Modern conservatives often point to William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), a leading public intellectual of the era, as one of their own, citing his articulate support for free markets, anti-imperialism, and the gold standard, and his opposition to what he saw as threats to the middle class from the rich plutocrats above or the agrarians and ignorant masses below.Robert Green McCloskey, American conservatism in the age of enterprise, 1865–1910: a study of William Graham Sumner, Stephen J. Field, and Andrew Carnegie (1964)Late in life Sumner wrote an essay focused on the dangers of monopoly. His unpublished essay of 1909, "On the Concentration of Wealth" shows his concern that pervasive corporate monopoly could be a grave threat to social equality and democratic government. Bruce Curtis, "William Graham Sumner 'On the Concentration of Wealth,'" Journal of American History 1969 55(4): 823–32.
