Protectionists
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty, Chapter 5: The Basic
Cause of Poverty (in the unabridged: Book
V: The Problem Solved)
The great problem, of which these recurring seasons of industrial depression
are but peculiar manifestations, is now, I think, fully solved, and the social
phenomena which all over the civilized world appall the philanthropist and
perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds the future of the most advanced
races, and suggest doubts of the reality and ultimate goal of what we have
fondly called progress, are now explained.
The reason why, in spite of the increase of productive power, wages constantly
tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living, is that, with increase
in productive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a
constant tendency to the forcing down of wages.
Land being necessary to labor, and being reduced to private ownership, every
increase in the productive power of labor but increases rent — the
price that labor must pay for the opportunity to utilize its powers; and
thus all
the advantages gained by the march of progress go to the owners of land,
and wages do not increase.*
*Whatever be the fact as to wages, the reader will, of
course, recognize that higher money wages which merely balance higher living
costs, are not to be reckoned as real wage increases. H.G.B
The simple theory which I have outlined (if indeed it can be called a theory
which is but the recognition of the most obvious relations) explains this conjunction
of poverty with wealth, of low wages with high productive power, of degradation
amid enlightenment, of virtual slavery in political liberty.
- It harmonizes, as results flowing from a general and inexorable law,
facts otherwise most perplexing, and exhibits the sequence and relation
between
phenomena that without reference to it are diverse and contradictory.
- It explains why improvements which increase the productive power of
labor and capital increase the reward of neither.
- It explains what is commonly called the conflict between labor and capital,
while proving the real harmony of interest between them.
- It cuts the last inch of ground from under the fallacies of protection,
while showing why free trade fails to benefit permanently the working
classes.
- It explains why want increases with abundance, and wealth tends to greater
and greater aggregations.
- It explains the vice and misery which show themselves amid dense population,
without attributing to the laws of the All-Wise and All-Beneficent
defects which belong only to the shortsighted and selfish enactments of
men.
The truth is self-evident. ... read
the whole chapter
Henry George: The Wages of
Labor
What most strikingly shows how
opposed to Christianity is the
existing system of raising public revenue is its influence on thought.
Christianity teaches us that all
men are brethren; that their
true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It gives us, as the
golden rule of life, that we should do to others as we would have
others do to us. But, out of the system of taxing the products and
processes of labor, and out of its effects in increasing the price of
what some have to sell and others must buy, has grown the theory of
“Protection,” which denies this
gospel, which holds Christ ignorant of
political economy, and proclaims laws for the nation utterly at
variance with His teaching.
This theory
sanctifies national hatreds; it inculcates a
universal war of hostile tariffs; it teaches peoples that their
prosperity lies in imposing on the productions of other peoples
restrictions they do not wish imposed, on their own; and, instead of
the Christian doctrine of man’s brotherhood, it makes injury of
foreigners a civic virtue. ...
The vice of Socialism in all its
degrees is its want of
radicalism, of going to the root.
Its advocates generally teach the
preposterous and degrading
doctrine that slavery was the first condition of labor. It assumes
that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks
to abolish wages; it assumes that the natural result of competition is
to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish competition by
restrictions, prohibitions, and extensions of governing power. Thus,
mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming the state for
hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies that when not
worse are futile.
Associated though it is in many
places with democratic
aspiration, yet its essence is the same delusion to which the Children
of Israel yielded when, against the protest of their prophet, they
insisted on a king; the delusion that has everywhere corrupted
democracies and enthroned, tyrants – that power over the people can be
used for the benefit of the people; that there may be devised machinery
that through human agencies will secure for the management of
individual affairs more wisdom and mare virtue than the people
themselves possess. This superficiality and this tendency may be seen
in all the phases of Socialism.
Though not usually classed as
Socialists; both the Trade
Unionists and the Protectionists have the same essential character.
Take, for instance, Protectionism. The Protectionists seek by
governmental prohibitions or taxes on imports to regulate the industry
and control the exchanges of their country, so as they imagine, to
diversify home industries and prevent the competition of people of
other countries.
What support Protectionism has,
beyond the mere selfish desire
of sellers to compel buyers to pay them more than their goods are
worth, springs from such superficial ideas as that production, not
consumption, is the end of effort; that money is more valuable than
money’s worth, and to sell more profitable than to buy; and, above all,
from a desire to limit competition, springing from an unanalysing
recognition of the phenomena that necessarily follow when men who have
the need to labor are deprived by monopoly of access to the natural
and indispensable element of all labor.
Its
methods involve the idea that Governments can more wisely
direct the expenditure of labor and the investment of capital than can
laborers and capitalists, and that the men who control Governments
will use this power for the general good and not in their own
interests. They tend to multiply officials, restrict liberty, invent
crimes. They promote perjury, fraud, and corruption. And they would,
were the theory carried to its logical conclusion, destroy civilisation
and reduce mankind to savagery.... read
the whole article
Henry George: The Condition of
Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
Nor do we hesitate to say that this way of securing the equal right to the
bounty of the Creator and the exclusive right to the products of labor is
the way intended by God for raising public revenues. For we are not atheists,
who deny God; nor semi-atheists, who deny that he has any concern in politics
and legislation.
It is true as you say — a salutary truth too often forgotten — that “man
is older than the state, and he holds the right of providing for the life
of his body prior to the formation of any state.” Yet, as you too perceive,
it is also true that the state is in the divinely appointed order. For He
who foresaw all things and provided for all things, foresaw and provided
that with the increase of population and the development of industry the
organization of human society into states or governments would become both
expedient and necessary.
No sooner does the state arise than, as we all know, it needs revenues.
This need for revenues is small at first, while population is sparse, industry
rude and the functions of the state few and simple. But with growth of population
and advance of civilization the functions of the state increase and larger
and larger revenues are needed.
Now, He that made the world and placed man in it, He that pre-ordained civilization
as the means whereby man might rise to higher powers and become more and
more conscious of the works of his Creator, must have foreseen this increasing
need for state revenues and have made provision for it. That is to say: The
increasing need for public revenues with social advance, being a natural,
God-ordained need, there must be a right way of raising them — some
way that we can truly say is the way intended by God. It is clear that this
right way of raising public revenues must accord with the moral law.
Hence:
It must not take from individuals what rightfully belongs to individuals.
It must not give some an advantage over others, as by increasing the prices
of what some have to sell and others must buy.
It must not lead men into temptation, by requiring trivial oaths, by making
it profitable to lie, to swear falsely, to bribe or to take bribes.
It must not confuse the distinctions of right and wrong, and weaken the
sanctions of religion and the state by creating crimes that are not sins,
and punishing men for doing what in itself they have an undoubted right to
do.
It must not repress industry. It must not check commerce. It must not punish
thrift. It must offer no impediment to the largest production and the fairest
division of wealth.
Let me ask your Holiness to consider the taxes on the processes and products
of industry by which through the civilized world public revenues are collected — the
octroi duties that surround Italian cities with barriers; the monstrous
customs duties that hamper intercourse between so-called Christian states; the taxes
on occupations, on earnings, on investments, on the building of houses, on
the cultivation of fields, on industry and thrift in all forms. Can these
be the ways God has intended that governments should raise the means they
need? Have any of them the characteristics indispensable in any plan we can
deem a right one?
All these taxes violate the moral law. They take by force what belongs to
the individual alone; they give to the unscrupulous an advantage over the
scrupulous; they have the effect, nay are largely intended, to increase the
price of what some have to sell and others must buy; they corrupt government;
they make oaths a mockery; they shackle commerce; they fine industry and
thrift; they lessen the wealth that men might enjoy, and enrich some by impoverishing
others.
Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to Christianity is this system
of raising public revenues is its influence on thought.
Christianity teaches us that all men are brethren; that their true interests
are harmonious, not antagonistic. It gives us, as the golden rule of life,
that we should do to others as we would have others do to us. But
out of the system of taxing the products and processes of labor, and out
of its
effects in increasing the price of what some have to sell and others must
buy, has grown the theory of “protection,” which denies this
gospel, which holds Christ ignorant of political economy and proclaims laws
of national well-being utterly at variance with his teaching. This theory
sanctifies national hatreds; it inculcates a universal war of hostile tariffs;
it teaches peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the productions
of other peoples restrictions they do not wish imposed on their own; and
instead of the Christian doctrine of man’s brotherhood it makes injury
of foreigners a civic virtue.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.” Can anything more clearly
show that to tax the products and processes of industry is not the way God
intended public revenues to be raised?
But to consider what we propose — the raising of public revenues by
a single tax on the value of land irrespective of improvements — is
to see that in all respects this does conform to the moral law.
Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the value we propose to tax,
the value of land irrespective of improvements, does not come from any exertion
of labor or investment of capital on or in it — the values produced
in this way being values of improvement which we would exempt. The value
of land irrespective of improvement is the value that attaches to land by
reason of increasing population and social progress. This is a value that
always goes to the owner as owner, and never does and never can go to the
user; for if the user be a different person from the owner he must always
pay the owner for it in rent or in purchase-money; while if the user be also
the owner, it is as owner, not as user, that he receives it, and by selling
or renting the land he can, as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases
to be a user.
Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement cannot lessen the rewards
of industry, nor add to prices,* nor in any way take from the individual
what belongs to the individual. They can take only the value that attaches
to land by the growth of the community, and which therefore belongs to the
community as a whole.
* As to this point it may be well to add that all economists
are agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of improvement or use — or
what in the terminology of political economy is styled rent, a term distinguished
from the ordinary use of the word rent by being applied solely to payments
for the use of land itself — must be paid by the owner and cannot
be shifted by him on the user. To explain in another way the reason given
in the text: Price is not determined by the will of the seller or the
will of the buyer, but by the equation of demand and supply, and therefore
as to things constantly demanded and constantly produced rests at a point
determined by the cost of production — whatever tends to increase
the cost of bringing fresh quantities of such articles to the consumer
increasing price by checking supply, and whatever tends to reduce such
cost decreasing price by increasing supply. Thus taxes on wheat or tobacco
or cloth add to the price that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening
in the cost of producing steel which improved processes have made in
recent years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land has no
cost of production, since it is created by God, not produced by man.
Its price therefore is fixed —
1 (monopoly rent), where land is held in close monopoly,
by what the owners can extract from the users under penalty of deprivation
and consequently of starvation, and amounts to all that common labor
can earn on it beyond what is necessary to life;
2 (economic rent proper), where there is no special monopoly, by what
the particular land will yield to common labor over and above what may
be had by like expenditure and exertion on land having no special advantage
and for which no rent is paid; and,
3 (speculative rent, which is a species of monopoly rent, telling particularly
in selling price), by the expectation of future increase of value from
social growth and improvement, which expectation causing landowners to
withhold land at present prices has the same effect as combination.
Taxes on land values or economic rent can therefore never
be shifted by the landowner to the land-user, since they in no wise increase
the demand for land or enable landowners to check supply by withholding
land from use. Where rent depends on mere monopolization, a case I mention
because rent may in this way be demanded for the use of land even before
economic or natural rent arises, the taking by taxation of what the landowners
were able to extort from labor could not enable them to extort any more,
since laborers, if not left enough to live on, will die. So, in the case
of economic rent proper, to take from the landowners the premiums they
receive, would in no way increase the superiority of their land and the
demand for it. While, so far as price is affected by speculative rent,
to compel the landowners to pay taxes on the value of land whether they
were getting any income from it or not, would make it more difficult
for them to withhold land from use; and to tax the full value would not
merely destroy the power but the desire to do so.
To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes on the products
of labor, would therefore leave to the laborer the full produce of labor;
to the individual all that rightfully belongs to the individual. It would
impose no burden on industry, no check on commerce, no punishment on thrift;
it would secure the largest production and the fairest distribution of wealth,
by leaving men free to produce and to exchange as they please, without any
artificial enhancement of prices; and by taking for public purposes a value
that cannot be carried off, that cannot be hidden, that of all values is
most easily ascertained and most certainly and cheaply collected, it would
enormously lessen the number of officials, dispense with oaths, do away with
temptations to bribery and evasion, and abolish man-made crimes in themselves
innocent.
But, further: That God has intended the state to obtain the revenues it
needs by the taxation of land values is shown by the same order and degree
of evidence that shows that God has intended the milk of the mother for the
nourishment of the babe.
See how close is the analogy. In that primitive condition ere the need for
the state arises there are no land values. The products of labor have value,
but in the sparsity of population no value as yet attaches to land itself.
But as increasing density of population and increasing elaboration of industry
necessitate the organization of the state, with its need for revenues, value
begins to attach to land. As population still increases and industry grows
more elaborate, so the needs for public revenues increase. And at the same
time and from the same causes land values increase. The connection is invariable.
The value of things produced by labor tends to decline with social development,
since the larger scale of production and the improvement of processes tend
steadily to reduce their cost. But the value of land on which population
centers goes up and up. Take Rome or Paris or London or New York or Melbourne.
Consider the enormous value of land in such cities as compared with the value
of land in sparsely settled parts of the same countries. To what is this
due? Is it not due to the density and activity of the populations of those
cities — to the very causes that require great public expenditure for
streets, drains, public buildings, and all the many things needed for the
health, convenience and safety of such great cities? See how with the growth
of such cities the one thing that steadily increases in value is land; how
the opening of roads, the building of railways, the making of any public
improvement, adds to the value of land. Is it not clear that here is a natural
law — that is to say a tendency willed by the Creator? Can it mean
anything else than that He who ordained the state with its needs has in the
values which attach to land provided the means to meet those needs? ...
I have said enough to show your Holiness the injustice into which you fall
in classing us, who in seeking virtually to abolish private property in land
seek more fully to secure the true rights of property, with those whom you
speak of as socialists, who wish to make all property common. But you also
do injustice to the socialists.
There are many, it is true, who feeling bitterly the monstrous wrongs of
the present distribution of wealth are animated only by a blind hatred of
the rich and a fierce desire to destroy existing social adjustments. This
class is indeed only less dangerous than those who proclaim that no social
improvement is needed or is possible. But it is not fair to confound with
them those who, however mistakenly, propose definite schemes of remedy.
The socialists, as I understand them, and as the term has come to apply
to anything like a definite theory and not to be vaguely and improperly used
to include all who desire social improvement, do not, as you imply, seek
the abolition of all private property. Those who do this are properly called
communists. What the socialists seek is the state assumption of capital (in
which they vaguely and erroneously include land), or more properly speaking,
of large capitals, and state management and direction of at least the larger
operations of industry. In this way they hope to abolish interest, which
they regard as a wrong and an evil; to do away with the gains of exchangers,
speculators, contractors and middlemen, which they regard as waste; to do
away with the wage system and secure general cooperation; and to prevent
competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of the impoverishment
of labor. The more moderate of them, without going so far, go in the same
direction, and seek some remedy or palliation of the worst forms of poverty
by government regulation. The essential character of socialism is that it
looks to the extension of the functions of the state for the remedy of social
evils; that it would substitute regulation and direction for competition;
and intelligent control by organized society for the free play of individual
desire and effort.
Though not usually classed as socialists, both the trades-unionists
and the protectionists have the same essential character. The trades-unionists
seek the increase of wages, the reduction of working-hours and the general
improvement in the condition of wage-workers, by organizing them into guilds
or associations which shall fix the rates at which they will sell their labor;
shall deal as one body with employers in case of dispute; shall use on occasion
their necessary weapon, the strike; and shall accumulate funds for such purposes
and for the purpose of assisting members when on a strike, or (sometimes)
when out of employment. The protectionists seek by governmental prohibitions
or taxes on imports to regulate the industry and control the exchanges of
each country, so as, they imagine, to diversify home industries and prevent
the competition of people of other countries. ...
With the socialists we have some points of agreement, for we recognize fully
the social nature of man and believe that all monopolies should be held and
governed by the state. In these, and in directions where the general health,
knowledge, comfort and convenience might be improved, we, too, would extend
the functions of the state.
But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its degrees is its want
of radicalism, of going to the root. It takes its theories from those who
have sought to justify the impoverishment of the masses, and its advocates
generally teach the preposterous and degrading doctrine that slavery was
the first condition of labor. It assumes that the tendency of wages to a
minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the
natural result of competition is to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish
competition by restrictions, prohibitions and extensions of governing power.
Thus mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming the stone for hitting
it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies that when not worse are futile.
Associated though it is in many places with democratic aspiration, yet its
essence is the same delusion to which the children of Israel yielded when
against the protest of their prophet they insisted on a king; the delusion
that has everywhere corrupted democracies and enthroned tyrants — that
power over the people can be used for the benefit of the people; that there
may be devised machinery that through human agencies will secure for the
management of individual affairs more wisdom and more virtue than the people
themselves possess. This superficiality and this tendency may be seen in all the phases of socialism.
Take, for instance, protectionism. What support it has, beyond the
mere selfish desire of sellers to compel buyers to pay them more than their
goods
are worth, springs from such superficial ideas as that production, not consumption,
is the end of effort; that money is more valuable than money’s-worth,
and to sell more profitable than to buy; and above all from a desire to limit
competition, springing from an unanalyzing recognition of the phenomena that
necessarily follow when men who have the need to labor are deprived by monopoly
of access to the natural and indispensable element of all labor. Its methods
involve the idea that governments can more wisely direct the expenditure
of labor and the investment of capital than can laborers and capitalists,
and that the men who control governments will use this power for the general
good and not in their own interests. They tend to multiply officials, restrict
liberty, invent crimes. They promote perjury, fraud and corruption. And they
would, were the theory carried to its logical conclusion, destroy civilization
and reduce mankind to savagery.
Take trades-unionism. While within narrow lines trades-unionism promotes
the idea of the mutuality of interests, and often helps to raise courage
and further political education, and while it has enabled limited bodies
of working-men to improve somewhat their condition, and gain, as it were,
breathing-space, yet it takes no note of the general causes that determine
the conditions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a small part
of the great body by means that cannot help the rest. Aiming at the restriction
of competition — the limitation of the right to labor, its methods
are like those of an army, which even in a righteous cause are subversive
of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the strike, is destructive
in its nature, both to combatants and non-combatants, being a form of passive
war. To apply the principle of trades-unions to all industry, as some dream
of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste system.
Or take even such moderate measures as the limitation of working-hours and
of the labor of women and children. They are superficial in looking no further
than to the eagerness of men and women and little children to work unduly,
and in proposing forcibly to restrain overwork while utterly ignoring its
cause — the sting of poverty that forces human beings to it. And the
methods by which these restraints must be enforced, multiply officials, interfere
with personal liberty, tend to corruption, and are liable to abuse.
As for thoroughgoing socialism, which is the more to be honored as having
the courage of its convictions, it would carry these vices to full expression.
Jumping to conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails to see
that oppression does not come from the nature of capital, but from the wrong
that robs labor of capital by divorcing it from land, and that creates a
fictitious capital that is really capitalized monopoly. It fails to see that
it would be impossible for capital to oppress labor were labor free to the
natural material of production; that the wage system in itself springs from
mutual convenience, being a form of cooperation in which one of the parties
prefers a certain to a contingent result; and that what it calls the “iron
law of wages” is not the natural law of wages, but only the law of
wages in that unnatural condition in which men are made helpless by being
deprived of the materials for life and work. It fails to see that what it
mistakes for the evils of competition are really the evils of restricted
competition — are due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced
when deprived of land. While its methods, the organization of men into industrial
armies, the direction and control of all production and exchange by governmental
or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full expression, mean
Egyptian despotism.
We differ from the socialists in our diagnosis of the evil and we differ
from them as to remedies. We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the
natural handmaiden of labor; we look on interest in itself as natural and
just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden
that is not equally placed on the poor; we see no evil in competition, but
deem unrestricted competition to be as necessary to the health of the industrial
and social organism as the free circulation of the blood is to the health
of the bodily organism — to be the agency whereby the fullest cooperation
is to be secured. We would simply take for the community what belongs to
the community, the value that attaches to land by the growth of the community;
leave sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual; and,
treating necessary monopolies as functions of the state, abolish all restrictions
and prohibitions save those required for public health, safety, morals and
convenience.
But the fundamental difference — the difference I ask your Holiness
specially to note, is in this: socialism in all its phases looks on the evils
of our civilization as springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural
relations, which must be artificially organized or improved. In its idea
there devolves on the state the necessity of intelligently organizing the
industrial relations of men; the construction, as it were, of a great machine
whose complicated parts shall properly work together under the direction
of human intelligence. This is the reason why socialism tends toward atheism.
Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, it fails to recognize
God.
On the other hand, we who call ourselves single-tax men (a name which expresses
merely our practical propositions) see in the social and industrial relations
of men not a machine which requires construction, but an organism which needs
only to be suffered to grow. We see in the natural social and industrial
laws such harmony as we see in the adjustments of the human body, and that
as far transcends the power of man’s intelligence to order and direct
as it is beyond man’s intelligence to order and direct the vital movements
of his frame. We see in these social and industrial laws so close a relation
to the moral law as must spring from the same Authorship, and that proves
the moral law to be the sure guide of man where his intelligence would wander
and go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to remedy the evils of our
time is to do justice and give freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs
tend toward, nay are indeed the only beliefs consistent with a firm and reverent
faith in God, and with the recognition of his law as the supreme law which
men must follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid destruction. This
is the reason why to us political economy only serves to show the depth of
wisdom in the simple truths which common people heard gladly from the lips
of Him of whom it was said with wonder, “Is not this the Carpenter
of Nazareth?”
And it is because that in what we propose — the securing to all men
of equal natural opportunities for the exercise of their powers and the removal
of all legal restriction on the legitimate exercise of those powers — we
see the conformation of human law to the moral law, that we hold with confidence
that this is not merely the sufficient remedy for all the evils you so strikingly
portray, but that it is the only possible remedy. ... read
the whole letter
Henry George: In Liverpool: The Financial
Reform Meeting at the Liverpool Rotunda (1889)
It is a deep pleasure for me to be here tonight, the guest of the Liverpool
Financial Reform Association, and to speak at my last meeting in England with
my honored countrymen, [including] William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts.
(Cheers)
You are right, Mr. Garrison. The true republic, the American Republic that
we hope for and pray is not yet here. (Hear, hear) A poor thing is a republic
where the tramp jostles the millionaire, where liberty is mocked by a paternal
system of interference with human rights, where, under the pretext of protecting
labor, labor is robbed! (Cheers) And here, in the motherland, in the United
States, in Australia and New Zealand, we of the English tongue find the
same difficulties confronting us. Liberty is not yet here; but, thank God,
she is
coming. (Cheers) Not merely the American Republic, not merely the Republic
of the Southern Cross, not merely the Republic of Great Britain and Ireland
is it that we see in the future, but that great republic that some day
is to confederate the English speaking people everywhere (loud cheers) that
is to
bring a grander "Roman peace" to the world. (A voice: More than that.)
Aye, more than that — that is to bring civilization as much higher,
as much better than what we call a Christian civilization, as this is higher
and
better than barbarism. And already, in meetings such as this, it seems
to me that I feel an earnest [presentiment] of the coming time when we
of one blood
and one speech are also to be one. (Cheers) For the same principles, for
the same great cause that we stand in the United States we stand here.
And in a
little over a week from now I will be standing on an American platform
speaking to men whose hearts are beating in the same cause in which we
are engaged here.
(Cheers)
Our little local politics may differ; our greater politics are one and the
same. We have the same evils to redress, the same truth to propagate, the same
end to seek.
And that end, what is it but liberty? (Hear, hear) He who listens to the voice
of Freedom, she will lead and lead him on. Before I was born, before our friend
there was born, there was in a southern city of the United States a young printer
bearing the name William Lloyd Garrison. (Cheers) He saw around him the iniquity
of negro slavery. (Hear, hear) The voice of the oppressed cried to him and
would not let him rest, and he took up the cross. He became the great apostle
of human liberty, and today in American cities that once hooted and stoned
him there are now statues raised to William Lloyd Garrison.
He began as a protectionist. As he moved on he saw that liberty meant something
more than simply the abolition of chattel slavery. He saw that liberty also
meant, not merely the right to freely labor for oneself, but the right to freely
exchange one's production, and, from a protectionist, William Lloyd Garrison
became a free trader. (Cheers)
And now, when the first is gone, the second comes forward, to take one further
step to realize that for perfect freedom there must also be freedom in the
use of natural opportunities. (Hear, hear, and cheers)
We have come . . . to the same point by converging lines. Why is freedom
of trade good? Simply that trade — exchange — is but a mode of production.
Therefore, to secure full free trade we must also secure freedom to the natural
opportunities of production. (Hear, hear) Our production—what is it?
We produce from what? From land. All human production consists but in working
up the raw materials that we find in nature — consists simply in changing
in place, or in form, that matter which we call land. To free production there
must be no monopoly of the natural element. Even in our methods we agree primarily
on this essential point — that everyone ought to be free to exert
his labor, to retain or to exchange its fruits, unhampered by restrictions,
unvexed
by the tax gatherer. (Hear, hear) . . .
Chattel slavery, thank God, is abolished at last. Nowhere, where the American
flag flies, can one man be bought, or sold, or held by another. (Cheers) But
a great struggle still lies before us now. Chattel slavery is gone; industrial
slavery remains. The effort, the aim of the abolitionists of this time is to
abolish industrial slavery. (Cheers)
The free trade movement in England was a necessary step in this direction.
The men who took part in it did more than they knew. Striking at restrictions
in the form of protection, aiming at emancipating trade by reducing tariffs
to a minimum for revenue only, they aroused a spirit that yet goes further.
There sits, in the person of my friend, Mr. Briggs [Thomas Briggs], one
of the men of that time, one of the men who, not stopping, has always aimed
a
a larger freedom, one of the men who today hails what we in the United
States call the single tax movement, as the natural outcome and successor
of the movement
which Richard Cobden led.39 (A voice: "Three cheers for Mr. Briggs," and
cheers)
And here, in your Financial Reform Association, you have the society that
has best preserved the best spirit of that time, that has never cried "Hold!" [and]
that has always striven to move forward to a fuller and a brighter day.
(Hear, hear)
In the United States, carried away by the heat of the great struggle, we
allowed protection to build itself up. We have to now make the fight that
you have
partially won over here; but, in making that fight, we make the fight for
full and absolute free trade. I don't believe that protection can ever be
abolished
in the United States until a majority of the people have been brought to
see the absurdity and the wickedness of all tariffs, whether protective or
for
revenue only (hear, hear); have been brought to realize the deep truth
of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; have been led to see
what Mr.
Garrison has so eloquently said, that the interests of mankind are harmonious,
not antagonistic, that one nation cannot profit at the expense of another,
but that every people is benefited by the advance of other peoples — (cheers) — until
we shall aim at a free trade that will enable the citizen of England to
enter the ports of the United States as freely as today, the citizen of
Massachusetts
crosses into New York. (Cheers) ... read
the whole speech
Henry George: Justice
the Object -- Taxation the Means (1890)
Go over to Europe; travel
around for a while among the effete
monarchies of the old world, and what you see will make you
appreciate democracy. Then come home. At length you take a pilot.
There is the low-lying land upon the horizon — the land of the
free and the home of the brave — and if you are entering the port
of New York, as most Americans do, finally you will see that great
statue, presented by a citizen of the French republic — the statue
of Liberty holding aloft a light that talks to the world.
Just as you get to see that
statue clearly, Liberty enlightening
the world, you will be called down by a Customhouse officer to form
in line, men and women, and to call on God Almighty, maker of heaven
and earth, to bear witness that you have nothing dutiable in your
trunks or in your carpet sacks, or rolled up in your shawl straps;
and you take that oath. The United States of America compels you to.
But the United States of America don't leave you there. The very next
thing, another official steps up to demand your keys and to open your
box or package and to look through it for things dutiable, unless, as
may be, his eyes are stopped by a greenback. Well, now, everyone who
has made that visit does know that most passengers have things
dutiable; and I notice that the protectionists have them fully as
often as the free traders. I have never yet seen a consistent
protectionist. There may he protectionists who would not smuggle when
they get a chance, but I think they must be very, very few. Read the entire article
Henry George: The
Great Debate: Single Tax vs Social Democracy (1889)
Here is an example of Government
directing
production: under the plea of directing production, of controlling
exchange, you had a system called a protective tariff – we in
the States have it still. The wisdom of the people freely expressed
by means of manhood suffrage, endeavouring to so direct industry as
to benefit the whole people, and what has been the result? A system
of utter robbery and spoliation; a system that has given to men such
as Andrew Carnegie incomes of five millions of dollars per year, and
has driven our ships off the high seas; a system that has been used
by every corrupt influence to add to the wealth of men who are
willing to spend their money for corrupt purposes. (Hear, hear.)
Think of what would be the result if you were to apply that system to
all industry. (Applause.) You speak about organising an industrial
army; the organising of an army always means tyranny; it means that a
man must be put in the ranks as a machine, and must obey arbitrary
authority. Do you think that there is less tyranny because men claim
to act in the name and by the authority of the people than without
it? Not at all. Do you think that there is any virtue in any party,
or any men, or any system of Government attempting to do things for
the benefit of the whole? (“No.”) Why, we know that in the
United States there can be a tyranny of majorities just as bad as the
tyranny of despotism. ... Read the entire article
Henry George: Concentrations of
Wealth Harm America (excerpt
from Social Problems) (1883)
Sources of Great Wealth
An acquaintance of mine died in San Francisco
recently, leaving $4,000,000, which will go to heirs to be looked up in England.
I have known many men more industrious, more skilful, more temperate than
he -- men who did not or who will not leave a cent. This man did not get
his wealth by his industry, skill or temperance. He no more produced it than
did those lucky relations in England who may now do nothing for the rest
of their lives. He became rich by getting hold of a piece of land in the
early days, which, as San Francisco grew, became very valuable. His wealth
represented not what he had earned, but what the monopoly of this bit of
the earth's surface enabled him to appropriate of the earnings of others.
A man died in Pittsburgh, the other day,
leaving $3,000,000. He may or may not have been particularly industrious,
skilful and economical, but it was not by virtue of these qualities that
he got so rich. It was because he went to Washington and helped lobby through
a bill which, by way of "protecting American workmen against the pauper labor
of Europe," gave him the advantage of a sixty-per-cent, tariff. To the day
of his death he was a stanch protectionist, and said free trade would ruin
our "infant industries." Evidently the $3,000,000 which he was enabled to
lay by from his own little cherub of an "infant industry" did not represent
what he had added to production. It was the advantage given him by the tariff
that enabled him to scoop it up from other people's earnings.
"Beneath all political problems lies the social problem of the distribution
of wealth."
This element of monopoly, of appropriation
and spoliation will, when we come to analyze them, be found largely to account
for all great fortunes....
Take the great Vanderbilt fortune. The
first Vanderbilt was a boatman who earned money by hard work and saved it.
But it was not working and saving that enabled him to leave such an enormous
fortune. It was spoliation and monopoly. As soon as he got money enough he
used it as a club to extort from others their earnings. He ran off opposition
lines and monopolized routes of steamboat travel. Then he went into railroads,
pursuing the same tactics. The Vanderbilt fortune no more comes from working
and saving than did the fortune that Captain Kidd buried.
Or take the great Gould fortune. Mr. Gould
might have got his first little start by superior industry and superior self-denial.
But it is not that which has made him the master of a hundred millions. It
was by wrecking railroads, buying judges, corrupting legislatures, getting
up rings and pools and combinations to raise or depress stock values and
transportation rates.
So, like wise, of the great fortunes which
the Pacific railroads have created. They have been made by lobbying through
profligate donations of lands, bonds and subsidies, by the operations of
Credit Mobilier and Contract and Finance Companies, by monopolizing and gouging.
And so of fortunes made by such combinations as the Standard Oil Company,
the Bessemer Steel Ring, the Whisky Tax Ring, the Lucifer Match Ring, and
the various rings for the "protection of the American workman from the pauper
labor of Europe."
Or take the fortunes made out of successful
patents. Like that element in so many fortunes that comes from the increased
value of land, these result from monopoly, pure and simple. And though I
am not now discussing the expediency of patent laws, it may be observed,
in passing, that in the vast majority of cases the men who make fortunes
out of patents are not the men who make the inventions.
Through all great fortunes, and, in fact,
through nearly all acquisitions that in these days can fairly be termed fortunes,
these elements of monopoly, of spoliation, of gambling run. The head of one
of the largest manufacturing firms in the United States said to me recently, "It
is not on our ordinary business that we make our money; it is where we can
get a monopoly." And this, I think, is generally true.
The Evils of Monopolists
Consider the important part in building up fortunes which the increase
of land values has had, and is having, in the United States. This is, of course,
monopoly, pure and simple. When land increases in value it does not mean that
its owner has added to the general wealth. The owner may never have seen the
land or done aught to improve it. He may, and often does, live in a distant
city or in another country. Increase of land values simply means that the owners,
by virtue of their appropriation of something that existed before man was,
have the power of taking a larger share of the wealth produced by other people's
labor. Consider how much the monopolies created and the advantages given to
the unscrupulous by the tariff and by our system of internal taxation -- how
much the railroad (a business in its nature a monopoly), telegraph, gas, water
and other similar monopolies, have done to concentrate wealth; how special
rates, pools, combinations, corners, stock-watering and stock-gambling, the
destructive use of wealth in driving off or buying off opposition which the
public must finally pay for, and many other things which these will suggest,
have operated to build up large fortunes, and it will at least appear that
the unequal distribution of wealth is due in great measure to sheer spoliation;
that the reason why those who work hard get so little, while so many who work
little get so much, is, in very large measure, that the earnings of the one
class are, in one way or another, filched away from them to swell the incomes
of the other.
That individuals are constantly making
their way from the ranks of those who get less than their earnings to the
ranks of those who get more than their earnings, no more proves this state
of things right than the fact that merchant sailors were constantly becoming
pirates and participating in the profits of piracy, would prove that piracy
was right and that no effort should be made to suppress it.
I am not denouncing the rich, nor seeking,
by speaking of these things, to excite envy and hatred; but if we would get
a clear understanding of social problems, we must recognize the fact that
it is due to monopolies which we permit and create, to advantages which we
give one man over another, to methods of extortion sanctioned by law and
by public opinion, that some men are enabled to get so enormously rich while
others remain so miserably poor. If we look around us and note the elements
of monopoly, extortion and spoliation which go to the building up of all,
or nearly all, fortunes, we see on the one hand now disingenuous are those
who preach to us that there is nothing wrong in social relations and that
the inequalities in the distribution of wealth spring from the inequalities
of human nature; and on the other hand, we see how wild are those who talk
as though capital were a public enemy, and propose plans for arbitrarily
restricting the acquisition of wealth. Capital is a good; the capitalist
is a helper, if he is not also a monopolist. We can safely let any one get
as rich as he can if he will not despoil others in doing so.
There are deep wrongs in the present constitution
of society, but they are not wrongs inherent in the constitution of man nor
in those social laws which are as truly the laws of the Creator as are the
laws of the physical universe. They are wrongs resulting from bad adjustments
which it is within our power to amend. The ideal social state is not that
in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion
to his contribution to the general stock. And in such a social state there
would not be less incentive to exertion than now; there would be far more
incentive. Men will be more industrious and more moral, better workmen and
better citizens, if each takes his earnings and carries them home to his
family, than where they put their earnings in a "pot" and gamble for them
until some have far more than they could have earned, and others have little
or nothing. ... Read the entire article
Henry George: Progress & Poverty: The
Current Doctrine of Wages — Its Insufficiency
What gives to the fallacies of protection such a tenacious hold, in spite
of their evident inconsistencies and absurdities, is the idea that the sum
to be distributed in wages is in each community a fixed one, which the competition
of "foreign labor" must still further
subdivide. The same idea underlies most of the theories which aim at the
abolition of interest and the restriction of competition, as the means whereby
the share of the laborer in the general wealth can be increased; and it crops
out in every direction among those who are not thoughtful enough to have any
theories, as may be seen in the columns of newspapers and the debates of legislative
bodies.
And yet, widely accepted and deeply rooted as it is, it seems to me that this
theory does not tally with obvious facts. For, if wages depend upon the
ratio between the amount of labor seeking employment and the amount of capital
devoted to its employment, the relative scarcity or abundance of one factor
must mean the relative abundance or scarcity of the other. Thus, capital
must be relatively abundant where wages are high, and relatively scarce where
wages are low. Now, as the capital used in paying wages must largely consist
of the capital constantly seeking investment, the current rate of interest
must be the measure of its relative abundance or scarcity. So, if it be true
that wages depend upon the ratio between the amount of labor seeking employment
and the capital devoted to its employment, then high wages, the mark of the
relative scarcity of labor, must be accompanied by low interest, the mark
of the relative abundance of capital, and reversely, low wages must be accompanied
by high interest.
This is not the fact, but the contrary. Eliminating from interest the element
of insurance, and regarding only interest proper, or the return for the use
of capital, is it not a general truth that interest is high where and when
wages are high, and low where and when wages are low? Both wages and interest
have been higher in the United States than in England, in the Pacific than
in the Atlantic States. ... read
the entire chapter
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a
themed collection of
excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
WE should keep our own market for our
own producers, seems by many to be regarded as the same kind of
a proposition as, We should keep our
own pasture for our own cows; whereas, in truth, it is such a proposition
as, We should keep our own appetites
for our own cookery, or, We should
keep our own transportation for our own legs.— Protection
or Free Trade, Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib
THE protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny — the
plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave
owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves. British misrule in Ireland
is upheld on the ground that it is for the protection of the Irish. But, whether
under a monarchy or under a republic, is there an instance in the history of
the world in which the "protection" of the laboring masses has not meant their
oppression? The protection that those who have got the law-making power into
their hands have given labor, has at best always been the protection that man
gives to cattle — he protects them that he may use and eat them. — Protection
or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground econlib
IT is never intimated that the land-owner or the capitalist needs protection.
They, it is always assumed, can take care of themselves. It is only the poor
workingman who must be protected. What is labor that it should so need protection?
Is not labor the creator of capital, the producer of all wealth? Is it not the
men who labor that feed and clothe all others? Is it not true, as has been said,
that the three great orders of society are "workingmen, beggarmen, and thieves?" How,
then, does it come that workingmen alone need protection? — Protection
or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground econlib -|- abridged
WHAT should we think of human laws framed for the government of a country which
should compel each family to keep constantly on their guard against every other
family, to expend a large part of their time and labor in preventing exchanges
with their neighbors, and to seek their own prosperity by opposing the natural
efforts of other families to become prosperous? Yet the protective theory implies
that laws such as these have been imposed by the Creator upon the families of
men who tenant this earth. It implies that by virtue of social laws, as immutable
as the physical laws, each nation must stand jealously on guard against every
other nation and erect artificial obstacles to national intercourse.— Protection
or Free Trade, Chapter 4: Protection as a Universal Need econlib
TO attempt to make a nation prosperous by preventing it from buying from other
nations is as absurd as it would be to attempt to make a man prosperous by preventing
him from buying from other men. How this operates in the case of the individual
we can see from that practice which, since its application in the Irish land
agitation, has come to be called "boycotting." Captain Boycott, upon whom has
been thrust the unenviable fame of having his name turned into a verb, was in
fact "protected." He had a protective tariff of the most efficient kind built
around him by a neighborhood decree more effective than act of Parliament. No
one would sell him labor, no one would sell him milk or bread or meat or any
service or commodity whatever. But instead of growing prosperous, this much-protected
man had to fly from a place where his own market was thus reserved for his own
productions. What protectionists ask us to do to ourselves in reserving our home
market for home producers, is in kind what the Land Leaguers did to Captain Boycott.
They ask us to boycott ourselves. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib
WHEN not caused by artificial obstacles, any tendency in trade to take a certain
course is proof that it ought to take that course, and restrictions are harmful
because they restrict, and in proportion as they restrict. To assert that the
way for men to become healthy and strong is for them to force into their stomachs
what nature tries to reject, to regulate the play of their lungs by bandages,
or to control the circulation of their blood by ligatures, would be not a whit
more absurd than to assert that the way for nations to become rich is for them
to restrict the natural tendency to trade. — Protection or Free Trade,
Chapter 6: Trade - econlib
... go to "Gems from George"
Judge Samuel Seabury: An Address delivered
upon the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry George
WE are met to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry George.
We meet, therefore, in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving for the great life
which he devoted to the service of humanity. To very few of the children of
men is it given to act the part of a great teacher who makes an outstanding
contribution toward revealing the basic principles to which human society must
adhere if it is to walk in the way which leads to freedom. This Henry George
did, and in so doing he expressed himself with a clarity of thought and diction
which has rarely been surpassed.
The second principle to which I wish to refer is Henry George's advocacy
of freedom of trade among the nations — not free trade introduced overnight,
but freedom of trade as an end toward which the nations should move. When he
wrote his great work on "Protection or Free Trade," he demolished
the protectionist argument and in chapter after chapter he showed the absurdities
to which the protectionist principle led if carried to its logical conclusion.
But even he, penetrating as his vision was, could not foresee that mankind
was heading for a world order of economic nationalism and isolation, based
upon the principle of protection carried to its utmost extreme. And yet
that it is precisely the doctrine which is now currently accepted. If it
becomes
general, it can serve only to sow the seeds of destruction of that measure
of civilization which we now have and force a lowering of the standard
of living throughout the world.
There are two ways by which the people of one nation can acquire the property
or goods of the people of another nation. These are by war and by trade. There
are no other methods. The present tendency among civilized people to outlaw
trade must drive the states which prescribe such outlawry to acquire the property
and goods of other peoples by war. Early in man's struggle for existence the
resort to war was the common method adopted. With the advancement of civilization
men resorted to trade as a practical substitute for war. The masses of men
wish to trade with one another. The action of the states alone prevents them
from so doing. In prohibiting trade, the state gives an importance to territorial
boundaries which would not exist if freedom of trade existed. In accentuating
the importance of mere boundary disputes, rather than assuring the right of
peoples to trade with one another, the nations put the emphasis upon the precise
issue which is, itself, one of the most prolific causes of war.
All the great modern states are turning away from freedom of trade, and indeed,
from trade itself, and forbidding their people the right to earn their own
livelihood and to associate freely with one another in industry. In order to
accomplish this end they are compelled to regiment the lives of their people
under state bureaucracies and this can be accomplished only by a despotic state.
If the powers of the modern states are to be augmented by conferring upon them
the right to run all industry, despotism is inevitable. A dictator may, by
reducing the standard of living and regimenting the people, run all industry
within the state over which he rules, but a democracy, which, if it is to be
true to itself, must preserve individual initiative, can not do so without
transforming itself into a dictatorship. ... read the whole speech
|
To
share this page with a friend: right click, choose "send," and
add your comments.
|
|
Red
links have not been visited; .
Green
links are pages you've seen |
Essential Documents
pertinent to this theme:
|
|