The soap salesman who built a utopian empire and died on the Lusitania

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Elbert Hubbard was a master of reinvention, evolving from a successful soap salesman into a philosopher-publisher. He founded the Roycroft community, an Arts and Crafts collective that mirrored William Morris’s ideals. His life ended abruptly in 1915, leaving behind a legacy of moralistic essays and a complex, contradictory intellectual footprint.

Born in 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois, Elbert Hubbard spent his early career as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. By 1892, he had retired from the corporate world to pursue a different path. Inspired by a visit to William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in England, Hubbard established the Roycroft Press in 1893 in East Aurora, New York. This venture grew into a sprawling, quasi-communal artisan community known as the Roycrofters, which produced everything from hand-illumined books and leather goods to furniture and metalwork.

Hubbard’s influence was cemented through his prolific writing and publishing. He launched the monthly 'Little Journeys' series in 1895, featuring biographical essays that blended facts with satire. His magazine, The Philistine, became a platform for his unique, epigrammatic style, which often championed efficiency and work. It was here that he published 'A Message to Garcia' in 1899, a moralistic essay that drew lessons on perseverance from the Spanish-American War. In 1908, he expanded his editorial reach by launching a second monthly publication, The Fra.

His philosophy was famously difficult to categorize, shifting from early socialist leanings to a staunch defense of free enterprise and American ingenuity. This evolution drew criticism from the Socialist press, though Hubbard maintained that his core ideals remained intact. His life and career were cut short on May 7, 1915, when he and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, perished in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. His posthumous influence persisted through collections like his 1923 'Selected Writings' and his 'Scrap Book', which continue to reflect his mix of radicalism and conservatism.

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