1790 Philadelphia Merchants' and Importers' Declaration of Association against European Agents

[Philadelphia, December 1790]. [3]pp. Bifolium. 13 x 8 inches. Laid paper with bell and crown watermark (Gravell: BELL.005.1). Expert mends. Folds; some losses at folds; lacking three-quarters of second leaf; good.

Declaration of association signed by 51 Philadelphia merchants or firms against "Agents of European houses trading to this Country..." The merchants state plainly that these agents are "...importing on their own Account, and of receiving by consignment, large quantities of goods, and have also taken orders from persons in the retail business [thus harming] the Interests of the regular Importers, as well as of the greater part of the Retailers..."

A December 2nd, 1790 article in Dunlap & Claypoole's lays out the problem. Philadelphia merchants are ordering their goods from manufacturers in Europe. But then these same manufacturers import these same goods to their own agents in America, happily undercutting their own customers:

"By this means, the demand upon which you depended for vending your goods, is otherwise supplied, and you under the ruinous necessity of keeping, or of selling them under their prime cost. This practice must have operated very generally upon you, and is so evidently injurious that it requires no comment. It is therefore to be wished that you would soon meet, to adopt some Plan for remedying the great and growing Evil." (A future issue notes of a meeting at City Tavern on December 11th.)"

Signatories "mutually associate" and agree to discontinue commissions to those agents. Many of the signers are listed in Clement Biddle's The Philadelphia Directory of 1791 as merchants, though a few are listed by their trade such as porter, cordwainer, and, in the case of Godfrey Baker & Co., as "stationers and book binders."

Less than two months after this declaration, Congress chartered the First Bank of the United States to enable Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's plan to create the necessary financial infrastructure to promote domestic and international trade and commerce. The Philadelphia merchants and importers seen here are banding together to protect their economic interests.

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