Henry S. Salt

Henry Salt is not well know today but his work for humanitarian causes brought him praise from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi. It was Henry Salt's book A Plea for Vegetarianism that had a profound influence on Mahatma Gandhi's vegetarian beliefs. But it was Salt's book on Thoreau's, then little known writer, that was to help shape history, as Gandhi himself acknowledged the intellectual debt to Thoreau's essay on "civil disobedience" and Henry Salt in his own formulation of civil disobedience and non-violent noncooperation. Henry Salt wrote nearly 40 books most of which cogently argued and urged for some much needed humane reforms in prisons, schools, in the economic organisations of society at large, and in the treatment of animals. He was the founder of the Humanitarian League and editor of their publications.