762 EDWARD ATKINSON. 



ing this time organized, enlarged, and perfected the mutual insurance 

 of industrial concerns. In 1855 he married Miss Mary Caroline Heath 

 of Brookline, who survives him with seven children, — Mrs. Ernest 

 Winsor, E. W. Atkinson, Charles H. Atkinson, Wm. Atkinson, Robert 

 W. Atkinson, Miss C. P. Atkinson, and Mrs. R. G. Wadsworth. 



This gives the mere outline of a life of extraordinary activity and 

 usefulness which well merits a further delineation in detail. Mr. 

 Atkinson's interest in public life began with a vote for Horace Mann in 

 1848. Twenty years after, speaking at Salem, he described himself as 

 never having been anything else than a Republican ; but he was one 

 of those who supported Cleveland for President in 1884 and whose 

 general affinities were with the Democratic party. He opposed with 

 especial vigor what is often called " the imperial policy," which followed 

 the Cuban war, and he conducted a periodical of his own from time to 

 time, making the most elaborate single battery which the war-party had 

 to encounter. 



He was from an early period of life a profuse and vigorous pamphlet- 

 eer, his first pamphlet being published during the Civil War and 

 entitled " Cheap Cotton by Free Labor," this publication leading to his 

 acquaintance with David R. Wells and Charles Nordhoff, thenceforth 

 his life-long friends. His early pamphlets were on the cotton question 

 in different forms (1863-76) ; he wrote on blockade running (1865); 

 on the Pacific railway (1871); and on mutual fire insurance (1885), 

 this last being based on personal experience as the head of a mutual 

 company. He was also, during his whole life, in print and otherwise, 

 a strong and effective fighter for sound currency. 



A large part of his attention from 1889 onward was occupied by 

 experiments in cooking and diet, culminating in an invention of his 

 own called " The Aladdin Oven. " This led him into investigations as 

 to the cost of nutrition in different countries, on which subject he also 

 wrote pamphlets. He soon was led on into experiments so daring 

 that he claimed to have proved it possible to cook personally, in open 

 air, a five-course dinner for ten persons, and gave illustrations of this 

 at outdoor entertainments. He claimed that good nutrition could be 

 had for $1 per week, and that a family of five, by moderate management, 

 could be comfortably supported for $180 per year ("Boston Herald, 

 Oct. 8, 1891). These surprising figures unfortunately created among 

 the laboring class a good deal of sharp criticism, culminating in the 

 mistaken inquiry, why he did not feed his own family at 8180 a year, 

 if it was so easy 1 I can only say for one, that if the meals at that price 

 were like a dinner of which I partook at his own house with an invited 

 party, and at which I went through the promised five courses after 



