Wealth and Want
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity.
Home Essential Documents Themes All Documents Authors Glossary Links Contact Us

 

George Bernard Shaw

Robert V. Andelson  The Earth is the Lord's
George Bernard Shaw, in a letter written in 1905 to Hamlin Garland, describes how, more than twenty years earlier, he had attended Henry George's first platform appearance in London. He knew at once, he said, that the speaker must be an American, for four reasons:
  • "Because he pronounced 'necessarily' . . . with the accent on the third syllable instead of the first;
  • because he was deliberately and intentionally oratorical, which is not customary among shy people like the English;
  • because he spoke of Liberty, Justice, Truth, Natural Law, and other strange eighteenth-century superstitions; and
  • because he explained with great simplicity and sincerity the views of the Creator, who had gone completely out of fashion in London in the previous decade and had not been heard of there since."   Read the whole article

George Bernard Shaw, from a letter read at a dinner commemorating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Progress and Poverty, and quoted in the New York Times (January 25, 1905):

"When I was thus swept into the great Socialist revival of 1883 I found that five-sixths of those who were swept in with me had been converted by Henry George. This fact would have been far more widely acknowledged had it not been that it was not possible for us to stop where Henry George stopped.

"What George did not teach you you are being taught now by your great trusts and combines, as to which I need only say that if you would take them over as National property as cheerfully as you took the copyrights of all my early books you would find them excellent institutions, quite in the path of progressive evolution, and by no means to be discouraged or left unregulated as if they were nobody's business but their own.

"It is a great pity that you all take America for granted because you were born in it. I, who have never crossed the Atlantic, and have taken nothing American for granted, find I know ten times as much about your country as you do yourselves: and my ambition is to repay my debt to Henry George by coming over some day and trying to do for your young men what Henry George did nearly a quarter of a century ago for me."

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:

Home
Top of page
Essential Documents
Themes
to email this page to a friend: right click, choose "send"
   
Wealth and Want
www.wealthandwant.com
   
... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society in which all can prosper