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Henry George
by
Henry George studied economics at first hand. The dignified frappe which he received in way of honorarium for his university lecture had its advantages. People in San Francisco wanted to hear what the editor had to say as well as to read his utterances. He was invited to give the Fourth of July oration at the Grand Opera House–a very great compliment.
Henry George was a reformer, and reformers have but one theme, and that theme is Liberty. We grow by expression. There is no doubt that the university lecture and the Fourth of July oration added cubits to the stature of Henry George. In these two addresses we find the kernel of his philosophy–a kernel that was to germinate into a mighty tree which would extend its welcoming shade to travelers for many a decade yet to come.
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Like every other great book (or great man), “Progress and Poverty” was an accident–a providential accident. The book was ten years in the incubation. It began with a newspaper editorial in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine, and found form in a volume of five hundred pages in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine.
The editorial merely called attention to the fact that California, in spite of her vast wealth, was peopled, for the most part, with people desperately poor; and that ground in the vicinity of any city, town or place of enterprise was held at so exorbitant a figure that the poor were actually enslaved by the men who owned the land. That is to say, the men who owned the land controlled the people who had to live on it, for man is a land animal, and can not live apart from land, any more than fishes can live at a distance from water. And moreover we tax for the improvements on land, thus really placing a penalty on enterprise.
The article attracted attention, and opened the eyes of one man at least–and that was the man who wrote it. He had written better than he knew; and any writer who does not occasionally surprise himself does not write well.
Henry George had surprised himself, and he wrote another editorial to explain the first. These editorials extended themselves into a series, and hand-polished and sandpapered, were reprinted in pamphlet form in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, under the title of “Our Land Policy.” The temerity which prompted the printing of this pamphlet was evolved through a letter from John Stuart Mill. Henry George knew he was right in his conclusions, but he felt that he needed the corroboration of a great mind that had grappled with abstruse problems; so he sent one of his editorials to Mill, the greatest living intellect of his time.
Mill showed his interest by replying in a long letter, wherein he addressed George as a man with a mind equal to his own, not as a sophomore trying his wings.
The letter from Mill was to him a white milepost. The corroboration gave him courage, confidence, poise.
The thousand copies of the pamphlet cost Henry George seventy-five dollars. The retail price was twenty-five cents each. Twenty-one copies were sold. The rest were given away to good people who promised to read them. Pamphlets are for the pamphleteer, but let the fact here be recorded that new ideas have always been issued at the author’s expense–and also risk. Martin Luther, Dean Swift, John Milton, Paine, Voltaire, Sam Adams were all pamphleteers. The early Colonial “broadsides” were pamphlets issued by men with thoughts plus, and all of the men just named fired inky volleys which proved to be shots heard ’round the world.
As the years passed, Henry George was gathering gear; he was getting an education. Providence was preparing him for his work. All he expressed by tongue or pen had land, labor, production and distribution in mind. He was getting acquainted with every phase of the subject–anticipating the objections, meeting the objectors, opening up side-paths.