CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)

Henry George was the author of Progress and Poverty (1879 with many later expanded editions) and founder of the ‘single tax’ on land values, a mechanism designed to enhance progress while alleviating poverty. George was born in Philadelphia and ended his formal education there at age 13. Two years later, he signed on as a foremast boy on a 15-month voyage to Australia. On his return, he worked briefly as a printer’s apprentice until shipping out as a steward on a ship bound for California, where he lived until moving to New York after the publication of Progress and Poverty. In California, he worked variously as a typesetter and printer, prospected unsuccessfully for gold, published and edited newspapers, and, while living at the margins of poverty, gained recognition as a crusading proponent of social reform.

In 1870, George concluded that land values were the key to the fact that progress seemed to be producing poverty, and he began to write and lecture on the subject, publishing Our Land and Land Policy in 1868. He wrote Progress and Poverty between 1877 and 1879, which, after considerable difficulty finding a publisher, was printed by

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the respectable firm of Appleton in New York. Initially, Progress and Poverty was ignored and received mixed to unfavourable reviews.

In New York, George wrote for The Irish World and published The Irish Land Question (1881). The paper sent him to Ireland and Britain where he lectured for a year, gaining support for the views expressed in Progress and Poverty but not for his views on Ireland.

On returning to New York, he discovered that the tide had shifted dramatically and Progress and Poverty was now considered a major contribution to debates over economic and social reform. George ran for mayor of New York in 1886 and secretary of state of New York in 1887, losing both races. He lectured frequently in the USA, twice more in Europe and made a tour of Australia and New Zealand, where his ideas were particularly influential. On returning from this trip, he suffered a stroke and his health was problematic for the rest of his life. Against medical advice, he ran again for mayor of New York in 1897 and died of a stroke just before the election.

George had concluded that the central problem of the modern era was that growing wealth was combined with increasing poverty. He searched for the cause of this situation and concluded that rises in the price of land were always combined with low wages and that low land prices came with high wages. To make his argument, George used a labour theory of value and attacked the arguments regarding population of THOMAS MALTHUS (1766–1834).

George argued that wages came from expended labour rather than from advances by capital, as was then the common position in political economy. George argued that wages were not advanced from capital or reduced capital. He contended that labour creates capital, part of which is then returned to the labourer in wages. He went so far as to argue that labour employed capital rather than the other way around.

George saw Malthusianism as a potential threat to his ideas, as did many other radicals and reformers in the nineteenth century. He argued that Malthus simply served the interests of the wealthy by justifying disease, hunger and poverty as part of the natural order rather than the result of greed and social maladjustments. He asserted, without examining Malthus’s evidence, that population growth had nothing to do with the existence of human misery and argued that a society run on the proper lines was perfectly capable of caring for an increasing population. He contended that in a society based on equality, population growth would make everyone better off.

The reason this is possible is George’s discovery that while land is the basis for the production of wealth, rent is the basis for its distribution, and, typically of the time, he tried to state this insight as a scientific law, even developing a formula:

Produce=Rent+Wages+ Interest therefore

Produce −Rent=Wages+Interest (Progress and Poverty: 171)

Wages and interest are what is left when rent is deducted. Thus, rent is what inhibits economic development.

The solution was ‘a single tax’ on land values. This would radically increase productivity and would redistribute wealth to those who produce and to the community as

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a whole. Extremes of wealth and poverty would be eliminated, and all would have more than necessary for a good life. This situation would transform society by reducing crime and elevating morality.

George published Social Problems in 1883 to take advantage of the popularity of Progress and Poverty and to apply his formula to contemporary issues in the USA. He also tied his work to various reform movements, particularly unionization and the Knights of Labor, which he supported, and land nationalisation, which was particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand.

While George did not write a utopia in the traditional sense of depicting an imaginary country, he did spell out the positive effects of his changes, and others wrote utopias depicting these results. Such works were published in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Also, a number of communities were founded in the USA and other countries based on George’s ideas, three of them very successfully, Fairhope in Alabama founded in 1895, Arden in Delaware founded in 1900 and Free Acres in New Jersey founded in 1910. All three still exist. While there were single-tax communities established in other countries, there is very little information available about them.

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)