fries, and he is convicted of treason after a trial at Philadelphia in which Supreme Court Justice William Paterson and a Judge Peters preside. Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution. Absent a state of war, the Constitution says, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them" (Article III, Section 3), and Fries's lawyers have argued that his armed rebellion was aimed only at one law, not at the United States; they appeal Fries's conviction (see 1800).

The Manhattan Company is chartered in March following passage of a "water bill" in the New York State assembly near the end of its session (see environment, 1798). Aaron Burr has introduced the measure, but the chief justice warns Governor Jay before he signs it that there is more than "pure and wholesome water" in the bill's final paragraph. The words in question state, "That it shall and may be lawful for the said company to employ all such surplus capital as may belong or accrue to the said company in the purchase of public or other stock or any other monied transactions not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of this state or of the United States, for the sole benefit of said Company." The Bank of New York founded in 1784 and a branch of the Bank of the United States have been the only two banks in town, the Federalists have blocked creation of any rivals, the Gazette and General Advertiser charges Burr and his friends with "scandalous duplicity," and Burr is defeated along with the entire Republican slate by 900 votes in the April Assembly elections that come 4 weeks after the charter has been granted. Burr is accused of chicanery by Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists, especially after the Bank of the Manhattan Company opens its doors September 1 on a site that will later be 40 Wall Street (see Chase Manhattan, 1955).

Former postmaster general Timothy Pickering writes a letter November 29 describing Lynn, Massachusetts-born Salem merchant William Gray, 49, as "a man of unspoted character and for mercantile talents and extent of business, the first merchant in the United States." Gray will soon be employing 300 seamen per year; by the times he moves to Boston 10 years hence he will own 15 ships, seven barks, 13 brigs, and a schooner, and by 1815 he will own at least 113 vessels (see 1807).

French economist Pierre S. (Samuel) du Pont de Nemours, 60, emigrates late in the year to the United States, having been imprisoned for a time as a collaborator of the late A. R. Jacques Turgot (see 1774; 1776). Du Pont is a disciple of the late Physiocrat François Quesnay (see E. I. Du Pont de Nemours, 1802).

Chinese authorities issue an edict against importation of opium, which has been coming into the country from British India (see 1729). Many men have become addicted, using money for the drug that should be used to feed their families, but the edict does little to discourage the opium trade (see 1816).