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POST, LOUIS FREELAND (Nov. 15 1849-Jan. 10, 1928), writer, reformer, government official, was born on a farm in northwestern New Jersey between Danville and Vienna, the first child of Eugene J. and Elizabeth (Freeland) Post. His paternal grandparents were Dr. Lewis Post (descended from Stephen Post who came from England to Cambridge, Mass., in 1633 and afterward settled at Saybrook, Conn.), and Theedosia Steele; his maternal grandparents were David Freeland and Sarah Vliet. His childhood, colored by a charming companionship with his grandfather Freeland, was sturdy and imaginative, and these qualities remained with him always. He attended two country schools and left another in New York City at the age of fourteen for a brief clerkship in a Seventh Avenue pawnshop. He joined the Presbyterian church, of which the Rev. Howard Crosby was pastor, but fell away from it promptly on reading Paine's Age of Reason. For eighteen months he was printer's apprentice in the antique office of the Hackettstown (N. J.) Gazette, transferring then to a job in New York, and again to the Brooklyn Union, which last he left in 1866 because he was refused full "space" wages. He entered the New York law office of Thomas, Glassey & Blake and after three years (1870) was admitted to the bar. Next came a complete change of scene. Through a family connection he was offered the position of clerk to Maj. David T. Corbin, United States attorney at Charleston, S. C., and state senator in the Reconstruction legislature. Post got an intimate view of Reconstruction by acting as secretary of three legislative committees, assisting Corbin in the codification of the South Carolina laws, and particularly in taking the confessions of accused Ku-Kluxers at Yorkville and later, with Benn Pitman, making stenographic reports of the Ku-Klux trials in November 1871. During this South Carolina period he married Anna Johnson, July 6, 1871, whom he had known in his apprentice days in Hackettstown.

Returning to New York and law practice, he served for a year and a half (1874-75) as assistant United States attorney for the southern district, quitting the work in disgust at the demands of Republican political bosses and forming the law partnership of Lockwood & Post in which he remained in practice, mostly in the federal courts, until 1880. He then became, for two years, an editorial writer for the new morning penny paper, Truth, which soon attained the fourth largest circulation in New York, and which, through his advocacy, was chiefly responsible for the first observance of Labor Day (1882). With others of the staff he was indicted for libel in connection with the publication, in the last days of the presidential campaign of 1880, of the "Morey" letter which undercut Garfield's pro-labor professions, and which later, to the dismay of Truth, was shown to be a clever forgery.

Post published in Truth a hasty criticism of the writings of Henry George which ended in a fast friendship between the two; he became a leading protagonist of the Georgist "Single Tax" philosophy, and this was really his distinctive service for the rest of his life. He edited the campaign daily the Leader, when George ran for mayor in 1886, and during the succeeding six years was successively editorial writer, news editor, and editor of the Standard, the weekly of the Single Tax movement. His wife died in 1891 and on Dec. 2, 1893, he married Alice Thacher, who was at the time an editor on two Swedenborgian papers. From 1892 to 1897 he lectured widely on the Single Tax and became an editorial writer on the Cleveland Recorder. Tn 1898 he and his wife established and thereafter edited the Public (Chicago) which was a journal of liberal opinion with the Single-Tax point of view, and which grew in fifteen years to a circulation of 10,000 copies weekly. The paper had the financial backing, among others, of Tom L. Johnson [q.v.] and later of Joseph Fels [q.v.]. His work on the Public was the most important of Post's life.

Post was appointed to the Chicago school board by a reform mayor, Edward F. Dunne. Here he fought against the looting of school funds, and stood for academic freedom and the right of teachers to organize. In 1908 and 1910 he made trips to Great Britain, the first to attend the International Free Trade Conference, the second to observe, and, as it turned out, to participate as a speaker in Lloyd George's "land for the people" campaign of the Liberals. He received appointment (June 1913) as assistant secretary of labor, continuing in office through President Woodrow Wilson's two administrations. He performed his uncongenial work with personal and official fortitude. Impeachment proceedings, urged against him in 1920 because he sought to temper deportation of "radical" aliens with humanity and liberalism, collapsed when he made a brilliant defense which shamed his inquisitors. He tried, unsuccessfully, to have returned soldiers colonized on public lands on a lease-hold basis, allowing economic rent to go to the community, rather than permitting private ownership which, he felt, through entrance of speculation, would deprive the settlers of their opportunities and earnings. His official position was unsatisfactory to him -- he found himself offending both liberals and conservatives. After his retirement he continued to live in Washington, giving himself, despite declining health, to industrious writing, much of it in recapitulation of his long and varied life experience. Typical of his more theoretical writings are The Ethics of Democracy (1903), Ethical Principles of Marriage and Divorce (1906), What Is the Single Tax (1926), and The Basic Facts of Economics (1927). In personal appearance Post was short but square-shouldered, erect, and vigorous; his manner spoke directness and sincerity. He was a Swedenborgian, and he believed in and practised the religion of social service.

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Post left with his widow a manuscript autobiography, "Living a Long Life Over Again." His Deportations Delirium Nineteen Twenty (1923) is largely autobiographical and his Prophet of San Francisco (1930) details his connection with Henry George. See also his Account of the George-Hewitt Campaign (1886). Other sources include: E. N. Vallandipham, "Louis F. Post ... A Personal Tribute." New-Church Rev., Jan. 1929; Belle C. La Follette, "Louis F. Post," La Follette's Mag., Feb. 1918; Land and Liberty, Mar. 1928, pp. 41, 49-50; W. M. Reedy, "A Cabinet Photograph," the Mirror (St. Louis), Jan. 24, 191.1; the New-Church Messenger, Nov. 5, 1930; Washington Post, Jan. 11, 1928.]