Grant McConnell was fond of my Henry George essay.   Grant didn't look much like a scholar. He was a burly man with a weathered face and an unruly shock of silver hair that flogged his face when his blood was up, Grant huffing his indignation at the evil greedy men will do.  What Grant looked like was a lumberjack.

Actually, Grant had spent most of his life in the outdoors.  He'd even been on Safari in Africa.  Grant had a wonderful store of gripping stories about his adventures on the veldt. And a funny one about his time on the Nile. Grant was taking a picture of his wife. He kept asking her to back up and get closer to the river for a better shot.   Grant finally noticed he was backing her into the gaping jaws of a waiting crocodile delighted that Grant was delivering dinner.

Grant was such a dedicated outdoorsman that he and his wife spent their summers in a crude log cabin in the wilderness not far from my place.  I lived in forest, but it was a tame place compared to Grant's primeval wilderness.  There were no roads to his cabin.  Grant got there by boat. When timber interests tried to log Grant's beloved wilderness, he worked behind the scenes to make the entire area a protected wilderness.

Grant passed away in 1993.  He left a large footprint.  Not physically.  Grant was a conservationist. He detested the idea of trampling over the earth.  He preferred the light step of a moccasin, leaving no imprint.

But Grant cast a giant shadow as a leading scholar of his generation.  His best known book is Private Power and American Democracy.  It is a powerful indictment of the idea that interest group democracy is as good as real democracy.  Grant showed with many examples and analysis that interest group politics does not serve the public interest.  It is not democracy.  It's the rule of powerful groups out only for themselves.  I was assigned Grant's books in graduate school.

Grant had another reason to be proud.  He'd saved a very large tract of the earth's wilderness from the predation of business blind to the beauties of nature. Before he died, Grant wrote a book (Stehekin) to honor of his adopted wilderness.

I've missed Grant.  He was an original.

Grant once told me my essay was the best piece he'd read on Henry George.  He regularly assigned the essay to his graduate students. That was high praise indeed.  I never bothered to publish the essay.  It was written for a conference.  In honor of Grant, I present the essay here. Enjoy!