ABSTRACT
The British-American John Francis Bray was born in the present-day American state of Washington to a family of singers and comedians. In 1822, he moved to the latter’s hometown of Leeds. In the following years, upon his father’s death, Bray became an apprentice to a printer and book-binder. Over the next decade, he joined the Yorkshire co-operative and Chartist movements and wrote for the local radical press. Bray’s first pamphlet, Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy, was based on a series of lectures he had given to the Working Men’s Association in Leeds, which he had helped to establish in 1837. Based on Robert Owen’s theory of value, Labour’s Wrongs argued that only working people were entitled to the full produce of their labour. But contrary to Owen, and in keeping with his Chartist beliefs, Bray was adamant that working people had to free themselves from the shackles of the competitive system, without following middle- and upper-class leaders.
