Talk:Robert Applegarth

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Here is what I know about Robert Applegarth from Asa Briggs' _Victorian People_.

He was at some point the Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. (1862-??)

He was the son of a Brig Captain. His father was also a whaler.

He arrived in New York from Sheffield in December of 1854 as a young carpenter with only half a crown to his possesion. He shortly met another immigrant from Sheffield, who welcomed him in, and within three years, Applegarth had saved enough to call for his wife, who was too ill to come. He returned to England.

While in the states, he witnessed democracy in action, saw that the labor problems were international in nature, and grew a distate for slavery. Asa Briggs: "He did not rest content with reading the novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe; he went down the Mississippi himself to see a slave market...He became a strong supporter of Negro emancipation and met Frederick Douglass..." (p 171).

He and John Arthur Roebuck were political opponents (this may be a tautology - it seems that Roebuck was a political opponent of nearly everyone, at least according to Briggs).

He was a proponent of working class causes, which propelled him to support socialism in England (this is an oversimplification).

--Thats all for now.