[This article was printed without information about the writer, in the bimonthly magazine “Progress”, number 1067, May-June 2005, published by the organizations “Prosper Australia” <www.prosper.org.au> and “EarthSharing” <www.earthsharing.org.au>, edited by Karl Williams, Melbourne.]

Henry George (1839-1897)

This self-made printer-journalist, political economist, and reformer was the most important and influential radical social thinker of the 19th century America. He became the third most famous man in the United States, only surpassed in public acclaim by Thomas Edison and Mark Twain (who himself became a “Georgist”). George was translated into almost every language that knew print, and some of the greatest and most influential thinkers of his time paid him the loftiest of tributes.

Very much the self-made man, his formative experiences were rich and varied. Born in Philadelphia as the second of ten children, he was raised in modest circumstances. He left school when 13 years old and spent 2 years as a clerk before seeking adventures and signing on as a foremast boy on a merchant ship which sailed around the globe for three years.

On his return he learnt typesetting for 9 months before shipping out again to California. Leaving the ship in San Francisco in 1858 he headed for British Columbia to join the gold rush; but the expedition was a failure.

George returned to San Francisco where he married Australian-born Annie Corsina Fox. Times were tough, and the Georges lived in real poverty to the point where in 1865 the family, with the addition of 2 young sons, was near starvation. Despite this, George continued to improve his mind with dedicated study and was starting to get a reputation as a writer. He thereafter managed to rise rapidly to the position of managing editor of the San Francisco Daily Evening Post. However, he never forgot that desperation of real poverty – this experience served him well.

George became outspoken against the major inequities of his day such as the illegal actions of monopolies, mining interests, political corruption, and the exploitation of new Chinese immigrants in California. As a deeply religious and moral man, he felt that America could not condone such actions.

It’s worth examining further the other influences that moulded this bold and original thinker. For starters, all through his life he tried to ennoble himself with the great works of literature - Fox TV and such trash played no part in Henry’s upbringing! As a boy he witnessed the fabulous of wealth of India, but most human life he saw grovelling in the dirt.

New York later made a similar impression during a trip there in the late 1860’s, where he observed the apparent paradox of extreme wealth existing side by side with poverty so harrowing and degrading that the victims of it had lost the will to escape. In California he lived and worked in a rapidly developing society where he had the unique opportunity of studying the formation of a civilization – how an encampment on the gold fields evolved into a thriving metropolis. And as he saw the beginning of wealth, he noted the first appearance of pauperism. He saw degradation forming as he saw the advent of leisure and affluence, and he felt compelled to discover why they arose concurrently.

The key to the mystery soon lay open to his mind. In San Francisco the railroad from the east was soon expected, and he was amazed and disturbed by the advice he receiving – to buy land and hold it. Already, much land was selling for $1,000 an acre, some of it used only for grazing cows. As he later wrote “We must do something, otherwise the very ground which nourishes and shelters us, as vital as the air, will be monopolised by a few men. Those few will own and rule us. And then democracy will perish.”

Meanwhile, back at the chronology, in an 1871 pamphlet, Our Land and Land Policy, George first set out his theory of rent as the primary cause of monopoly and poverty, and advocated a single tax on land. Between 1877 and 1879 he worked on his mighty masterpiece, Progress and Poverty. For its eloquence and stirring emotional impact alone, this grand work of genius would be considered essential reading, written simply but so beautifully that it has been compared to the very greatest works of the English language.

Yet there was no inkling then as to the huge impact this book would have on the world. George was unable to find a publisher and so self-published an edition of 500, doing much of the typesetting himself. When the first 500 sold quickly, a publisher was happy to take the plates. The book became a sensation in both America and England, eventually selling millions of copies and being translated into numerous languages. The scientist and writer, Alfred Russell Wallace, described Progress and Poverty as “the most remarkable and important book of the present century.”

George explained that the reason so many people lived in total misery was because their natural birthright – access to land – had been systematically and surreptitiously taken away. However, instead of urging an uprising against landowners and government, George made a case for peaceful yet permanent change by removing all taxes on what people produced with their labour and the capital goods used in production. In their place, George made clear how we must have a tax on land values, although this is really not a tax at all, but actually a user fee which society ought to collect from anyone who is given exclusive use of any part of nature.

Political prominence had been thrust upon George, and his spellbinding powers of oratory were used to rouse countless thousands in mass meetings. The publication of The Irish Land Question resulted in him being sent to Ireland and England in 1881-1882 on assignment for the radical Irish World. There he became acquainted with leaders of the Irish Land League as well as many English socialists and radicals. In 1883-4 he made another trip at the invitation of the Scottish land restoration league, producing on both tours a striking effect, lecturing extensively and becoming the catalyst for a new political movement to bring an end to land monopoly. Entrenched privilege had never been exposed and threatened so seriously.

The stakes became higher when he returned to New York a hero with a strong transatlantic following, and he agreed to run for mayor in 1886 as the candidate of the United Labor Party – in those days, the Mayor of New York was second in effective American power only to the President. The labour unions had been unanimous that Henry George should be their candidate, and his reluctance was only overcome by a petition of 34,000 people. After a strenuous campaign against Democrat Abram S Hewitt and Republican Theodore Roosevelt, George came second in the poll to Hewitt; many supporters charged that fraud had robbed him of victory.

Largely based in New York, George next started a weekly newspaper, The Standard, which he used to hammer away at the issues of the day, especially the reasons for the increasing disparities of wealth. The Standard then gave rise to the influential Anti-Poverty Society. Meanwhile his world popularity was growing even more, and his next calls abroad were to Britain in 1888 and 1889, and later to Australia and New Zealand. Now at the age of 51, he was one of Australia’s most celebrated men, attracting 10,000 eager listeners to hear him speak at Melbourne’s Exhibition Building in 1890. His visit to Australia was the catalyst for the formation of the Australian Labor Party, which based itself on his principles until loosing its way completely (see Clyde Cameron’s chronology of this tragedy on pages 14, Progress, No. 1067, May-June 2005).

He was now pushing himself to the limit, and suffered a slight stroke in the winter of 1890-1891, but nevertheless continues to lecture widely and write prolifically. The powerful landed interests of the Roman Catholic Church had given rise to Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on land ownership. George’s response was The Condition of Labour in 1891 which was a head-on demolition (in respectful and dignified language) of the warped and self-serving Church position.

He had still found time to write more books: Social Problems (1883), Protection or Free Trade (1886), A Perplexed Philosopher (a critique of social philosopher Herbert Spencer in 1892) and Science of Political Economy (1897).

In the later years George found himself more and more at odds with both socialists and mainstream labour leaders; his movement increasingly attracted middle class progressives.

Under immense pressure from self-inflicted overwork and against his doctor’s warnings that the stress of another campaign would likely prove fatal, in 1897 George again accepted nomination to run for the office of mayor of New York. Totally exhausted, he literally died from overwork on the eve of the election. The huge respect and affection felt for Henry George was demonstrated in the funeral ceremonies in which more than a hundred thousand people viewed his body and joined the procession to his burial site in Brooklyn.

He had dedicated his all to solving the greatest curse afflicting humanity, and his written legacy and personal example of virtue are monuments to the pursuit of truth. Einstein said of George, “Men like Henry George are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form, and fervent love of justice.” Leo Tolstoy wrote, “People do not argue with the teaching of George, they simply do not know it.” John Dewey fervently stressed the originality of George’s work, stating that, “Henry George is one of a small number of definitely original social philosophers that the world has produced.”

Henry George was a lucid voice, direct and bold, that pointed out basic truths and cut through the confusion of the wayward and corrupted discipline of economics. His ideas stand as desperately-needed today as then: he who makes should retain; what the community produces belongs to the community for communal uses; and God’s earth, all of it, is the fundamental birthright of all humanity.