Deciding the notes were not sufficient for editing, Gunton discarded them, instead building on the ideas of his colleague to formulate his own book on the labor movement, Wealth and Progress, which was published in 1887, followed by Principles of Social Economics in 1891.
He founded a school, the Institute of Social Economics, in 1891, with the aim of educating the masses in the path of responsible citizenship.
An early supporter and adviser to Theodore Roosevelt, Gunton later became a vocal critic of the president, when the administration began attacking trusts, forming a Bureau of Corporations with full investigative powers in 1903.
Though Gunton was accused in his life of being bought by big business, he genuinely believed, and made good argument to the fact, that well organized capital was vital to the protection of the rights of a well-organized labor force.
Applying this view of progress to human society, Gunton distinguished three elements at play within this process – material, intellect, and morality.
[1] Gunton saw the exploitation of nature as man's greatest power, and he saw no limit to the progress that could be made by its harnessing.
In his time, it was small businesses that were participating in petty practices such as blacklisting and organizing in "employer's associations" to engage in anti-union activity.
By October 1900, the lectures began to be printed monthly instead of weekly, then semi-monthly, then irregular, until the last was published in December 1903.
Gunton rejected Karl Marx, Henry George and the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.
Gunton followed in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, writer of the 1790 Report on Manufacturing, Mathew Carey, Friedrich List, Daniel Raymond, greatest American 19th-century economist and most prolific writer of his time, Henry Charles Carey, William Elder, author of Questions of the Day, and Conversations on Political Economy, Vanburen Denslow, and the American Protective Tariff League in rejecting the British System of Laissez faire, and also socialism.
Gunton is cited in George Boughton Curtiss' The Industrial Development of Nations volume 2 and Protection and Prosperity.
Human beings brought skill to the process of manufacturing and agriculture, this was fostered by developing his natural talents.
Gunton's Magazine, also called The Social Economist, was unapologetically rooted in a specific ideology, it had a mission to disseminate correct ideas.
Though it was primarily a vehicle for Gunton's philosophy, it also included articles on other matters of contemporary interest such as "Women's opportunity for Social Service", "Colored Men as Cotton Manufacturers" ,"Do the Filipinos Desire American Rule?
Edwin R. A. Seligman contributed about half a dozen articles and Theodore Roosevelt wrote "The Need of a Navy" in the January 1898 issue.
With no means for formal education, George Gunton still exhibited and avid interest in learning and read widely.
In 1874 he left his family in England for America, where he had secured work as a weaver in the cotton mills of Fall River, Massachusetts.
Mrs. Lowe was the president of the General Federation of Women's clubs from 1901 to 1905 and was the widow of a prominent Georgian banker.