John W. Hinton
John W. Hinton (1817-1901) was born in London, England, on November 30, 1817. He would receive a thorough education in England. It is not clear when Hinton made the move to the United States, but when he did, he would settle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hinton would then gain employment at the newspaper The Evening Wisconsin, where he would eventually become the editor. He would also be, at one point, the editor of the Wisconsin Sentinel, and for several years, he would also contribute protectionist tracts to the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Hinton began writing and speaking in support of the American System during the 1840s and would eventually establish the Northwestern Tariff Bureau in 1879. This organization seems to have been affiliated with the American Protective Tariff League, and operated as a local protectionist advocacy organization which published and circulated its own protectionist literature.
Hinton never produced a major treatise on political economy, and was instead more of a pamphleteer, with most of his pamphlets being published by the Bureau. Hinton produced numerous pamphlets and articles on the subject, but some of the more notable ones included Workingman and the Tariff (1880), The Humanity of the American Protective Tariff (1886), American Protective Tariff and American Political Economy (1886), and The Past, Present and Future Mission of the American Protectionist (1887). In addition to his written works, Hinton also conducted lectures on protectionism and would regularly engage in debates with free traders. As legend has it, Hinton created such a stir during one debate in 1883 with the economist John Barber Parkinson at the University of Wisconsin, that Parkinson’s students burned Hinton in effigy. On April 20, 1901, at the age of 84, Hinton died in his residence in Milwaukee. Prior to his death, Hinton donated $100,000 to fund an addition to an old-aged home ran by the local Protestant Church.