biography
| name: |
Hunter, (Wiles) Robert
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1874–1942)
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| biography:
| Socialist, social worker, and writer, born in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. Appalled by the misery of the depression of 1893, he decided to become a social worker. He was organizing secretary of Chicago's Board of Charities (1896–1902) and lived at Hull House (1899–1902), and wrote a survey of working-class housing for the City Homes Association (1901). A man of independent means, he became head worker at the University Settlement on Rivington Street, New York City (1902), directing their successful campaign to enact child labour laws (1903). He published his most important book, Poverty (1904), the first general statistical survey of America's poor. Declaring himself a Socialist (1905), he was elected to the first executive board of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. He was Socialist candidate for the New York state assembly (1908), represented American Socialism at the Third International in Stuttgart (1907), and having moved to Noroton, CT he ran as Socialist candidate for the governorship of Connecticut (1910). Antipathetic to violence and unrestrained radicalism, he published an indictment of the Industrial Workers of the World, Violence in the Labor Movement (1914), then left the party disillusioned because Socialism had failed to prevent the outbreak of World War 1. He moved to California (1918), where he lectured on economics and English at the University of California, Berkeley (1918–22). Settling in Pebble Beach, he wrote Links (1926), a book on golf-course design, and also laid out several West Coast courses. By the end of his life, he had turned right-wing, repudiated the New Deal, and wrote Revolution (1940), which rejected Marxism and revolutions. |
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