This work is a biography of Joseph Weldon Bailey, a United States Senator, United States Representative, lawyer, and a Bourbon Democrat who was famous for his speeches extolling conservative causes.

This was the first book to put the American federal income tax into its historical and political context. Acclaimed upon publication as a necessary supplement to the work of Seligman and Seidman, it is still an essential work. Erwin R. Griswald was among the first to recognize this book's value. In the Harvard Law Review he wrote "[t]here is very little in this book that will help a lawyer win a case...[y]et there is much of practical value, a clear picture of the forest which might otherwise escape the lawyer bent on dissecting the trees." He predicted correctly that "[t]here is a mass of fact and comment that will make the book a standard work of reference for many a year to come" (53:1218).