Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

Progress and poverty, the work upon which Mr. George's fame as a writer and thinker must ever rest, was written between August, 1877, and March, 1879. The book is an elaboration of a previous pamphlet entitled Our land and land policy, published in San Francisco in 1871. It consists of a careful examination in which the author endeavors to “seek the law which associates poverty with progress and increases want with advancing wealth.” As a preliminary to this search he first endeavors to establish the proposition that poverty deepens as wealth increases, that “where the lowest class barely lives, as has been the case for a long time in many parts of Europe, it is impossible for it to get any lower, for the next lowest step is out of existence, and no tendency to further depression can readily show itself. But in the progress of new settlements to the conditions of older communities it may clearly be seen that material progress does not merely fail to relieve poverty—it actually produces it. In the United States it is clear that squalor and misery, and the vices and crimes that spring from them, everywhere increase as the village grows to the city and the march of development brings the advantages of the improved methods of production and exchange. If there is less deep poverty in San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind New York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets?”

It is difficult to briefly formulate the result of the author's researches along these lines and to state at the same time the remedy he proposes for the betterment of social conditions. He infers that there must be a common cause, seeing that “there is distress where large standing armies are maintained, but that there is also distress where the standing armies are nominal; there is distress where protective tariffs stupidly and wastefully hamper trade, but there is also distress where trade is nearly free; there is distress where autocratic government yet prevails, but there is also distress where political power is wholly in the hands of the people; in countries where paper is money, and in countries where gold and silver are the only currency.” After pursuing his inquiry at great length the cause and the remedy are found to be, first, that a primal wrong has been committed in the institution of private property in land, and, second, that the remedy is to make land common property.

Commenting on these findings, he says: “There is but one way to remove an evil, and that is to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands, the [193] full earnings of the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil—in nothing else is there the slightest hope. This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it.”

The announcement of these doctrines in Progress and poverty attracted immediate and serious attention. They were in no sense new doctrines, but they certainly were presented to thinking and active minds for the first time in a manner that imperatively demanded action. Speaking of the French economists of the eighteenth century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, Mr. George says, on page 380 of Progress and poverty (Webster & Co.'s edition): “They proposed just what I have proposed, that all taxation should be abolished, save a tax upon the value of land,” and, “without knowing anything of Quesnay and his doctrines, I have reached the same practical conclusion.”

In 1850 Herbert Spencer published his first book, Social Statics. The ninth chapter of this book, which is entitled The right to the use of the earth, contains a long argument that has been fairly paraphrased by Mr. George as follows:

1. The equal right of all men to the use of land springs from the fact of their existence in a world adapted to their needs in which they are similarly born.

2. Equity, therefore, does not permit private property in land, since that would involve the right of some to deny to others the use of land.

3. Private property in land as at present existing can show no original title valid in justice, and such validity cannot be gained either by sale or bequest, or by peaceable possession during any length of time.

4. Nor is there any mode by which land can justly become private property. Cultivation and improvement can give title to their results, not to the land itself.

5. Nor could an equal division of land with the consent of all, even if it were not impossible that such a division could be made, give valid title to private property in land. For the equal right to the use of land would attach to all those thereafter born, irrespective of any agreement made by their predecessors.

6. There can be no modification of this dictate of equity. Either all men have equal right to the use of the land or some men have the just right to enslave others and deprive them of life.

7. As a matter of fact, nobody does really believe in private property in land. An act of Parliament even now supersedes title-deeds. That is to say, the right of private ownership in land exists by general consent; that being withdrawn, it ceases.

8. But the doctrine that all men are equally entitled to the use of the land does not involve communism or socialism, and need cause no serious change in existing arrangements. It is not necessary that the state should manage land: it is only necessary that rent, instead of going, as now, to individuals, should be taken by society for common purposes.

9. There may be difficulty in justly liquidating the claims of existing land-owners; but men, having got themselves into a dilemma, must get out of it as well as they can. The landed class are not alone to be considered. So long as the treatment of land as private property continues, the masses suffer from an injustice only inferior in wickedness to depriving them of life or personal liberty.

10. However difficult it may be to embody in fact the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil, equity sternly demands it to be done.

Mr. Spencer's views, however, do not appear to have moved any considerable number of men to take practical action towards righting the injustice he pointed out, until after the appearance of Progress and poverty. In 1892 he brought out a new edition of Social Statics, in which everything relating to land is omitted, and the new book was accompanied by a publisher's advertisement to the effect that Mr. Spencer had “abandoned” the views contained in the old edition. Mr. Spencer in “abandoning” or “withdrawing” his original views in this connection neglected, however, to disprove them.

Other writers and apologists of the existing order sprang up by scores during the controversial period between 1880 and [194] 1894, and many “answers” to Progress and Poverty were given to the world. The most notable of these “answers” was the one prepared by the late Duke of Argyll, entitled The Prophet of San Francisco, and republished in full, with Mr. George's reply thereto, in 1893.

Patrick Edward Dove was another forerunner of George. In the Theory of human progression he says: “If, then, successive generations of men cannot have their practical share of the actual soil (including mines, etc.), how can the division of the advantages of the natural earth be effected? By the division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the rent of the soil the common property of the nation. That is (as the taxation is the common property of the State), by taking the whole of the taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing all other kinds of taxation whatever, and thus all industry would be absolutely emancipated from every burden.”

Those who care to examine further into the evolution of the single-tax doctrine as it appears in the writings of men who preceded George, sometimes directly and clearly and at other times dimly seen or only partly apprehended by men who failed to follow out their thought to its logical conclusion, will find in The earth for all Calender, compiled by Ernest Crosby, a good bibliography, in connection with extended quotations from all the authors mentioned therein.

It may properly be said, then, that if Mr. George's book did not announce a new doctrine, he certainly called attention to, and made clear, a doctrine that had been more or less perfectly stated but which afterwards became obscured. Or, to use Mr. George's own words, words that have been carved upon his tomb:

The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it never would have been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of truth.

We assert as our fundamental principle the self-evident truth enunciated in the Declaration of American Independence, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

We hold that all men are equally entitled to the use and enjoyment of what God has created and of what is gained by the general growth and improvement of the community of which they are a part. Therefore, no one should be permitted to hold natural opportunities without a fair return to all for any special privilege thus accorded to him, and that value which the growth and improvement of the community attach to land should be taken for the use of the community.

We hold that each man is entitled to all that his labor produces. Therefore no tax should be levied on the products of labor.

To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, State, county, and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and indirect taxation.

Since in all our States we now levy some tax on the value of land, the single tax can be instituted by the simple and easy way of abolishing, one after another, all other taxes now levied, and commensurately increasing the tax on land values, until we draw upon that one source for all expenses of government, the revenue being divided between local governments, State governments, and the general government, as the revenue from direct taxes is now divided between the local and State governments; or, a direct assessment being made by the general government upon the States and paid by them from revenues collected in this manner.

The single tax we propose is not a tax on land, and therefore would not fall on the use of land and become a tax on labor.

It is a tax, not on land, but on the value of land. Thus it would not fall on all land, but only on valuable land, and on that not in proportion to the use made of it, but in proportion to its value—the premium which the user of land must [195] pay to the owner, either in purchase money or rent, for permission to use valuable land. It would thus be a tax not on the use or improvement of land, but on the ownership of land, taking what would otherwise go to the owner as owner, and not as user.

In assessments under the single tax all values created by individual use or improvement would be excluded, and the only value taken into consideration would be the value attaching to the bare land by reason of neighborhood, etc., to be determined by impartial periodical assessments. Thus the farmer would have no more taxes to pay than the speculator who held a similar piece of land idle, and the man who on a city lot erected a valuable building would be taxed no more than the man who held a similar lot vacant.

The single tax, in short, would call upon men to contribute to the public revenues, not in proportion to what they produce or accumulate, but in proportion to the value of the natural opportunities they hold. It would compel them to pay just as much for holding land idle as for putting it to its fullest use.

The single tax, therefore, would—

1. Take the weight of taxation off of the agricultural districts where land has little or no value irrespective of improvements, and put it on towns and cities, where bare land rises to a value of millions of dollars per acre.

2. Dispense with a multiplicity of taxes and a horde of tax-gatherers, simplify goverment and greatly reduce its cost.

3. Do away with the fraud, corruption, and gross inequality inseparable from our present methods of taxation, which allow the rich to escape while they grind the poor. Land cannot be hid or carried off, and its value can be ascertained with greater ease and certainty than any other.

4. Give us with all the world as perfect freedom of trade as now exists between the States of our Union, thus enabling our people to share, through free exchanges in all the advantages which nature has given to other countries, or which the peculiar skill of other peoples has enabled them to attain. It would destroy the trusts, monopolies, and corruptions which are the outgrowths of the tariff. It would do away with the fines and penalties now levied on any one who improves a farm, erects a house, builds a machine, or in any way adds to the general stock of wealth. It would leave every one free to apply labor or expend capital in production or exchange without fine or restriction, and would leave to each the full product of his exertion.

5. It would, on the other hand, by taking for public use that value which attaches to land by reason of the growth and improvement of the community, make the holding of land unprofitable to the mere owner, and profitable only to the user. It would thus make it impossible for speculators and monopolists to hold natural opportunities unused or only half used, and would throw open to labor the illimitable field of employment which the earth offers to man. It would thus solve the labor problem, do away with involuntary poverty, raise wages in all occupations to the full earnings of labor, make overproduction impossible until all human wants are satisfied, render labor-saving inventions a blessing to all, and cause such an enormous production and such an equitable distribution of wealth as would give to all comfort, leisure, and participation in the advantages of an advancing civilization.

With respect to monopolies other than the monopoly of land, we hold that where free competition becomes impossible, as in telegraphs, railroads, water and gas supplies, etc., such business becomes a proper social function, which should be controlled and managed by and for the whole people concerned, through their proper government, local, State, or national, as may be.

The single-tax adherents are at present far better organized as an aggressive force in England than in the United States. There the issue is brought prominently and persistently to the front, both in Parliament and elsewhere. In New Zealand, perhaps, the greatest advance has been made in the application of laws that have a genuine bearing upon the doctrine. These laws, of comparatively recent enactment, are looked upon by single-taxers as the “entering wedge,” and the experiment is being watched with great interest. Single-tax measures are also being considered in several of our State legislatures, notably in Colorado. [196]

Of the Anti-poverty Society, a remarkable association which held its first meeting in Chickering Hall, New York City, on May 1, 1887, a few words may be said. In the fall of 1886 Mr. George was the candidate of the United Labor party for the office of mayor of New York. Opposed to him on the side of the Democrats were Abram S. Hewitt (who was elected), and Theodore Roosevelt, Republican. Mr. George received 68,000 votes. Dr. Edward McGlynn (q. v.), pastor of St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church, was an ardent supporter of the single-tax doctrine, and made speeches on behalf of its candidate. His course displeased Archbishop Corrigan, and, having been publicly announced to speak at a meeting to be held in Chickering Hall early in October, he was formally forbidden by the archbishop to “attend the meeting or to take part in future in any political meeting whatever without permission of the Sacred Congregation Propaganda Fide.” Dr. McGlynn disobeyed this order and spoke at the meeting. For this disobedience he was excommunicated, and an attempt was made to have the pope condemn the books written by and the doctrines held by Henry George. The controversy that arose over this matter caused intense excitement, not only in New York, but throughout the country. Anti-poverty societies were formed in Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other cities. These meetings were intensely religious in character, and were addressed by clergymen of many Christian denominations and in some instances by Hebrews. A full account of the society and of the addresses delivered by Dr. McGlynn and others may be found in the Standard, a weekly newspaper then published by Henry George, files of which have been deposited in the public libraries of New York, Boston, and St. Louis, and perhaps in other cities. Of the excommunication of Dr. McGlynn and of the subsequent lifting of the ban by an apostolic delegate of the Roman Catholic Church who was sent to the United States in 1892, the Standard and its successor, The National single-taxer, also contain full accounts. Dr. McGlynn did not recant nor did he cease to publicly and privately support the doctrine that individual ownership of land was against natural justice after he was reinstated to the office of the priesthood.

Among the current publications issued in support of single-tax doctrines in the United States are The public, Justice, and the Single-tax review.