George Gunton
George Gunton (1845-1919) was born on September 8, 1845, in Cambridgeshire, England. He was the son of Matthew Gunton, who was a poor agricultural laborer. This family situation meant that the young George Gunton had limited opportunity to receive a formal education. From a young age, Gunton would also work as an agricultural laborer. He would later move to Lancashire, which was then a center of British cotton manufacturing. There, he would work in the textile mills. During this time, Gunton would also become involved in union activities within the mill. Being interested in politics, Gunton was considered a liberal radical, supporting such movements as granting suffrage to agricultural workers and the nine-and-a-half-hour workday. He would, however, gravitate towards the theories of free trade, having grown up in the atmosphere of the Manchester School of economics. After a decade of working in the English textile mills, and getting by at bear subsistence, Gunton and his family migrated to the United States in 1874. He would then reside in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he would gain employment at the local cotton mills.
After taking an active part in a labor strike at the mill in 1876, however, Gunton would be blacklisted by the owners of the mill. He would then cease manual work and pursue a career in journalism, initially contributing to the union orientated Labor Standard. It was through this position that Gunton became acquainted with the union leader and self-taught economist Ira Steward. Steward was not a socialist, but he was a staunch advocate of the eight-hour workday, and this was a view later adopted by Gunton. Steward wrote several articles and pamphlets in support of the eight-hour workday and sought to write a larger theoretical treatise on the question. Shortly before his death, Steward entrusted Gunton with the unpublished manuscript. The work, however, was far less developed than Gunton had anticipated, with him noting that Steward’s “papers when examined were found to consist of disconnected matter, made up of more or less extended notes, none of which were in a condition to be used.” In any event, Gunton had completed the manuscript in 1887. This represented Gunton’s first major work and was published under the title Wealth and Progress.
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Prior to the publication of Wealth and Progress, Gunton had left Massachusetts and arrived in New York in 1885. Here, he became involved in an economics society which operated out of a local church. The church fellowship was so impressed with Gunton that they made him the organizer of the society. The economics society eventually evolved into the Institute of Social Economics. In addition to running classes and lectures, the Institute would also begin publishing its own journal in 1890, known as The Social Economist. It would be rebranded sometime later as Gunton’s Magazine. It seems that it was around this time that Gunton became acquainted and subsequently adopted many of the ideas of the American Protectionists. In 1891, Gunton produced his more sophisticated and more distinctly Protectionist treatise entitled Principles of Social Economics. In addition to his various articles, Gunton would also write a volume in 1899 entitled Trusts and the Public, and would also co-author two other works with Hayes Robbins entitled Outlines of Social Economics (1900) and Outlines of Political Science (1901). Despite his earlier orientation with the labor movement and even though he remained steadfast in his commitment to the eight-hour workday, Gunton can be better seen as a compromiser between labor and capital, and essentially affirmed the harmony of interests espoused by the broader American Protectionist School. Politically, Gunton would also be aligned with the Republican Party and would serve as an advisor to William McKinley. George Gunton would die on September 11, 1919, at the age of 74.