\"The Social Law of Labor\" William Babcock Weeden Hand Written Letter For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "The Social Law of Labor" William Babcock Weeden Hand Written Letter Dated 1910.  

in 1638. He was born in Bristol, R. I, the son of John Edward and Eliza (Cross)

Weeden. His early education was received in the public schools of Westerly, R.

I, and at the Connecticut Literary Institute, Suffield, Connecticut. He was a

student at Brown University with the class of 1852. He left before graduation

in order to accept employment with Bradford & Taft, wool merchants of

Providence. So successful was he in this capacity that, with the dissolution of

the partnership about 1864, he became a member of the new firm of Taft, Weeden

& Company. Weeden's business activity was interrupted by his service during

the Civil War. He first served as a second lieutenant in the Rhode Island light

artillery, but was advanced to a captaincy after the battle of Bull Run. He

continued in active service through the Seven Days' Battle, when he resigned

his commission and resumed his business connections in Providence. The

important phase of his business life began in 1864, when he organized the

Weybosset Mills, control of which he retained until their purchase by the

American Woolen Company in 1902. These mills were devoted to the large-scale

manufacture of cassimeres and worsteds in the Blackstone Valley and in

Providence, and raised Weeden to a position of leadership among men of affairs

in southern New England. While probably bestknown among his contemporaries as a

manufacturer, Weeden will undoubtedly be remembered by posterity chiefly as an

historian. As a businessman he was content to tread the paths worn by his

predecessors. It was in the seventies that his interest began to turn to public

questions and to history. His first literary effort of importance was The

Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws (1875). This was followed by The Social Law

of Labor (1882), and Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization

(1884), which appeared in the Johns Hopkins University Studies. In the

last-named work he began the cultivation of a field which was to engage his

attention for many years. His studies resulted in his most important and widely

used work, Economic and Social History of New England, covering the period from

1620 to 1789. Despite its undeniable defects of arrangement and organization,

this work stamps Weeden as one of the handful of men in America who, when

history was still politics, dared to embrace a broader and more all-inclusive

view of the subject. Like his contemporary, John Bach McMaster, Weeden was a

social historian who sought faithfully to reproduce the life of the people in

different periods. Like McMaster, too, he wrote social history of the static

sort, as opposed to the dynamic, interpretative variety associated with

Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard. He died in Providence, survived by

his wife and six of his seven children. Weeden is undoubtedly remembered as an

historian. As a writer of history he ranks as a pioneer. He wrote numerous

other articles and books, the most important of which were War Government,

Federal and State 1861-1865 (1906), and Early Rhode Island, a Social History of

the People (1910). His activity as a writer of history earned for him

membership in such learned organizations as the American Antiquarian Society,

the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Rhode Island Historical Society.