Van Buren Denslow
Van Buren Denslow (1833-1902) was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1833. In his early twenties, Denslow would commence the study of the law, and would be admitted into the bar in 1855, but decided to pursue a career in journalism and academia instead. It was around this time that Denslow produced his first protectionist tract through a series of lectures called “The Causes of the Present Hard Times.” In 1863, Denslow would move to Chicago, where he became chief editorial writer of the Chicago Tribune, which was associated with Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Then, in 1866, he became editor in chief of the Chicago Republican, where he undertook an aggressive campaign for the cause of protectionism, but by 1868, he moved back to New York for a brief stint at Greeley’s New York Tribune, before returning to the Chicago Tribune the following year. Around the same time, he also helped with the editing of Putnam’s Magazine. Later in 1880, he would become the chief economic writer of the fiercely protectionist Chicago Inter-Ocean, as well as a contributor to George Gunton’s Social Economist, where many of his short economic tracts would appear.
Denslow’s academic career would commence in 1872, when he became the organizing secretary and Professor of Law at the Union College of Law. Around the same time, Denslow would also begin teaching at Northwestern University and the old University of Chicago, the predecessor institution of the present-day University of Chicago. One of Denslow’s first published works was produced in 1879 for the Philosophical Society of Chicago. This work was entitled A Plea for the Introduction of Responsible Government and the Representation of Capital into the United States as Safeguards against Communism and Disunion. In this piece, Denslow calls for constitutional reforms that would allow the introduction of aristocratic elements in state and local government to counterweight populist demands. Such reforms were intended to protect the United States from communism. In 1885, Denslow once again returned to New York with the intention of resuming his law practice but would become immediately preoccupied with editing the American Economist, which was the official periodical of the American Protective Tariff League. It was not long after this that Denslow produced his most brilliant work, his Principles of the Economic Philosophy of Society, Government, and Industry (1888). Whilst designed as a general economics textbook, the treatise’s central and original argument concerns the role of entrepreneurial profit and how it acts as a migratory force which moves resources into new industrial pursuits.
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On July 17, 1902, at the age of sixty-nine, Denslow died in his home in New York City. He left his personal effects to his housekeeper and friend, Melissa Waxham. These personal effects included sixteen unpublished manuscripts. The details surrounding these manuscripts remains unknown, but it stands to reason that at least some of them were on economic matters. Miss Waxham later moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where she lived out her remaining years. The unpublished manuscripts remain missing until this day. That death prevented Denslow from finalizing these works for publication is a misfortune. As one of the last and most sophisticated writers of the School, these lost writings may have contained one of the most advanced expositions of American Protectionist thought. Van Buren Denslow was survived by his four children, one of whom bore the name Henry Carey Denslow to signify the reverence which the elder Denslow held for the great economist who came before him.
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