John Francis Bray

The first book-length biography on the subject, this account details the history behind John Francis Bray, a man hailed later in life as the "Benjamin Franklin of American labor." This biography surveys Bray's experiences and ideas under all his labels--radical, chartist, writer, farmer, and democrat--as well as the impact he had in England and the United States from the 1830s to the end of the century. The chapters draw on original research through primary sources, including Bray's diaries, letters to and from his family, manuscripts, and newspapers. During his time in England, Bray worked as an apprentice printer, was a writer for the Chartist cause, and authored Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy and A Voyage from Utopia to Several Unknown Regions of the World. From the 1840s on he lived in America, farming and starting a family in Michigan. He was briefly a newspaper editor sympathetic to the Democrats and responded to issues of Spiritualism, the Civil War, slavery, and secession of the South. In the 1870s, Bray wrote God and Man: A Unity, supported the Socialistic Labor Party, and joined the Knights of Labor. His later years are also touched upon, when he was a correspondent with the labor press and helped to shape the new Populist Party of the 1890s.