Sumner's popular essays were to give him a wider audience to distribute his anti-imperialism, his advocacy of free markets and the gold standard. He also had a long term influence over modern American conservatism. This is the final collection of his essays and is edited by Albert Galloway Keller. It concludes with The Forgotten Man where Sumner argued that, in his day, politics was being subverted by those proposing a "measure of relief for the evils which have caught public attention.