Land Reform and Political Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States

Back to the Future? The Potters' Emigration Society and the Historians

“…79 Of the three organizations, Bronstein judged the leadership of the Potters' Emigration Society to be the 'most centralized', with Evans 'protective and proprietorial' of pottery workers. 80 Clearly, the Potters' Emigration Society failed to accomplish its aims; it 'fizzled in a sea of transatlantic acrimony [. .…”

“…and suffocated for want of cash'. 81 But ultimate outcomes were not what concerned her and she made scant mention of the fact that many settlers remained in America, and even thrived. After the Potters' Examiner folded, she wrote, Evans returned to Wales a penniless man, 'leaving the Wisconsin emigrants to shift for themselves, which, ostensibly, they did'.…”

“…After the Potters' Examiner folded, she wrote, Evans returned to Wales a penniless man, 'leaving the Wisconsin emigrants to shift for themselves, which, ostensibly, they did'. 82 In Bronstein's view, the principal achievements of the Potters' Emigration Society, like that of its companion movements, were not to be found in concrete results, which were meagre at best, but in the attempt to put agrarian ideas into practice and in the 'worker-based culture' created in the process of mobilizing beneath the banner of land reform. 83 Despite these shared goals and strategies, the Potters' Emigration Society had little direct association with American land reform.…”