Edward Atkinson (February 10, 1827 – December 11, 1905) was an economist, and a founder of the Anti-Imperialist League.
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He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and educated in private schools. He received the degrees of Ph.D. from Dartmouth College and that of LL.D. from the University of South Carolina.[1] In the decade before the Civil War, Atkinson was a successful entrepreneur as an executive of some of the leading cotton mills of New England. Later, he was President of Boston Manufacturers Mutual Insurance Company and the Mutual Boiler Insurance Company of Boston. He invented an improved kitchen stove, known as the “Aladdin cooker.”[1]
He also fought against slavery by supporting the Free-Soil Party and a Boston committee to aid escaped slaves. Growing weary of compromise, he soon began raising money to pay for rifles and ammunition to support the insurgent guerrilla force of John Brown. In 1866 he was chosen a delegate to the national union convention, held in Philadelphia, but he took no part in its deliberations. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1879.[2]
Inspired by the ideas of Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, and John Bright, Atkinson became a leading publicist for free trade. In many ways, he can be described as the American counterpart to Frédéric Bastiat. He spoke out against the inflationist ideas of William Jennings Bryan and others but, unlike some, favored the total denationalization, or privatization, of money.[3].
He campaigned for Grover Cleveland and participated in the formation of the Clevelandite National Democratic Party (United States) third party in 1896. Atkinson was appalled by the colonialist and imperialist policies of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations in the wake of the Spanish-American War. He reacted by becoming a full-time activist in the American Anti-Imperialist League. As a vice president of that organization, Atkinson wrote to the United States Department of War for a list of soldiers serving in the Philippines so that he might send them his privately published pamphlets. Failing to receive a reply, Atkinson announced to the press that he was sending copies to Generals Lawton, Miller, and Otis, Admiral Dewey, the correspondent J. F. Bass, and to Jacob Shurman and Dean Worcestrer on the Philippine Commission.
On February 17, 1899, Edward Atkinson sent three pamphlets entitled:
...in order to test the right of citizens of the United States to the free use of the mail.
United States Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith ordered that the pamphlets be seized in San Francisco, declaring the pamphlets "seditious". The United States Attorney General hinted that he would charge Atkinson with treason and sedition. In the end, officials decided that charging him would only make the seventy-two year old into a martyr. [4].
The U.S. pro-expansion press called Atkinson a "latter-day copperhead". Atkinson seemed to enjoy the infamy. Atkinson effusively and sacrastically thanked the Administration for calling national attention to his essays and increasing their demand in every state in the union.[5]
For nearly four decades Atkinson was actively engaged in the distribution of brochures of which he was the author on banking, competition, cotton manufacture, economic legislation, fire prevention, industrial education, the money question, and the tariff. In addition to his 1899 series of pamphlets, broadcast over the United States, which he entitled “The Anti-Imperialist,” he also issued:[1]