author
David Ames Wells
1828–1898
A lively 19th-century American writer who moved from popular science into hard-headed debates about taxation, trade, and public finance. His work helped shape how Americans thought about revenue, industry, and the costs of government in the years after the Civil War.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1828, he studied at Williams College and went on to build an unusually varied career as a journalist, inventor, science writer, and economist. Early on, he wrote accessible books on science and helped edit The Annual of Scientific Discovery, showing a talent for explaining complex ideas to general readers.
During and after the Civil War, his attention turned more strongly to economics and public policy. He served as chairman of the United States National Revenue Commission, where he played an important role in efforts to improve federal taxation and government statistics. He became especially well known as a forceful advocate of tariff reform and freer trade.
He spent much of his later career writing essays and books on taxation, industry, and social change, aiming to ground public argument in facts and careful observation. Remembered today as a prominent public intellectual of the Gilded Age, he died in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1898.