Laurence Gronlund (Danish: Lauritz Andreas Grønlund;[1] July 13, 1844 – October 15, 1899) was a Danish-born American lawyer, writer, lecturer, and political activist.

[4] For a short time he taught German in a public school in Milwaukee prior to his 1869 admission to the bar and the opening of a law practice in Chicago.

[4] Gronlund was a firm advocate of trade union-based, German-style International Socialism, in contrast to various communitarian schemes then in vogue in the United States.

The working class, forced to scramble for survival under the competitive system, was depicted as the "natural prey" of small shopkeeper "parasites" who existed by inflating selling prices and depreciating quality.

[11] More than 100,000 copies of The Cooperative Commonwealth were sold,[12] and the book would remain one of the most influential works on the socialist theme in the United States for the rest of the 19th century.

[19] In his book Gronlund attempted to challenge the popular image of Danton, first President of the Committee of Public Safety, as a terrorist and to restore his place to history as a leader of the democratic French revolution.

[20] Gronlund noted with bemusement that while people shuddered in fear of "destructive Socialism," at the same time the concentration of capitalism through trusts and increased government intervention in economic affairs was slowly bringing into existence a socialist regime.

[12] Owing to misgivings about the term "socialism" – which he believed covered too many bedfellows, such as anarchists and communitarians – Gronlund insisted upon describing himself as a "collectivist" in his later years on the lecture circuit.

[23]In addition to lecturing to audiences around the country about "collectivism", Gronlund plied his trade as a writer, contributing to the pages of Twentieth Century Magazine.

[25] Beulah was regarded as a talented artist and art teacher and was active in launching the Seattle Humane Society, dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to animals.

[26] A fourth and final book, The New Economy: A Peaceable Solution of the Social Problem, was published in 1898 and emphasized the evolutionary and anti-class war orientation which Gronlund developed in his later years.

He would walk with pipe and paper along a thriving thoroughfare oblivious of all; his hat shaped like a French general's, peak in front and back; shoes well worn; clothes shabby, and was in meeting reticent, even timid ...

[27]Leonard D. Abbott recalled Gronlund as a "great soul" who had lived in poverty throughout his life out of commitment to the socialist cause, the recipient of "very small financial rewards from all his books put together.

"[19] Gronlund was enormously influential during the decades of the 1880s and 1890s and is credited by historian Daniel Bell with playing a pivotal role in the conversion of future Appeal to Reason publisher Julius Wayland to socialism in 1891.

[28] Wayland would begin his first socialist newspaper, The Coming Nation, in 1893 and would build his subsequent publication into a mass circulation weekly that would help make socialism a broad political movement during the first two decades of the 20th century.