John Lincoln (1866-1959) was one of a number of highly successful industrialists (on this website, see also: Fels) who devoted himself to promoting Georgist ideas during his lifetime. In 1946, he endowed the Lincoln Foundation, to teach and expound the ideas of Henry George as expressed in Progress and Poverty, apparently using language identical to that used by Robert Schalkenbach twenty years earlier in endowing his foundation.

Unfortunately, it appears that his heirs and the foundation's trustees have other values and priorities.  Many Georgists deeply regret the directions his heirs have taken that foundation.  While the Lincoln Land Institute acknowledges Henry George ceremonially (and has published a two-CD set of George's writings), otherwise little priority is given to the social, economic and justice issues Henry George spoke to — or the remedy he called for — and his message is, at best, highly diluted in the foundation's activities and spending.   A visitor to the Lincoln Land Institute comes away with an impression that most people there regard George as the crazy uncle in their attic, rather than as one of the great modern prophets and seers and social reformers, whose ideas they are employed to promote, and that few have read widely or deeply or thoughtfully in Henry George's writings or in the writings of contemporary Georgists, nor given much thought to issues of social and economic justice. Rather, they seem to seek to support the status quo.

On the other hand, there are signs that at least part of the Lincoln family is familiar with Georgist ideas; they sponsored a week-long session at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2005, which included a speech by Lindy Davies (Land and Justice, among the Essential Documents on this website) and another by Alanna Hartzok. Wealthandwant hopes that they will shift the primary direction of the well-funded Lincoln Land Institute toward the important work John Lincoln clearly intended it to do. They could make a tremendous contribution to social and economic justice in America — and to peace in the world.

WSJ article

Mason Gaffney: Introduction: The Power of Neo-classical Economics  (Introduction to The Corruption of Economics, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1994)

TPR - How can my readers find out if what you're saying is really true? Name the most widely used economics textbooks in American universities right now and what they teach that is an obvious lie for the benefit of landed interests.

MG - I no longer use textbooks much, but there are dozens available for the more common courses. Some are less bad than others.

Strategies change over time. It is no longer common to attack George virulently, as was done in the period that my book covers, 1880-1930 or so. Today Georgism has receded as a political force, so modern strategies are less frantic and overt. Today, they trivialize, misrepresent, and brush off lightly.

Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Peter Mieszkowski, Theodore Schultz, and Edwin Mills, for example, casually pronounce that land rent is only 5% or so of total income, so a single land tax could not support government as we know it. They offer no support for this except to echo each other, and to cite some transparently irrelevant data from the US Dept. of Commerce. They are, tragically, encouraged in this stratagem by work subsidized and influenced by the Lincoln Foundation, an outfit originally funded to promote the ideas of Henry George, but soon coopted and diverted from its chartered purposes. They simply ignore the few careful studies of the matter, as by Michael Hudson, Allen Manvel, myself, and Steven Cord, that show much higher figures.  Read the whole article

Weld Carter, correspondence, August 25, 1984

It was a sad day for the Georgist movement when the Lincoln Foundation assumed the management of TRED conferences. Arlo Woolery is an extremely able administrator. But he is an assessor — not a Georgist. My crude estimate is that at least 90% of Lincoln funds are being channeled to improving assessment techniques, instead of ridding our socio-economic order of the evils of taxing buildings. . . . All that thunder you think you have been hearing has been old John C. turning over in his grave."