Henry
Demarest Lloyd
was born
in New York City on 1st May, 1847. His
father was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church but in 1860 he
left and opened a small bookshop.
After graduating from Columbia College in 1867
Lloyd entered Columbia Law School. He passed his New York bar examination
in 1869 and was employed as an assistant secretary to the American
Free Trade Association. He also joined the Young Men's Municipal Reform
Association, which helped to overthrow William
Tweed, the corrupt mayor of New York.
In 1872 Lloyd joined the Chicago
Tribune. He worked as literary
editor (1872-74) and financial editor (1874-80) before becoming the
newspaper's chief editorial writer in 1880. During this period he
was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Waldo
Emerson and the Christian Socialists
in Britain.
Lloyd published a series of articles exposing corruption in business
and politics. This included The
Story of a Great Monopoly (1881)
and The Political
Economy of Seventy-Three Million Dollars
(1882) in the Atlantic Monthly and
Making Bread
Dear (1883) and Lords
of Industry (1884) in the North
American Review. These
articles caused a stir and Lloyd has been described as America's first
investigative journalist.
He continued to write for the Chicago
Tribune until resigning in 1885
as a result of political differences with its principal owner,
Joseph Medill. Over the next few years
Lloyd took part in the campaign to bring an end to child
labour and to achieve clemency for the men accused of the Haymarket
Bombing. He was also a strong supporter of women's
suffrage and the trade union movement.
A close friend of
Jane Addams,
Lloyd provided free lectures at the Hull
House Settlement
in Chicago.
Lloyd became a leading figure in the reform movement and influenced
a generation of political activists including John
Peter Altgeld, Clarence
Darrow, William Dean Howells and
John Dewey. When
Altgeld was elected governor of Illinois in 1892 he offered Lloyd
the post as the state's first
chief factory inspector. However, Lloyd declined the offer and suggested
his friend Florence
Kelley for the
post.
Lloyd several books in favour of progressive reform
including A Strike
of Millionaires Against Miners
(1890), Wealth Against
Commonwealth (1894), Labor
Co-Partnerships (1898) and A
Country Without Strikes (1900).
Henry
Demarest Lloyd
died of pneumonia in Chicago on 28th
September, 1903.
(1)
Florence
Kelley,
Survey Magazine (June, 1927)
Hull House was, we soon discovered,
surrounded in every direction by homework carried on under the sweating
system. From the age of eighteen months few children able to sit in
high chairs at tables were safe from being required to pull basting
threads. Out of this enquiry, amplified by Hull House residents and
other volunteers, grew the volume published under the title Hull House
Maps and Papers.
The discoveries as to home work under the sweating system thus recorded
and charted in 1892 led to the appointment at the opening of the legislature
of 1893, of a legislative commission of enquiry into employment of
women and children in manufacture, for which Mary Kenney and I volunteered
as guides. With backing from labour, from Hull House, from Henry Demarest
Lloyd and his friends, the Commission and the report carried almost
without opposition a bill applying to manufacture, and prescribing
a maximum working day not to exceed eight hours for women, girls,
and children, together with child labour safeguards based on laws
then existing in New York and Ohio.
When the new law took effect, and its usefulness depended on the personnel
prescribed in the text to enforce it, Governor Altgeld offered the
position of chief inspector to Henry Demarest Lloyd, who declined
it and recommended me. I was accordingly made chief state inspector
of factories, the first and so far as I know, the only woman to serve
in that office in any state.
(2)
Samuel Jones, the successful businessman
and four-term mayor of Toledo, Ohio, was one of the first to try and
introduce socialist ideas to local government. In his article,
