Our founders eventually wanted to do it themselves without getting skimmed by capitalists
Red:
The Founders were capitalists, through and through.
- Franklin --> Publishing, chandlery
- Jefferson --> Agriculture
- Washington --> Agriculture
- Adams --> Law, farming and cobblery
- Hamilton --> Writing
- Madison --> Agriculture
- John Jay --> Law
- John Hancock --> Merchant
Examine the lives of the 1st and 2nd Continental Congress, the signers of the Articles, Declaration or Constitution, the state legislators and executives.
Every last one of them was a
capitalist. They owned factors of production -- land, labor or capital -- and availed to profit their title thereunto.
Distinguishing a very small few from the rest is their "Horatio Algerism." Make no mistake; however, mostly the Founders inherited wealth, status and power and had the enviable task of not losing it.
Aside:
One would be remiss thinking the Founders sought to form a democracy. They did not. They sought a republic, as stated in
Federalist 10.
A communication and concert result from [democracy] itself; and there is nothing to check the [impetus] to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property...Theoretic politicians, who have patronized [democracy], have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect [political] equality, [mankind would simultaneously] be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and...passions.
It clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy...is enjoyed by a large over a small republic, -- is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments.
Madison could not have been clearer:
[*=1]Republic is better than democracy.
[*=1]The "talented 10th" ought be who manage the state.
To them injustice meant "messing" with the power (all forms of it), riches, property and means of obtaining and retaining either by those who hold all three.
Madison was not unique in his disapprobation of the notion that the hoi polloi have saw in government.
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government…
--
Alexander Hamilton
Succinctly: the Founders sought to replace the monarchical aristocratic plutocracy under which they lived with a republican geniocratic plutocracy.
I cannot count how often I see and hear folks -- here as well in the "general public" -- repeat the highly idealized Founding Fathers themes typical of texts read by, or at times to, elementary schoolers. The problem isn't that those narratives are wrong -- they're not -- it's that they're trivial, flagrantly incomplete.
The Founders, unlike "everyone else," thrived under monarchy, the culture to which they were born, for they were, like their Continental counterparts, among the most well read, well educated, well traveled and thoughtful people in Western Civilization. The Founders (those whose names we know and those we don't) had a problem with the monarch, from across a damn ocean, claiming as his own more of their property and wealth than they cared to part with. They also weren't keen on inserting himself into, not only their economic and financial affairs, but also into their local/colonial political lives. (The rural vs. urban political divide roiling us today is substantively the same animus that was extant between the Founders and their English governors, i.e., the King and Parliament.) Were George III less avaricious, we'd be Brits.