Utopian Capitalist

摘要

He was raised on a farm in bloomington, Ill. but hob-nobbed with the likes of Henry Ford, E.H. Harriman and C.W. Post He founded an artisans' cooperative yet considered socialism a pernicious failure. In an era of epic excess he hewed to a simple life of fresh air, physical exercise and writing. Elbert Hubbard was a Gilded Age original, his eccentricities exaggerated by a Dutchboy haircut and ubiquitous floppy tie. He believed in women's suffrage, free speech, equal opportunity and big business. He spoke out against alcohol, capital punishment, censorship, child labor, religious superstition and distinctions of class. Closed-shop labor unions he equated with the Ku Klux Klan, as "an engine for the destruction of liberty." After his scandalous divorce he prominently hung a sign that read, "They Will Talk Any- way."