Laurence Gronlund was born in Denmark in 1846. Educated at the University of Copenhagen he emigrated to the United States in 1867. He worked as a lawyer in Chicago and became involved in the reform movement. Gronlund, an executive member of the Socialist Labor Party, wrote several books on social reform such as The Coming Revolution: Its Principles (1878), Cooperative Commonwealth (1884), Our Destiny (1891), The New Economy (1898) and Socializing a State (1898). Gronlund died in 1899.