 His death at age 51 was regarded as "untimely" by his daughter; in the previous year he had not only published two books ("The Science of Being Well" and "The Science of Getting Rich"), but he had also run for public office.In 1896 in Chicago, Illinois, Wattles attended "a convention of reformers" and met George Davis Herron, a Congregational Church minister and professor of Applied Christianity at Grinnell College  who was then attracting nationwide attention by preaching a form of Christian Socialism.After meeting Herron, Wattles became a social visionary and began to expound upon what Florence called "the wonderful, social message of Jesus."