Harold Wilson

EARLY LIFE 

Harold Wilson was born at 4 Warneford Road, Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on March 11, 1916.

Harold Wilson

Harold's father James Herbert Wilson was a works chemist who had been active in the Liberal Party.

Herbert Wilson was Winston Churchill's deputy election agent in his 1908 by-election before then joining the Labour Party.

His mother Ethel (née Seddon) was a schoolteacher before her marriage.

Wilson studied Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1934. He graduated in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) with a first class Bachelor of Arts degree.

EARLY CAREER 

Wilson became one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21. He was a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Wilson was classed as a specialist and moved into the Civil Service. Most of his War was spent as a statistician and economist for the coal industry.

Wilson first began working in British politics in 1945 when he began representing Ormskirk in Parliament.

In 1947, then Prime Minister Clement Attlee made Wilson President of the Board of Trade. Aged 31, he had become the youngest member of the UK Cabinet in the 20th century.

He was President of the Board of Trade until 1951 when he resigned because of social service cuts.

In opposition to the then-Conservative government, Wilson served as Shadow Chancellor (1955–1961) and Shadow Foreign Secretary (1961–1963)

After the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell passed away suddenly in 1963, Wilson fought and won a leadership contest against George Brown and James Callaghan.

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn secretly claimed in 1963 that Wilson was a KGB agent.

Wilson was worried that Labour voters would stay at home to watch the popular BBC comedy Steptoe And Son, about rag-and-bone men, instead of voting in the 1964 General Election. He persuaded the BBC to reschedule the show and won by four seats.

Harold Wilson 1963

PRIME MINISTER 

He was Prime Minister between 1964 and 1970 (increasing his majority in 1966). Following elections, Wilson formed a minority government in February 1974 and achieved a majority of three in October 1974.

Wilson won more elections than any other 20th century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (in 1964, 1966, February and October 1974) — but only once with a clear majority (1966).

His premiership was dominated by the issue of UK admission to EEC membership, the social contract, and economic difficulties.

Wilson's Labour government supported backbench MPs in liberalising laws on abortion, divorce and homosexuality.

Wilson with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House in 1966

On October 11, 1967, Harold Wilson received an apology from pop group The Move after he sued them for printing a postcard with a caricature of him in the nude. It was to promote their new record, "Flowers In The Rain," which went on to be the first single played on BBC Radio 1.

In early 1968, Harold Wilson's government launched the "I'm Backing Britain" campaign to rally enthusiasm and boost their economy. The title of The Beatles "Back In The U.S.S.R" was a punt at Wilson's slogan.

Wilson was hit in the eye with a stink bomb hurled by a schoolboy in 1969. He quipped: "With an arm like that he ought to be in the English cricket eleven."

By the 1970s Wilson's dependence on brandy was becoming increasingly evident. He was prone to rambling in cabinet meetings and sometimes forget to sum up.

After being returned to office in 1974, Wilson became aware that his powers of debate and concentration were failing, and he resigned in March 1976. Shortly afterwards Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed.

Queen Elizabeth II came to dine at 10 Downing Street to mark Wilson's resignation, an honour she has bestowed on only one other Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. An unadventurous meal of beef, roast potatoes, ice cream, cheese and biscuits was served.

Wilson was knighted in 1976 and became a peer in 1983.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Mary Baldwin was a shorthand typist when she first met civil service employee Harold Wilson. They married on January 1, 1940, in the chapel of Mansfield College, Oxford.

They had two sons, Robin and Giles (named after Giles Alington); Robin became a professor of Mathematics, and Giles became a teacher.

Mary became a published poet when her volume Selected Poems was published in 1970.

The only prime ministerial spouse to become a centenarian, Mary Wilson died at the age of 102 years, 145 days on June 6, 2018.

Harold and Mary Wilson eschewed continental holidays, returning every summer to their holiday home on the Isles of Scilly.

Harold Wilson was born into a Congregationalist family but attended the local Baptist chapel because there was no Congregationalist establishment to hand. As Prime Minister, Wilson was an infrequent church attender, but undoubtedly believed in God and in the Christian faith.

He had a seal point Siamese cat called Nemo that used to accompany him and Mary on holiday.

Harold Wilson’s favorite food was a Cornish pasty. He was so keen on HP Sauce, it was known as "Wilson's gravy."

Wilson's famous pipe was a prop to make him seem more approachable and working-class. In private he smoked cigars.

Harold Wilson in 1986. By Allan Warren 

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

On leaving the House of Commons after the 1983 general election, Wilson was granted a life peerage as Baron Wilson of Rievaulx.

Wilson was not especially active in the House of Lords.  His last speech was in a debate on marine pilotage in 1986, but he continued regularly attending the House of Lords until just over a year before his death.

Wilson's mental deterioration from Alzheimer's disease became increasingly apparent, and he rarely appeared in public after 1987.

He died of colon cancer and Alzheimer's Disease on May 24, 1995, at the age of 79.

When her husband passed away, Mary Wilson wrote a poem which included the lines: "My love you have stumbled slowly. On the quiet way to death. And you lie where the wind blows strongly. With a salty spray on its breath."

He was buried at St Mary's Old Church, St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly, on June 6, 1995. Wilson's epitaph is "Tempus Imperator Rerum" ("Time Commands All Things").

Sources Daily Mail, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Stock market

A stock market is an institution where humans and computers buy and sell shares of companies.

A stock market crash happens when the prices of stock are lowered greatly, and as a result no one wants to buy them. Instead, the stock is sold for cheap prices. Stock market crashes can cause an economic depression, as banks buy stock with people's money (stored inside the bank), so the banks ran out of money too. This means that because people cannot not get money back from banks, only a few people can afford the cost of living.

The first modern stock market crash occurred in 1825 after Scottish con-artist Gregor Macgregor convinced hundreds of his countrymen to invest their life savings in "Poyais", a fictional Central America territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". About 250 emigrated to the supposed country to find only untouched jungle and over half of them died. When the scam was eventually exposed and all the “value” that had been added to investors and banks portfolios vanished many banks were forced to close and the stock market saw its first crash. 

The Great Depression became worldwide news with the Wall Street Crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday).

Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, made a fortune as a stock market and commodity investor before cashing in all his stocks just days before the stock market crash of 1929. Consequentially, he was one of the few people who vastly increased their fortune during the Great Depression.

On November 15, 1867, the first stock ticker was unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around the country. Prior to this development, information from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been around since 1792, traveled by mail or messenger.

Watching the ticker tape, 1918

In 1986,  Ivan F. Boesky, reputed to be the highest-paid person on Wall Street, faced penalties of $100 million for insider stock trading. It was the highest penalty ever imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell exactly 508 points to 1,738.74 (22.61%) on October 19, 1987, the biggest percentage decline in its history, as stock markets around the world crashed. It initially continued its plunge on the 20th. The markets rallied sharply in the afternoon when the Dow posted its first triple-digit gain in its history. 

DJIA (June 19, 1987, to January 19, 1988).

After launching in 1971 with 50 companies and a starting value of 100, the NASDAQ Composite peaked at a high of 5,132.52 on March 10, 2000 signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.  It subsequently fell to a low of 1,108.49 on October 10, 2002 when the bubble burst. On April 23, 2015, after over 15 years, the index made a new closing high of 5,056.06.

In 1999, Raven the Chimpanzee became the 22nd most successful money manager in the United States after choosing stocks at random, generating a 213 percent gain and outperforming more than 6,000 professional Wall Street stock brokers. 

NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. By Kowloonese 

As of mid 2017, the size of the world stock market (total market capitalization) was about US$76.3 trillion. By country, the largest market was the United States (about 34%), followed by Japan (about 6%) and the United Kingdom (about 6%).These numbers increased in 2013.

On March 12, 2020 Global stock markets suffered from the greatest single-day fall since the 1987 stock market crash. Black Thursday was attributed principally to the coronavirus pandemic. 

JP Morgan estimates that only about 10% of US stock trades are done by actual humans. The remainder is done by high frequency trading algorithms and day trading bots.

The UK stock market tends to do better in December than any other month. This has been put down to something called the 'Santa rally'.

Monday is the only day of the week when the US stock market is more likely to fall than rise.

We got the terms "bear market" and "bull market" from the ways the animals attack. Bears strike downward, while bulls launch themselves upward into the air.

Source Firsts: Origins of Everyday Things That Changed the World By Wilson Casey

Stock Exchange

A stock exchange is a place where people meet to buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock and bonds and other financial instruments. Some stock exchanges are real places (like the New York Stock Exchange), others are virtual places (like the NASDAQ).

In the early 1600s the Dutch East India Company (VOC) became the first public company in history to issue bonds and shares of stock to the general public. The VOC paid annual dividends worth of over 16 percent of the value of the shares from 1602 to 1650.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange was the world's first official (formal) stock exchange when in 1602 it began trading the VOC's freely transferable securities, including bonds and shares of stock.

A 17th-century engraving depicting the Amsterdam Stock Exchange

The London Stock exchange traces its roots to 1698, when John Castaing began listing stock and commodity prices at Jonathan's coffee house in the city.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was founded on May 17, 1792. It was established by 24 brokers who gathered under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street in New York City and signed the Buttonwood Agreement. This agreement established the rules and regulations for trading securities among the participating brokers, laying the foundation for what would become the NYSE.

The London Stock exchange evolved throughout the 18th century and in 1801, it began inviting members to join on a formal subscription basis and thus became the first regulated exchange in London.

London Stock Exchange in 1810

In the 19th century much of the dealing on the London Stock exchange was confirmed by a handshake, and a trader's promise was as good as a contract. When the exchange received its coat of arms in 1923, its motto was Dictum Meum Pactum, meaning "my word is my bond." This premise continues today.

The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) is the world's leading exchange for mining and petrochemical companies, with over 550 companies listed. It was established on October 25, 1861, and is now the third-largest stock exchange in North America by market capitalization.

The TSX is home to some of the world's largest and most successful mining and petrochemical companies, including Barrick Gold, Teck Resources, First Quantum Minerals, and Canadian Natural Resources. The exchange also plays an important role in supporting the growth and development of smaller and emerging companies in the sector.

Karl Marx earned £400 from trading on the London Stock Exchange in 1854. He was inspired to try his hand at financial speculation after hearing about the profits that German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle was making on the stock market. Marx invested in a number of companies, including the East India Company and the Bank of England. He also made some short-term trades, hoping to profit from market fluctuations.

Marx's stock market investments were not always successful. He lost money on some of his trades, and he was even accused of insider trading. However, he also made some significant profits, and he eventually withdrew from the market with a net profit of £400.

Marx's stock market investments were a financial success, but they were also a source of controversy. Some critics accused him of hypocrisy, arguing that he could not be a true socialist while also making money on the stock market. Marx defended his investments, arguing that he was simply trying to make a living and that he was not exploiting anyone.

The New York stock exchange crashed  on October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). Two months earlier, in August, the price of shares had been at its peak.

On Black Tuesday about 16 million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange as the panicking people  sold their shares, a record that stood for almost 40 years. A total of $30 billion was lost over two days.

American businesswoman Muriel Siebert was the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and the first woman to head one of the NYSE's member firms. She joined the 1,365 male members of the exchange on December 28, 1967. 

NASDAQ was founded on February 8, 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). When the NASDAQ began trading on February 8, 1971, it was the world's first electronic stock market. (NASDAQ stands for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations).

In 1987, a squirrel chewed through a power line near NASDAQ’s computer center and shut trading down for 87 minutes. Another squirrel repeated the event in 1994, shutting trading down for 34 minutes.

The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), which divested itself of NASDAQ in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001.

As of 2015, there are a total of 60 stock exchanges in the world with a total market capitalization of $69 trillion.

The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies.

The floor of the New York Stock Exchange. By Kevin Hutchinson - Flickr, 

George Floyd - a 46-year-old black man from Minneapolis, Minnesota died after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes. He was laid to rest in a grave next to his mother’s on June 9, 2020. As the service began, the New York Stock Exchange went silent for eight minutes, 46 seconds — the length of time Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck. It was the longest moment of silence on the stock exchange floor in its 228-year history.

Source Daily Mail

Adam Smith

EARLY LIFE 

Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in the County of Fife, Scotland on June 16, 1723.

His father, also Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet (senior solicitor), advocate and prosecutor (Judge Advocate) who also served as comptroller of the Customs in Kirkcaldy.

Adam's mother was Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry.

Adam's father died two months after he was born, leaving his mother a widow.

At around the age of 4, Adam was kidnapped by a band of gypsies, but he was quickly rescued by his uncle and returned to his mother. Smith's biographer, John Rae, commented wryly that he feared Smith would have made "a poor gypsy."

Adam attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy from 1729 to 1737, where he learned Latin, mathematics, history, and writing.

Adam Smith. The Muir portrait

He entered the University of Glasgow at the age of fourteen and studied moral philosophy under "the never-to-be-forgotten" (as Smith called him) Francis Hutcheson. It was at Glasgow that Adam developed his passion for liberty, reason and free speech.

In 1740, Adam won an exhibition to Balliol College of the University of Oxford, where he took the opportunity to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library.  He also translated several famous French books.

His time at Oxford was not a happy one. Adam found the teaching there to be intellectually stifling and he left the University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.

CAREER

 In 1751 Smith was appointed professor on logic at the University of Glasgow, transferring in 1752 to the chair of moral philosophy. His lectures covered the fields of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, political economy, and "police and revenue." His forceful argumentative style of lecturing made him popular with students.

At the end of 1763, Smith resigned from his professorship after he obtained an offer from Charles Townshend to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch.

He was paid £300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300 per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher. The two and half years Smith spent as tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch set him up financially.

Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, which gave him the opportunity to meet other intellectual leaders of his day. The highlight was the meeting with leading French thinkers in Paris.

In 1766, the duke's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter.
Smith returned home in 1766 to Kirkcaldy, where he concentrated on writing including his magnum opus Wealth of Nations.

In 1778, Smith was appointed to the well paid post of commissioner of customs in Scotland.

From 1787 to 1789 Smith occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.

WORKS

Smith published his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in 1759. The book explains how human morality depends on empathy between agent and spectator, or the individual and other members of society. For Smith, empathy was like "putting yourself in someone else's shoes". The work was well received.

Smith's Wealth of Nations was first published on March 9, 1776. The work, which took him ten years to write, heralded the birth of modern economics with its avocation of free trade (or Laissez Faire) rather than duties on imports.

The Wealth of Nations was an instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.

Smith's writing style were often satirized by Tory writers in the moralizing tradition of William Hogarth and Jonathan Swift.

BELIEFS 

Adam Smith advocated the necessity of individual enterprise rather than the old fashioned mercantile system. He theorized economies are built on individual self-interest and the state shouldn't interfere. Countries should concentrate on making goods they were best at and import those other countries could make more cheaply. He was the greatest exponent of free enterprise economics until Friedman.

Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and slaves cost more to maintain than free laborers.

Adam Smith was a liberal minded Protestant, suspicious of evangelical Christianity. He wrote in Wealth of Nations. "Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."

Smith famously asked, “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clean conscience?”

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Smith was not a looker. He was described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment". He is said to have acknowledged his unattractive looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books."

Portrait of Smith by John Kay, 1790

Smith devoted a considerable part of his income to numerous secret acts of charity.

Adam Smith was notoriously absent-minded. On one occasion falling into discourse with a certain Mr Damer during breakfast, Smith took a piece of bread and butter, and after rolling it round and round put in into the teapot and poured the water to brew it. Shortly after he poured out a cup, and on tasting it declared it was the worst tea he had ever met with.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

Adam Smith never married. He spent his last years living with his mother and after she passed away his cousin Miss Jane Douglas at Panmure House, Cannongate, Edinburgh.

Portrait of Smith's mother, Margaret Douglas

Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House on July 17, 1790 after a painful illness. On his death bed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more. His last words were "I believe we must adjourn the meeting to some other place."

His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.

The father of modern economics, Smith's thinking on mutual trading was influential on William Pitt and other prime ministers. By 1860 Great Britain was a free trade country.

Share (or Stock)

A share is a unit of account for various investments. It often means the stock of a corporation, but the term is also used for collective investments such as mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts.

In the United Kingdom and Australia, the word share is used the same way as stock is described in the United States.

Dividends are payments made by a company to its shareholders. When a company earns more money than it spends, the extra money can either be spent on making the company better or it can be given to the people who own stock in the company as a dividend. In the financial history of the world, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the first recorded (public) company ever to pay regular dividends in 1602.

The VOC invented the idea of investing in the company rather than in a specific venture governed by the company. The VOC was also the first company to use a fully-fledged capital market (including the bond market and the stock market) as a crucial channel to raise medium-term and long-term funds. The VOC paid annual dividends worth around 18 percent of the value of the shares for almost 200 years of existence (1602–1800).

 Bond from the Dutch East India Company dating from 7 November 1623

In 1719, the South Sea Company proposed to convert £30,981,712 of the British national debt. At the time, government bonds were extremely difficult to trade due to unrealistic restrictions; for example, it was not permitted to redeem certain bonds unless the original debtor was still alive. Each bond represented a very large sum, and could not be divided and sold. Thus, the South Sea Company sought to convert high-interest, untradeable bonds to low-interest, easily-tradeable ones. The Company bribed Lord Stanhope to support their plan; they were also supported by Lord Sunderland. Company prices rose rapidly; the shares had cost £128 in January 1720, but were valued at £550 when Parliament accepted the scheme in May. The price reached £1000 by August. Uncontrolled selling, however, caused the stock to plummet to £150 by the end of September. Many individuals—including aristocrats—were completely ruined. The economic crisis, known as the South Sea Bubble, made King George I and his ministers extremely unpopular and resulted in the rise of power of Britain's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

1720 "South Sea Bubble" from the mid-19th century, by Edward Matthew Ward

On July 3, 1884, Dow Jones and Company published its first stock average index. The inaugural index was published as part of the "Customer's Afternoon Letter" and consisted of 11 stocks, nine of which were railroad stocks, since railroads were considered the largest and sturdiest companies in the U.S. at the time.

In 1887 Irishman John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. Commercial production began in late 1890 in Belfast. Dunlop assigned his patent to William Harvey Du Cros, in return for 1,500 shares in the resultant company.

Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company founder Charles Dow published the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on May 26, 1896. There are 30 companies, all from the USA, and traded on either the NYSE or the NASDAQ, that make up the Industrial Average.

Historical logarithmic graph of the DJIA from 1896 to July 2011.

When he was UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George was caught buying American shares in Marconi on basis of inside information that they had just secured a government contract.

October 24, 1929, a day known now as "Black Thursday," saw the stock markets take an 11% tumble that shook investors to their core. Markets dropped by another 13% on "Black Monday" after the weekend and then another 12% on "Black Tuesday." The losses continued and saw the markets crash hard in front of the broader economic crash that would become the Great Depression.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22 on July 8, 1932.

When the Ford company went public in 1956, the Ford family, through special Class B shares, retained 40 percent voting rights.

Immediately after the 1986 Challenger explosion, shares of every corporation involved in the Space Shuttle dropped. But by the end of the day, most had rebounded; only Morton Thiokol remained low. This was months before the official investigation found Thiokol to be responsible for the disaster.

Google's initial public offering of stock was on August 18, 2004. The initial price was set at $85 and ended the day at $100.34 with more than 22 million shares traded.

In 2005, Facebook hired graffiti artist David Choe to paint murals in their new office space. Choe accepted Facebook shares instead of a cash payment, and when Facebook went public in 2012, his shares were valued at $200 million.

In 2018, Mark Charles Barnett of Ocala, Florida plotted to plant small bombs in Target stores along the Eastern seaboard disguised in food packages. He hoped to create bad publicity for Target, which would lower stock prices and allow him to buy cheap shares before they rebounded. Barnett was caught after paying someone else to plant the bombs.

Following concerns over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,997 points  – nearly 13 percent – on March 16, 2020, the largest single-day point loss in its history

Statistics show September is the only month when share prices are likelier to fall than rise.

Source Equities

Poverty

Until the Black Death, poor people living in poverty had been treated with some sympathy as it was felt they were a punishment for original sin and were therefore a necessary part of the world. However as a result of the economic hardships caused by the vicious plague the poor were viewed with a lot more scorn and were treated like robbers and vagabonds.

The world population living in extreme poverty was 94% of the world population in 1820,

A 1996 report by the World Bank revealed one-fifth of the world's population had to live on less than a dollar a day.

In 2005 291 million Africans-out of a total population of 703 million were surviving on less than $1 a day.

Africa is estimated to lose $2 billion a year as a result of trade barriers imposed by rich countries.

About 43.1 million Americans live in poverty according to the the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 estimates - eleven million more than in 2000.

Using the World Bank definition of $1.25/day, as of September 2013, roughly 1.3 billion people remain in extreme poverty (or roughly 1 in 6 people). Nearly half live in India and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries.

In 1990, 34.8% of the world's population lived in poverty. In 2015 it was just 9.6%.

The 100 richest people in the world earned enough money in 2012 to end global poverty four times.

John Stuart Mill

EARLY LIFE

John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London on May 20, 1806. He was the eldest son of James Mill, and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was brought up at 40 Queen Anne's Gate, London.

His Scottish philosopher, historian and economist father was a lower middle class radical who worked for the India office. James Mill wrote a pioneering book History of India, which changed people's attitude towards the British colony and was the spark that led to reform.

His mother, Harriet Burrow, ran an establishment for lunatics.

John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.

John Stuart was a notably precocious child.  At the age of three, he was taught the Greek alphabet and long lists of Greek words with their English equivalents. By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis,  the whole of Herodotus and other great Greek and Roman authors, By the age of ten he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. At about the age of twelve, John began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father--ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production.

WORKING LIFE 

At the age of eight Mill was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family.

Between 1822 and 1858, Mill worked at East India Company following in his father's footsteps.

Mill was a Member of Parliament for City and Westminster, sitting for the Liberal Party between 1865 and 1868. During the election he had refused to canvass for votes or have anything to do with the local business of his constituency, but he was still elected for three years.

John Stuart Mill

Mill was one of the founders of the original Woman's suffrage society. As a Radical MP, he became in 1866 the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debates.

BELIEFS  

A child prodigy who became a philosopher and economist, Mill reacted to the lack of normal childhood in his twenties and suffered accordingly. He asked himself the question, "suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you." When he realized the answer was no, Mill sank into a deep depression for a year questioning life's purpose. He was rescued by Wordsworth's poetry.

Mill believed that the only way by which actions can be judged right or wrong is on their propensity to further personal or social happiness thus throwing out a basic ethical guide and tearing up much of the Christian message. He wrote, "It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable."

Nietzsche abhorred Mill's philosophy of the happiness for the greatest number describing him as a blockhead, ignoramus and cretin.

His libertarianism threatened the moral doctrine of Victorian England. Apart from some pioneering work on woman's suffrage, Mill and his humanistic followers achieved little compared to the Evangelicals in bringing social reform to 19th century England.

"A Feminine Philosopher". Caricature by Spy published in Vanity Fair in 1873.

WORKS 

Mill's Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848 established his reputation as a leading public intellectual. One of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period, Mill's Principles dominated economics teaching for many decades. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Marshall's Principles of Economics.

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, London, 1848

Mill's book Utilitarianism argued that actions are right if they bring happiness and wrong if they bring sadness and despair.  The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863.

The first recorded use of the word dystopia was when John Stuart Mill coined it to describe British governance of Ireland.

Mill's 1873 Autobiography of John Stuart Mill was arguably the leading autobiography of the 19th century.

Mill's maid burnt the manuscript of his friend, Thomas Carlyle's History of the French Revolution which had taken him five months to write. Mill had borrowed it to read it but the maid thought it was waste paper. It was the only copy of the manuscript.

PERSONAL LIFE 

James Mill once lived at 19 York Street, Marylebone, the same house as where John Milton lived during Cronwell's Commonwealth of England.. Later it belonged to Jeremy Bentham, and was occupied successively by James Mill and William Hazlitt, and finally demolished in 1877.

The back of No. 19, York Street (1848). 

In 1851 Mill married the charming, wise, dark eyed Mrs Harriet Taylor, They had originally met at a dinner party 20 years earlier when she was unhappily married to John Taylor, a wholesale druggist. Until the death of her husband Harriet and John Stuart had a deep friendship, but being sensitive to gossip they kept their relationship platonic. After a while (divorce being out of the question) she split her time between the two men seeing Mill during the weekends.

Though it was a marriage of intellects, the modest John Stuart regarded Harriet as his intellectual superior. She was a significant influence on Mills's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. Their relationship inspired Mill's advocacy of women's rights.

Harriet Taylor Mill

After Taylor developed consumption they lived in the country and she died on November 3, 1858  at the Hotel de l’Europe in Avignon, France after seven years of happy marriage.

A few months after Harriet's death, John bought a small white house in Avignon. He installed the furniture from the hotel room in which she'd died.

Mill's stepdaughter, Helen, from Harriet's first marriage became John Stuart's constant companion She helped Mill continue his and Harriet’s reforming work.

John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor. 

A few months before Mill died, he became godfather to the newly born Bertrand Russell in May 1872.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH  

Much of the last five years of Mill’s life were much spent at his Avignon home, often with Harriet’s daughter Helen Taylor,

Mill suddenly died on May 8, 1873  at his Avignon home aged 66. The cause of death was erysipelas, a skin infection caught a few days earlier, which caused his face to swell.

Mill was buried with his beloved wife at the Cimetiere Saint-Veron, Avignon.

Karl Marx

EARLY LIFE 

Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818 at Bruckenstrausse 10, Trier, Prussia, (now Germany). It is now a museum.

Marx's birthplace in Trier. By Berthold Werner, Wikipedia Commons

Karl Marx was born into a progressive middle class Jewish family. His father Heinrich, descending from a long line of rabbis, was a lawyer. Karl Marx's grandfather Meier Halevi Marx and uncle, Samuel Marx, both served as chief rabbi of Trier.

 In 1817 Heinrich Marx converted to the Prussian state religion of Lutheranism to keep his position as a lawyer, which he had gained under the Napoleonic regime.

Young Karl himself was baptized a Christian at the age of 6.

The Marx family was very liberal and the Marx household hosted many visiting intellectuals and artists during Karl's early life.

Marx was deeply attached to his father and he always carried a photo of him.

In 1830 the 12 year old Karl Marx started attending Trier High School. The Protestant educational establishment was under police surveillance as they were suspected of employing liberal teachers.

Marx received good grades at his secondary education school. His senior thesis, which anticipated his later development of a social analysis of religion, was a treatise entitled Religion: The Glue That Binds Society Together, for which he won a prize.

In 1833 Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn to study law, at his father's behest. He joined the Trier Tavern Club and at one point served as its president.

Marx's grades suffered at Bonn as he spent most of his time singing songs in beer halls. The next year, his father made him transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin (now known as the Humboldt University).

In Berlin, Marx's interests turned to philosophy, much to his father's dismay, and he joined the circle of students and young professors known as the "Young Hegelians", led by Bruno Bauer. Some members of this circle drew an analogy between post-Aristotelian philosophy and post-Hegelian philosophy.

CAREER 

Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and between 1842-43, he edited the Rheinische Zeitung, a radical Cologne newspaper, until its suppression.

After the Rheinische Zeitung was shut down in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government censors, he returned to philosophy. From then on Marx concentrated on political activism, and worked as a freelance journalist.

On August 28, 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence in Paris. Engels was a textile manufacturer whose ideas were in complete accord with Marx’s and they begun a lifelong friendship.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx associated with the secret radical organisation League of the Just. In June 1847 the League of the Just was reorganized by its membership into a new open "above ground" political society that appealed directly to the working classes.This new open political society was called the Communist League.

In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing  a program of action for the Communist League. Written from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto was first published on  February 21, 1848.

 first edition of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in German in 1848

Marx had friends among the German labor unions and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. In 1848 the political activist was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his Cologne house. Dressed in his bathrobe he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver which, it turned out, was not loaded.

 In early June 1849 Marx was expelled from Prussia so he settled in London. He  would remain based in the city for the rest of his life.

When not stirring up agitation, Marx was busy in British Museum's reading room researching the works of political economists and on economic data.

Between 1851-62, Marx was  European Correspondent for the New York Tribune. He was paid a guinea each for his contributions. Together with Engels, he wrote around 500 articles for the newspaper over the eleven year period. As a columnist Marx is considered to be one of the great Victorian journalists.

In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. He presided over the First International in London for the next eight years.

Apart from sporadic journalism, Marx shunned gainful employment. He never did a day of manual work in his life. He once applied for a job as a railway clerk, but was rejected as his writing was so atrocious.

BELIEFS 

In 1841 The German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, published The Essence of Christianity, which promoted humanistic atheism. The book argued that mankind had invented God as a spiritual answer to their needs, hopes and fears. His work proved to be a great influence on Karl Marx  when he was a student at the University of Berlin.

Karl Marx joined the Communist League, which was originally a German refugee organization, in 1844 with his life long collaborator, Engels.

During his time in England, Marx saw the harsh working conditions and poverty of workers which helped fuel his principles.

According to Marx, history is moving relentlessly in the direction of the communist society. When that society is reached private property will be a thing of the past.

Marx declared "Religion is the sigh of the hard pressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people." He taught that religion should have been stamped out by natural selection but the proletariat would assist this evolutionary process.

WRITINGS 

The Communist Manifesto was written over 6–7 weeks in the winter of 1847- 1848. Although Engels is credited as co-writer, the final draft was penned exclusively by Marx.

At first the Communist Manifesto was largely ignored . It only began to shift some copies in 1872 when it was reprinted.

Karl Marx published the first volume of his political and economic treatise Das Kapital, subtitled A Critique of Political Economy, on September 14, 1867. It was researched mainly in the British Museum's reading room, where he spent ten hours a day gathering evidence for this communist philosophy.

The first volume of Das Kapital

Marx wrote Das Kapital while living in unhygienic squalor at 28 Dean Street, Soho, London in two small rooms above what subsequently became the Quo Vadis restaurant. He was residing there with his wife, maid and five children. They were so poor that all the family slept in the same bed (including the housekeeper.)

Marx sent a copy of Das Kapital to Charles Darwin who responded that both works would ultimately add to the long-term happiness of mankind.

The second and third volumes of Das Kapital were edited from Marx's notes by Engels and published posthumously

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Marx had a long black beard, which turned white as he grew older.  He was fairly short, with bushy eyebrows, sand hard eyes but a pleasant expression. He had the features of a cultivated Jew and was swarthy enough to be nicknamed “moor”.

Marx in 1875

Marx was assertive as a younger man, but developed an inferiority complex as he got older. He was impatient, dogmatic and not generally liked.

MARRIAGE

At the age of 17 Marx fell in love with the gifted and beautiful Jenny Von Westplalen, a childhood friend and the daughter of an official in Prussian administration at Trier. She was four years older than him.

Jenny von Westphalen came from an aristocratic background. Her uncle was Lion Philips, father of the brothers Gerard and Anton who founded the famous Philips company in 1891.

,Jenny von Westphalen in the 1830s

Marx and Jenny married on June 19, 1843 in the Kreuznacher Pauluskirche (the Kreuznach church of Saint Paul), Bad Kreuznach, in spite of both families misgivings.

Following their marriage, Karl and Jenny Marx moved to Rue Vaneau in Paris.

She called him "schwarzwildchen", German for "little wild one."

They had four daughters all named Jenny after her: Jenny Laura, Jenny Caroline, Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"), who died aged one, and Jenny Julia Eleanor.

After moving to London, the Marx family relied mainly on Engels' support and lived in virtual poverty. They received some legacies from Jenny’s rich relatives whose deaths Marx greeted with cheers.

Karl Marx (1818–1883), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), and Marx's daughters: Jenny Caroline (1844–1883), Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898), and Jenny Laura (1845–1911)

Their children learned to pretend their father was not at home when his creditors called.

The Marx family liked to picnic on Hampstead Heath but were often forced because of their poverty to survive on bread and potatoes.

Whilst picnicking on Hampstead Heath the Marxses liked to produce family performances of Shakespeare.

Asked later in her life if her marriage had been happy when they were poor, Jenny wistfully replied "yes we were happy enough, but I wish dear Karl could have spent some time acquiring capital instead of writing about it."

Jenny died of cancer on December 2, 1881 when Marx was 63, which left him a "moral cripple." The next year his favorite eldest daughter Caroline died.

Upon his own death in 1895, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a "significant portion" of his $4.8 million estate.

His youngest daughter Eleanor Marx (1858-98) was a left wing activist who eventually committed suicide.

It was controversially discovered after Marx's death that he had fathered a son by a maid servant, Freddie Deumuth, who had previously been passed off as Engels' offspring. Engels had loyally pretended to be the father.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Marx was an excellent player on the checkerboard. He acquired such a dexterity at this game that it was difficult to win a game from him.

Marx also enjoyed, which he wasn't so good at. He tried to make up what he lacked in tactical acumen by zeal, impetuousness of attack and surprise.

HEALTH 

Marx suffered from piles while penning Das Kapital. He wrote "I hope the Bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles."

When he was 56, Marx fell sick with enlargement of the liver which made him feel permantly ill and prone to imagining sicknesses. He toured the English spas to try to recover his health.

According to a British expert, Karl Marx suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings.

LAST YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY

Following the death of Jenny, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on March 14, 1883. He passed away while contemplating realms of statistics about the Russian economy.

Marx in 1882

Family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate Cemetery, London, on March 17, 1883. There were only around ten mourners at his funeral including the loyal Engels who paid tribute to the father of communism saying “On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever.”

At Highgate Cemetery there is a large bust of Marx with ”Workers of the World Unite,” the final line of The Communist Manifesto, carved on its base.

Grave of Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetery 

By the 1980s more than a billion humans had lived under communist regimes. Marx had a greater influence on social change in the 20th century than any other man.

Statues of Karl Marx are dotted around the world, attracting tourists, controversy, garlands and graffiti. In 1971, a huge bronze head of Marx was unveiled in Chemnitz, once known as Karl-Marx-Stadt - it is a second largest bust in the world.

According to a 1999 BBC online poll Marx was the leading thinker of the Millennium.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce