Wilson published several works of history and political science and was a regular contributor to "Political Science Quarterly". Wilson's textbook, "The State", was widely used in American college courses until the 1920s. In "The State", Wilson wrote that governments could legitimately promote the general welfare "by forbidding child labor, by supervising the sanitary conditions of factories, by limiting the employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, by instituting official tests of the purity or the quality of goods sold, by limiting the hours of labor in certain trades, by a hundred and one limitations of the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to out-do the scrupulous and merciful in trade or industry." He also wrote that charity efforts should be removed from the private domain and "made the imperative legal duty of the whole," a position which, according to historian Robert M. Saunders, seemed to indicate that Wilson "was laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state." His third book, "Division and Reunion" (1893) became a standard university textbook for teaching mid- and late-19th century U.S. history.