Concentration
of Wealth
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing
one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live,
we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material
progress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy
that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses
in every civilized
country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder
and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed;
that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom,
and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy. — Henry
George, Progress & Poverty (below)
Adams quote -- our generation ... next generation ... that our grandchildren
... - was that meant for everyone, or only the aristocracy, the landed
gentry?
Henry George: The Common Sense of
Taxation (1881 article)
To consider the nature of property of this kind is again to see a clear
distinction. That distinction is not, as the lawyers have it, between
movables and immovables, between personal property and real estate. The
true distinction is between property which is, and property which is
not, the result of human labor; or, to use the terms of political economy,
between land and wealth. For, in any precise use of the term, land is
not wealth, any more than labor is wealth. Land and labor are the factors
of production. Wealth is such result of their union as retains the capacity
of ministering to human desire. A lot and the house which stands upon
it are alike property, alike have a tangible value, and are alike classed
as real estate. But there are between them the most essential differences.
The one is the free gift of Nature, the other the result of human exertion;
the one exists from generation to generation, while men come and go;
the other is constantly tending to decay, and can only be preserved by
continual exertion. To the one, the right of exclusive possession, which
makes it individual property, can, like the right of property in slaves,
be traced to nothing but municipal law; to the other, the right of exclusive
property springs clearly from those natural relations which are among
the primary perceptions of the human mind. Nor are these mere abstract
distinctions. They are distinctions of the first importance in determining
what should and what should not be taxed.
For, keeping in mind the fact that all wealth is the result of human
exertion, it is clearly seen that, having in view the promotion of the
general prosperity, it is the height of absurdity to tax wealth for purposes
of revenue while there remains, unexhausted by taxation, any value attaching
to land. We may tax land values as much as we please, without in the
slightest degree lessening the amount of land, or the capabilities of
land, or the inducement to use land. But we cannot tax wealth without
lessening the inducement to the production of wealth, and decreasing
the amount of wealth. We might take the whole value of land in taxation,
so as to make the ownership of land worth nothing, and the land would
still remain, and be as useful as before. The effect would be to throw
land open to users free of price, and thus to increase its capabilities,
which are brought out by increased population. But impose anything like
such taxation upon wealth, and the inducement to the production of wealth
would be gone. Movable wealth would be hidden or carried off, immovable
wealth would be suffered to go to decay, and where was prosperity would
soon be the silence of desolation.
And the reason of this difference is clear. The possession of wealth
is the inducement to the exertion necessary to the production and maintenance
of wealth. Men do not work for the pleasure of working, but to get the
things their work will give them. And to tax the things that are produced
by exertion is to lessen the inducement to exertion. But over and above
the benefit to the possessor, which is the stimulating motive to the
production of wealth, there is a benefit to the community, for no matter
how selfish he may be, it is utterly impossible for any one to entirely
keep to himself the benefit of any desirable thing he may possess. These
diffused benefits when localized give value to land, and this may be
taxed without in any wise diminishing the incentive to production. ...
So with railroads everywhere. And so not alone with railroads, but with
all industrial enterprises. So long as we consider that community most
prosperous which increases most rapidly in wealth, so long is it the
height of absurdity for us to tax wealth in any of its beneficial forms.
We should tax what we want to repress, not what we want to encourage.
We should tax that which results from the general prosperity, not that
which conduces to it. It is the increase of population, the extension
of cultivation, the manufacture of goods, the building of houses and
ships and railroads, the accumulation of capital, and the growth of commerce
that add to the value of land — not the increase in the value of
land that induces the increase of population and increase of wealth.
It is not that the land of Manhattan Island is now worth hundreds of
millions where, in the time of the early Dutch settlers, it was only
worth dollars, that there are on it now so many more people, and so much
more wealth. It is because of the increase of population and the increase
of wealth that the value of the land has so much increased. Increase
of land values tends of itself to repel population and prevent improvement.
And thus the taxation of land values, unlike taxation of other property,
does not tend to prevent the increase of wealth, but rather to stimulate
it. It is the taking of the golden egg, not the choking of the goose
that lays it.
Every consideration of policy and ethics squares with this conclusion.
The tax upon land values is the most economically perfect of all taxes.
It does not raise prices; it maybe collected at least cost, and with
the utmost ease and certainty; it leaves in full strength all the springs
of production; and, above all, it consorts with the truest equality and
the highest justice. For, to take for the common purposes of
the community that value which results from the growth of the community,
and to free
industry and enterprise and thrift from burden and restraint, is to leave
to each that which he fairly earns, and to assert the first and most
comprehensive of equal rights — the equal right of all to the land
on which, and from which, all must live.
Thus it is that the scheme of taxation which conduces to the greatest
production is also that which conduces to the fairest distribution, and
that in the proper adjustment of taxation lies not merely the possibility
of enormously increasing the general wealth, but the solution of these
pressing social and political problems which spring from unnatural inequality
in the distribution of wealth.
"There is," says M. de Laveleye, in concluding that work in
which he shows that the first perceptions of mankind have everywhere
recognized a most vital distinction between property in land and property
which results from labor, — "there is in human affairs one
system which is the best; it is not that system which always exists,
otherwise why should we desire to change it; but it is that system which
should exist for the greatest good of humanity. God knows it, and wills
it; man's duty it is to discover and establish it." ... read
the whole article
Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's
Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)
d. Effect of Confiscating Rent to Private Use.
By giving Rent to individuals society ignores this most just law, 99
thereby creating social disorder and inviting social disease. Upon society
alone, therefore, and not upon divine Providence which has provided bountifully,
nor upon the disinherited poor, rests the responsibility for poverty
and fear of poverty.
99. "Whatever dispute arouses the passions of
men, the conflict is sure to rage, not so much as to the question
'Is it wise?' as to the question 'Is it right?'
"This tendency of popular discussions to take
an ethical form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human mind;
it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition of what is probably
the deepest truth we can grasp. That alone is wise which is just;
that alone is enduring which is right. In the narrow scale of individual
actions and individual life this truth may be often obscured, but
in the wider field of national life it everywhere stands out.
"I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test." — Progress
and Poverty, book vii, ch. i.
The reader who has been deceived into believing that
Mr. George's proposition is in any respect unjust, will find profit
in a perusal of the entire chapter from which the foregoing extract
is taken.
Let us try to trace the connection by means of a chart, beginning with
the white spaces on page 68. As before, the first-comers take possession
of the best land. But instead of leaving for others what they do not
themselves need for use, as in the previous illustrations, they appropriate
the whole space, using only part, but claiming ownership of the rest.
We may distinguish the used part with red color, and that which is appropriated
without use with blue. Thus: [chart]
But what motive is there for appropriating more of the space
than is used? Simply that the appropriators may secure the pecuniary
benefit
of future social growth. What will enable them to secure that? Our system
of confiscating Rent from the community that earns it, and giving it
to land-owners who, as such, earn nothing.100
100. It is reported from Iowa that a few years ago
a workman in that State saw a meteorite fall, and. securing possession
of it after much digging, he was offered $105 by a college for his "find." But
the owner of the land on which the meteorite fell claimed the money,
and the two went to law about it. After an appeal to the highest
court of the State, it was finally decided that neither by right
of discovery, nor by right of labor, could the workman have the money,
because the title to the meteorite was in the man who owned the land
upon which it fell.
Observe the effect now upon Rent and Wages. When other men come, instead
of finding half of the best land still common and free, as in the corresponding
chart on page 68, they find all of it owned, and are obliged either to
go upon poorer land or to buy or rent from owners of the best. How much
will they pay for the best? Not more than 1, if they want it for use
and not to hold for a higher price in the future, for that represents
the full difference between its productiveness and the productiveness
of the next best. But if the first-comers, reasoning that the next best
land will soon be scarce and theirs will then rise in value, refuse to
sell or to rent at that valuation, the newcomers must resort to land
of the second grade, though the best be as yet only partly used. Consequently
land of the first grade commands Rent before it otherwise would.
As the sellers' price, under these circumstances, is arbitrary it cannot
be stated in the chart; but the buyers' price is limited by the superiority
of the best land over that which can be had for nothing, and the chart
may be made to show it: [chart]
And now, owing to the success of the appropriators of the best land
in securing more than their fellows for the same expenditure of labor
force, a rush is made for unappropriated land. It is not to use it that
it is wanted, but to enable its appropriators to put Rent into their
own pockets as soon as growing demand for land makes it valuable.101
We may, for illustration, suppose that all the remainder of the second
space and the whole of the third are thus appropriated, and note the
effect: [chart]
At this point Rent does not increase nor Wages fall, because there is
no increased demand for land for use. The holding of inferior land for
higher prices, when demand for use is at a standstill, is like owning
lots in the moon — entertaining, perhaps, but not profitable. But
let more land be needed for use, and matters promptly assume a different
appearance. The new labor must either go to the space that yields but
1, or buy or rent from owners of better grades, or hire out. The effect
would be the same in any case. Nobody for the given expenditure of labor
force would get more than 1; the surplus of products would go to landowners
as Rent, either directly in rent payments, or indirectly through lower
Wages. Thus: [chart]
101. The text speaks of Rent only as a periodical
or continuous payment — what would be called "ground rent." But
actual or potential Rent may always be, and frequently is, capitalized
for the purpose of selling the right to enjoy it, and it is to selling
value that we usually refer when dealing in land.
Land which has the power of yielding Rent to its owner
will have a selling value, whether it be used or not, and whether
Rent is actually derived from it or not. This selling value will
be the capitalization of its present or prospective power of producing
Rent. In fact, much the larger proportion of laud that has a selling
value is wholly or partly unused, producing no Rent at all, or less
than it would if fully used. This condition is expressed in the chart
by the blue color.
"The capitalized value of land is the actuarial
'discounted' value of all the net incomes which it is likely to afford,
allowance being made on the one hand for all incidental expenses,
including those of collecting the rents, and on the other for its
mineral wealth, its capabilities of development for any kind of business,
and its advantages, material, social, and aesthetic, for the purposes
of residence." — Marshall's Prin., book vi, ch. ix, sec.
9.
"The value of land is commonly expressed as a
certain number of times the current money rental, or in other words,
a certain 'number of years' purchase' of that rental; and other things
being equal, it will be the higher the more important these direct
gratifications are, as well as the greater the chance that they and
the money income afforded by the land will rise." — Id.,
note.
"Value . . . means not utility, not any quality
inhering in the thing itself, but a quality which gives to the possession
of a thing the power of obtaining other things, in return for it
or for its use. . . Value in this sense — the usual sense — is
purely relative. It exists from and is measured by the power of obtaining
things for things by exchanging them. . . Utility is necessary to
value, for nothing can be valuable unless it has the quality of gratifying
some physical or mental desire of man, though it be but a fancy or
whim. But utility of itself does not give value. . . If we ask ourselves
the reason of . . . variations in . . . value . . . we see that things
having some form of utility or desirability, are valuable or not
valuable, as they are hard or easy to get. And if we ask further,
we may see that with most of the things that have value this difficulty
or ease of getting them, which determines value, depends on the amount
of labor which must be expended in producing them ; i.e., bringing
them into the place, form and condition in which they are desired.
. . Value is simply an expression of the labor required for the production
of such a thing. But there are some things as to which this is not
so clear. Land is not produced by labor, yet land, irrespective of
any improvements that labor has made on it, often has value. . .
Yet a little examination will show that such facts are but exemplifications
of the general principle, just as the rise of a balloon and the fall
of a stone both exemplify the universal law of gravitation. . . The
value of everything produced by labor, from a pound of chalk or a
paper of pins to the elaborate structure and appurtenances of a first-class
ocean steamer, is resolvable on analysis into an equivalent of the
labor required to produce such a thing in form and place; while the
value of things not produced by labor, but nevertheless susceptible
of ownership, is in the same way resolvable into an equivalent of
the labor which the ownership of such a thing enables the owner to
obtain or save." — Perplexed Philosopher, ch. v.
The figure 1 in parenthesis, as an item of Rent, indicates potential
Rent. Labor would give that much for the privilege of using the space,
but the owners hold out for better terms; therefore neither Rent nor
Wages is actually produced, though but for this both might be.
In this chart, notwithstanding that but little space is used, indicated
with red, Wages are reduced to the same low point by the mere appropriation
of space, indicated with blue, that they would reach if all the space
above the poorest were fully used. It thereby appears that under a system
which confiscates Rent to private uses, the demand for land for speculative
purposes becomes so great that Wages fall to a minimum long before they
would if land were appropriated only for use.
In illustrating the effect of confiscating Rent to private use we have
as yet ignored the element of social growth. Let us now assume as before
(page 73), that social growth increases the productive power of the given
expenditure of labor force to 100 when applied to the best land, 50 when
applied to the next best, 10 to the next, 3 to the next, and 1 to the
poorest. Labor would not be benefited now, as it appeared to be when
on page 73 we illustrated the appropriation of land for use only, although
much less land is actually used. The prizes which expectation of future
social growth dangles before men as the rewards of owning land, would
raise demand so as to make it more than ever difficult to get land. All
of the fourth grade would be taken up in expectation of future demand;
and "surplus labor" would be crowded out to the open space
that originally yielded nothing, but which in consequence of increased
labor power now yields as much as the poorest closed space originally
yielded, namely, 1 to the given expenditure of labor force.102 Wages
would then be reduced to the present productiveness of the open space.
Thus: [chart]
102. The paradise to which the youth of our country
have so long been directed in the advice, "Go West, young man,
go West," is truthfully described in "Progress and Poverty," book
iv, ch. iv, as follows :
"The man who sets out from the eastern seaboard
in search of the margin of cultivation, where he may obtain land
without paying rent, must, like the man who swam the river to get
a drink, pass for long distances through half-titled farms, and
traverse vast areas of virgin soil, before he reaches the point
where land can be had free of rent — i.e., by homestead entry
or preemption."
If we assume that 1 for the given expenditure of labor force is the
least that labor can take while exerting the same force, the downward
movement of Wages will be here held in equilibrium. They cannot fall
below 1; but neither can they rise above it, no matter how much productive
power may increase, so long as it pays to hold land for higher values.
Some laborers would continually be pushed back to land which increased
productive power would have brought up in productiveness from 0 to 1,
and by perpetual competition for work would so regulate the labor market
that the given expenditure of labor force, however much it produced,
could nowhere secure more than 1 in Wages.103 And this tendency would
persist until some labor was forced upon land which, despite increase
in productive power, would not yield the accustomed living without increase
of labor force. Competition for work would then compel all laborers to
increase their expenditure of labor force, and to do it over and over
again as progress went on and lower and lower grades of land were monopolized,
until human endurance could go no further.104 Either that, or they would
be obliged to adapt themselves to a lower scale of living.105
103. Henry Fawcett, in his work on "Political
Economy," book ii, ch. iii, observes with reference to improvements
in agricultural implements which diminish the expense of cultivation,
that they do not increase the profits of the farmer or the wages
of his laborers, but that "the landlord will receive in addition
to the rent already paid to him, all that is saved in the expense
of cultivation." This is true not alone of improvements in agriculture,
but also of improvements in all other branches of industry.
104. "The cause which limits speculation in commodities,
the tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional supplies,
cannot limit the speculative advance in land values, as land is a
fixed quantity, which human agency can neither increase nor diminish;
but there is nevertheless a limit to the price of land, in the minimum
required by labor and capital as the condition of engaging in production.
If it were possible to continuously reduce wages until zero were
reached, it would be possible to continuously increase rent until
it swallowed up the whole produce. But as wages cannot be permanently
reduced below the point at which laborers will consent to work and
reproduce, nor interest below the point at which capital will be
devoted to production, there is a limit which restrains the speculative
advance of rent. Hence, speculation cannot have the same scope to
advance rent in countries where wages and interest are already near
the minimum, as in countries where they are considerably above it.
Yet that there is in all progressive countries a constant tendency
in the speculative advance of rent to overpass the limit where production
would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring seasons of industrial
paralysis." — Progress and Poverty, book iv, ch. iv.
105. As Puck once put it, "the man who makes
two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, must not be
surprised when ordered to 'keep off the grass.' "
They in fact do both, and the incidental disturbances of general readjustment
are what we call "hard times." 106 These culminate in forcing
unused land into the market, thereby reducing Rent and reviving industry.
Thus increase of labor force, a lowering of the scale of living, and
depression of Rent, co-operate to bring on what we call "good times." But
no sooner do "good times" return than renewed demands for land
set in, Rent rises again, Wages fall again, and "hard times" duly
reappear. The end of every period of "hard times" finds Rent
higher and Wages lower than at the end of the previous period.107
106. "That a speculative advance in rent or land
values invariably precedes each of these seasons of industrial depression
is everywhere clear. That they bear to each other the relation of
cause and effect, is obvious to whoever considers the necessary relation
between land and labor." — Progress and Poverty, book
v, ch. i.
107. What are called "good times" reach
a point at which an upward land market sets in. From that point there
is a downward tendency of wages (or a rise in the cost of living,
which is the same thing) in all departments of labor and with all
grades of laborers. This tendency continues until the fictitious
values of land give way. So long as the tendency is felt only by
that class which is hired for wages, it is poverty merely; when the
same tendency is felt by the class of labor that is distinguished
as "the business interests of the country," it is "hard
times." And "hard times" are periodical because land
values, by falling, allow "good times" to set it, and by
rising with "good times" bring "hard times" on
again. The effect of "hard times" may be overcome, without
much, if any, fall in land values, by sufficient increase in productive
power to overtake the fictitious value of land.
The dishonest and disorderly system under which society confiscates
Rent from common to individual uses, produces this result. That maladjustment
is the fundamental cause of poverty. And progress, so long as the maladjustment
continues, instead of tending to remove poverty as naturally it should,
actually generates and intensifies it. Poverty persists with increase
of productive power because land values, when Rent is privately appropriated,
tend to even greater increase. There can be but one outcome if this continues:
for individuals suffering and degradation, and for society destruction.
...
Q41. Why does land tend to concentrate in the hands of the few?
A. Because material progress tends to increase its value, and under existing
conditions valuable things tend to concentrate in the hands of the few. ... read
the book
John Dewey: Steps to Economic Recovery
I do not claim that George's remedy is a panacea that will cure by itself
all our ailments. But I do claim that we cannot get rid of our basic troubles
without it. I would make exactly the same concession and same claim that
Henry George himself made:
"I do not say that in the recognition of the equal and unalienable
right of each human being to the natural elements from which life must
be supported and wants satisfied, lies the solution of all social problems.
I fully recognize that even after we do this, much will remain to do.
We might recognize the equal right to land, and yet tyranny and spoilation
be continued. But whatever else we do, as along as we fail to recognize
the equal right to the elements of nature, nothing will avail to remedy
that unnatural inequality in the distribution of wealth which is fraught
with so much evil and danger. Reform as we may, until we make this fundamental
reform, our material progress can but tend to differentiate our people
into the monstrously rich and frightfully poor. Whatever be the increase
of wealth, the masses will still be ground toward the point of bare subsistence — we
must still have our great criminal classes, our paupers and our tramps,
men and women driven to degradation and desperation from inability to
make an honest living." ... read
the whole speech
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty, Chapter
4: Land Speculation Causes Reduced Wages
Whether we formulate it as an extension of the margin of production, or
as a carrying of the rent line beyond the margin of production, the influence
of speculation in land in increasing rent is a great fact which cannot be
ignored in any complete theory of the distribution of wealth in progressive
countries. It is the force, evolved by material progress, which tends constantly
to increase rent in a greater ratio than progress increases production, and
thus constantly tends, as material progress goes on and productive power
increases, to reduce wages, not merely relatively, but absolutely. ... read the whole chapter
In all our long investigation we have been advancing to this simple
truth: That as land is necessary to the exertion of labor in the
production of wealth, to command the land which is necessary to labor,
is to command all the fruits of labor save enough to enable labor
to exist. ...
... For land is the habitation of man, the
storehouse upon which he must draw for all his needs, the material to which
his labor must
be applied for the supply of all his desires; for even the
products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the sun enjoyed, or any
of the forces of nature utilized, without the use of land or
its
products. On the land we are born, from it we live, to it we
return again — children of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass
or the flower of the field. Take away from man all that belongs
to land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material progress cannot
rid us of our dependence upon land; it can but add to the power
of producing wealth from land; and hence, when land is monopolized,
it might go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving
the condition of those who have but their labor. It can but
add to the value of land and the power which its possession gives. Everywhere,
in all times, among all peoples, the possession of land is
the base
of aristocracy, the foundation of great fortunes, the source
of power. ... read the whole
chapter
But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a transference
of all public burdens to a tax upon the value of land cannot be fully
appreciated until we consider the effect upon the distribution of
wealth.
Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth which
appears in all civilized countries, with a constant tendency to greater
and greater inequality as material progress goes on, we have found
it in the fact that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land,
now in private hands, gives a greater and greater power of appropriating
the wealth produced by labor and capital.
Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct and
indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, would be, as far as
it went, to counteract this tendency to inequality, and, if it went
so far as to take in taxation the whole of rent, the cause of inequality
would be totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality,
as now, would then promote equality. Labor and capital would then
receive the whole produce, minus that portion taken by the state
in the taxation of land values, which, being applied to public purposes,
would be equally distributed in public benefits.
That is to say, the wealth produced in every community would be
divided into two portions.
-
One part would be distributed in wages and interest between
individual producers, according to the part each had taken in the
work of production;
-
the other part would go to the community as a whole, to be distributed
in public benefits to all its members.
In this all would share equally — the weak with the strong,
young children and decrepit old men, the maimed, the halt, and the
blind, as well as the vigorous. And justly so — for while
one part represents the result of individual effort in production,
the
other represents the increased power with which the community
as a whole aids the individual.
Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were rent taken
by the community for common purposes the very cause which now tends
to produce inequality as material progress goes on would then tend
to produce greater and greater equality. ... read
the whole chapter
When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the value of
land, all landholders are likely to take the alarm, and there
will not be wanting appeals to the fears of small farm and homestead
owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob them
of their hard-earned property. But a moment's reflection will
show that this proposition should commend itself to all whose
interests as landholders do not largely exceed their interests
as laborers or capitalists, or both. And further consideration
will show that though the large landholders may lose relatively,
yet even in their case there will be an absolute gain. For, the
increase in production will be so great that labor and capital
will gain very much more than will be lost to private landownership,
while in these gains, and in the greater ones involved in a more
healthy social condition, the whole community, including the
landowners themselves, will share.
-
It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose will
greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether of hand
or of head -- laborers, operatives, mechanics, clerks, professional
men of all sorts.
-
It is manifest, also, that it will benefit all those who
live partly by wages and partly by the earnings of their capital
-- storekeepers, merchants, manufacturers, employing or undertaking
producers and exchangers of all sorts from the peddler or drayman
to the railroad or steamship owner -- and
-
it is likewise manifest that it will increase the incomes
of those whose incomes are drawn from the earnings of capital.
Take, now, the case of the homestead owner -- the mechanic,
storekeeper, or professional man who has secured himself a house
and lot, where he lives, and which he contemplates with satisfaction
as a place from which his family cannot be ejected in case of
his death. He will not be injured; on the contrary, he will be
the gainer. ...
... In short, the working farmer is both a laborer and a capitalist,
as well as a landowner, and it is by his labor and capital that
his living is made. His loss would be nominal; his gain would
be real and great. In varying degrees is this true of all landholders.
Many landholders are laborers of one sort or another. This measure
would make no one poorer but such as could be made a great deal
poorer without being really hurt. It would cut down great fortunes,
but it would impoverish no one.
Wealth would not only be enormously increased; it would be equally
distributed. I do not mean that each individual would get the
same amount of wealth. That would not be equal distribution,
so long as different individuals have different powers and different
desires. But I mean that wealth would be distributed in accordance
with the degree in which the industry, skill, knowledge, or prudence
of each contributed to the common stock. The great cause which
concentrates wealth in the hands of those who do not produce,
and takes it from the hands of those who do, would be gone. The
inequalities that continued to exist would be those of nature,
not the artificial inequalities produced by the denial of natural
law. The nonproducer would no longer roll in luxury while the
producer got but the barest necessities of animal existence.
... read the whole
chapter
To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all classes
leisure, and comfort, and independence, the decencies and
refinements of life, the opportunities of mental and moral
development, would be like turning water into a desert. The
sterile waste would clothe itself with verdure, and the barren
places where life seemed banned would ere long be dappled
with the shade of trees and musical with the song of birds.
Talents now hidden, virtues unsuspected, would come forth
to make human life richer, fuller, happier, nobler. For
-
in these round men who are stuck into three-cornered
holes, and three-cornered men who are jammed into round
holes;
-
in these men who are wasting their energies in the scramble
to be rich;
-
in these who in factories are turned into machines,
or are chained by necessity to bench or plow;
-
in these children who are growing up in squalor, and
vice, and ignorance, are powers of the highest order, talents
the most splendid.
They need but the opportunity to bring them forth.
Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave
that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the picture;
its colors grow too bright for words to paint.
-
Consider the moral elevation, the intellectual activity,
the social life.
-
Consider how by a thousand actions and interactions
the members of every community are linked together, and
how in the present condition of things even the fortunate
few who stand upon the apex of the social pyramid must
suffer, though they know it not, from the want, ignorance,
and degradation that are underneath.
-
Consider these things and then say whether
the change I propose would not be for the benefit of every one — even
the greatest landholder? ... read
the whole chapter
The truth to which we were led in the politico-economic
branch of our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise
and fall of nations and the growth and decay of civilizations,
and it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of
relation and sequence that we denominate moral perceptions.
Thus are given to our conclusions the greatest certitude
and highest sanction.
This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It
shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more
apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents
of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress
to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on
the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow
greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism
by the road every previous civilization has trod. But
it also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural
laws; that they spring solely from social maladjustments
which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their
cause we shall be giving an enormous impetus to progress.
The poverty which in the midst of abundance
pinches and embrutes men, and all the manifold
evils which flow
from it, spring from a denial of justice. In
permitting the monopolization of the opportunities which nature
freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental
law of justice — for, so far as we can
see, when we view things upon a large scale,
justice seems to be
the supreme law of the universe. But
by sweeping away this injustice and asserting
the
rights of all men to
natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves
to the law —
-
we shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality
in the distribution of wealth and power;
-
we shall abolish poverty;
-
tame the ruthless passions of greed;
-
dry up the springs of vice and misery;
-
light in dark places the lamp of knowledge;
-
give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse to
discovery;
-
substitute political strength for political weakness;
and
-
make tyranny and anarchy impossible.
The reform I have proposed accords with all
that is politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the
qualities of a true reform, for it will make all
other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter
and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration
of Independence — the "self-evident" truth
that is the heart and soul of the Declaration —"That
all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"
These rights are denied when the equal right
to land — on
which and by which men alone can live — is
denied. Equality of political rights will not compensate for
the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature.
Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied,
becomes, as population increases and invention goes on,
merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation
wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. And so
-
there come beggars in our streets and tramps on
our roads; and
-
poverty enslaves men who we boast are political
sovereigns; and
-
want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten;
and
-
citizens vote as their masters dictate; and
-
the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman;
and
-
gold weighs in the scales of justice; and
-
in high places sit those who do not pay
to civic virtue even the compliment of hypocrisy; and
-
the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong
already bend under an increasing strain.
We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her
statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully
trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands.
She will have no half service!
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not
to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and
Justice is the natural law — the law of
health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity
and co-operation.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished
her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges
and given men the ballot, who think of her as
having no further relations to the everyday affairs of
life, have not seen her real grandeur — to them the poets
who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and
her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of
light; as his beams not merely pierce the clouds,
but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth
from what would otherwise be a cold and inert
mass all the infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty
to mankind. It is not for an abstraction that
men have toiled and died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty
have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty
have suffered.
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth,
knowledge, invention, national strength, and national
independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty
is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. ...
Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun
of Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath
she called forth. ...
In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious
forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On
the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty
calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must
trust
her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will
not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is
not enough that they should be theoretically equal before
the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of
the opportunities and means of life; they must stand
on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature.
Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this,
or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress
has evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This
is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries.
Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social
structure cannot stand.
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of
justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which
and from
which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen
in a degree which increases as material progress goes
on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do
not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized
country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting
a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which
has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism
out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic
institutions into anarchy.
It is this that turns the blessings of material
progress into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into
noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills
prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes
them with greed; that robs women of the grace and beauty
of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children
the joy and innocence of life's morning.
Civilization so based cannot continue. The
eternal laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify,
and the witness that is in every soul answers,
that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence,
something more august than Charity — it is Justice
herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice
that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice
that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we
ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall
we avert
the decrees of immutable law by raising churches
when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?
Though it may take the language of prayer, it
is blasphemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees
of Providence the suffering and brutishness that come
of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father
and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and
crime of our great cities. We degrade
the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. A merciful
man
would have better ordered the world; a just man
would crush with his foot such an ulcerous ant-hill!
It is
not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for
the vice and misery that fester amid our civilization.
The Creator showers upon us his gifts — more
than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for
food, we tread them in the mire — tread them
in the mire, while we tear and rend each other!
In the very centers of our civilization today
are want and suffering enough to make sick at heart
whoever does not close his eyes and steel his nerves.
Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve
it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at
the behest with which the universe sprang into being
there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue
fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every
blade of grass that now grows two should spring up,
and the seed that now increases fiftyfold should increase
a hundredfold! Would poverty be abated or want relieved?
Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would
be but temporary. The new powers streaming through
the material universe could be utilized only through
land.
This is not merely a deduction of political economy;
it is a fact of experience. We know it because
we have seen it. Within our own times, under
our very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in
all, and through all; that Power of which the whole universe
is but the manifestation; that Power which maketh all
things, and without which is not anything made that is
made, has increased the bounty which men may enjoy, as
truly as though the fertility of nature had been increased.
-
Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed
steam for the service of mankind.
-
To the inner ear of another was whispered the secret
that compels the lightning to bear a message round
the globe.
-
In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed;
-
in every department of industry have arisen arms
of iron and fingers of steel, whose effect upon the
production of wealth has been precisely the same as
an increase in the fertility of nature.
What has been the result? Simply that landowners
get all the gain.
Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may
be thus misappropriated with impunity? Is it a
light thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings while
greed rolls in wealth — that the many should
want while the few are surfeited? Turn
to history, and on every page may be read the lesson
that
such wrong never goes unpunished; that the Nemesis
that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps!
Look around today. Can this state of things continue?
May
we even say, "After us the deluge!" Nay;
the pillars of the State are trembling even now,
and the very foundations of society begin to quiver
with
pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle
that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin,
is near
at hand, if it be not already begun.
The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity,
and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered
the world that will either compel us to a higher plane
or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization
after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. ...
-
We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing
them to tramp.
-
We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our
public schools and then refusing them the right to
earn an honest living.
-
We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights
of man and then denying the inalienable right to the
bounty of the Creator.
Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment,
and elemental forces gather for the strife!
But if, while there is yet time, we turn to
Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow
her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the
forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think
of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of
knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities
of which the wondrous inventions of this century give
us but a hint.
-
-
with greed changed to noble passions;
-
with the fraternity that is born of equality taking
the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men
against each other;
-
with mental power loosed by conditions that give
to the humblest comfort and leisure; and
-
who shall measure the heights to which our civilization
may soar?
Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age
of which poets have sung and high-raised seers
have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which has
always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor.
It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed
in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity — the
City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper
and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the
Prince of
Peace! ... read
the whole chapter
Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come
(1889 speech)
If Adam, when he got out of
Eden, had sat down and commenced to
pray, he might have prayed till this time without getting anything to
eat unless he went to work for it. Yet food is God’s bounty. He
does not bring meat and vegetables all prepared. What He gives are
the opportunities of producing these things — of bringing them
forth by labour. His mandate is — it is written in the Holy
Word, it is graven on every fact in nature — that by labour we
shall bring forth these things. Nature gives to labour and to nothing
else.
What God gives are the natural
elements that are indispensable
to labour. He gives them, not to one, not to some, not to one
generation, but to all. They are His gifts, His bounty to the whole
human race. And yet in all our civilised countries what do we see?
That a few people have appropriated these bounties, claiming them as
theirs alone, while the great majority have no legal right to apply
their labour to the reservoirs of Nature and draw from the
Creator’s bounty.
Thus it
happens that all over the civilised world that class
that is called peculiarly ‘the labouring class’ is the poor
class, and that people who do no labour, who pride themselves on
never having done honest labour, and on being descended from fathers
and grandfathers who never did a stroke of honest labour in their
lives, revel in a superabundance of the things that labour brings
forth. ... Read the whole speech
Henry George: The
Land Question (1881)
IMAGINE an island girt with ocean; imagine a little world swimming in space.
Put on it, in imagination, human beings. Let them divide the land, share
and share alike, as individual property. At first, while population is sparse
and industrial processes rude and primitive, this will work well enough.
Turn away the eyes of the mind for a moment, let time pass, and look again.
Some families will have died out, some have greatly multiplied; on the whole,
population will have largely increased, and even supposing there have been
no important inventions or improvements in the productive arts, the increase
in population, by causing the division of labor, will have made industry
more complex. During this time some of these people will have been careless,
generous, improvident; some will have been thrifty and grasping. Some of
them will have devoted much of their powers to thinking of how they themselves
and the things they see around them came to be, to inquiries and speculations
as to what there is in the universe beyond their little island or their little
world, to making poems, painting pictures, or writing books; to noting the
differences in rocks and trees and shrubs and grasses; to classifying beasts
and birds and fishes and insects – to the doing, in short, of all the
many things which add so largely to the sum of human knowledge and human
happiness, without much or any gain of wealth to the doer. Others again will
have devoted all their energies to the extending of their possessions. What,
then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated as private property?
Clearly, we shall see that the primitive equality has given way to inequality.
Some will have very much more than one of the original shares into which
the land was divided; very many will have no land at all. Suppose that, in
all things save this, our little island or our little world is Utopia – that
there are no wars or robberies; that the government is absolutely pure and
taxes nominal; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a currency; imagine,
if you can imagine such a world or island, that interest is utterly abolished;
yet inequality in the ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual
slavery.
For the people we have supposed are human beings – that is to say,
in their physical natures at least, they are animals who can live only on
land and by the aid of the products of land. They may make machines which
will enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the air, but to
build and equip these machines they must have land and the products of land,
and must constantly come back to land. Therefore those who own the land must
be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come to own all the land,
he is their absolute master even to life or death. If they can live on the
land only on his terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without
land they cannot live. They are his absolute slaves, and so long as his ownership
is acknowledged, if they want to live, they must do in everything as he wills.
If, however, the concentration of landownership has not gone so far as to
make one or a very few men the owners of all the land – if there are
still so many landowners that there is competition between them as well as
between those who have only their labor – then the terms on which these
non-landholders can live will seem more like free contract. But it will not
be free contract. Land can yield no wealth without the application of labor;
labor can produce no wealth without land. These are the two equally necessary
factors of production. Yet, to say that they are equally necessary factors
of production is not to say that, in the making of contracts as to how the
results of production are divided, the possessors of these two meet on equal
terms. For the nature of these two factors
is very different. Land is a natural element; the human being must have his
stomach filled every few hours. Land can exist without labor, but labor cannot
exist without land. If I own a piece of land, I can let it lie idle
for a year or for years, and it will eat nothing. But the laborer must eat every day, and his family
must eat. And so, in the making of terms between them, the landowner has
an immense advantage over the laborer. It is on the side of the laborer that
the intense pressure of competition comes, for in his case it is competition
urged by hunger. And, further than this: As population increases,
as the competition for the use of land becomes more and more intense, so
are the owners of land enabled to get for the use of their land a larger
and larger part of the wealth which labor exerted upon it produces. That
is to say, the value of land steadily rises. Now, this steady rise in the
value of land brings about a confident expectation of future increase of
value, which produces among landowners all the effects of a combination to
hold for higher prices. Thus there is a constant tendency to force mere laborers
to take less and less or to give more and more (put it which way you please,
it amounts to the same thing) of the products of their work for the opportunity
to work. And thus, in the very nature of things, we should see on our little
island or our little world that, after a time had passed, some of the people
would be able to take and enjoy a superabundance of all the fruits of labor
without doing any labor at all, while others would be forced to work the
livelong day for a pitiful living.
But let us introduce another element into the supposition. Let us
suppose great discoveries and inventions – such as the steam-engine,
the power-loom, the Bessemer process, the reaping-machine, and the thousand
and one labor-saving
devices that are such a marked feature of our era. What would be the result?
Manifestly, the effect of all such discoveries and inventions is
to increase the power of labor in producing wealth – to enable the same amount
of wealth to be produced by less labor, or a greater amount with the same
labor. But none of them lessen, or can lessen the necessity for land. Until
we can discover some way of making something out of nothing – and that
is so far beyond our powers as to be absolutely unthinkable – there
is no possible discovery or invention which can lessen the dependence of
labor upon land. And, this being the case, the effect of these labor-saving
devices, land being the private property of some, would simply be to increase
the proportion of the wealth produced that landowners could demand for the
use of their land. The ultimate effect of these discoveries and inventions
would be not to benefit the laborer, but to make him more dependent.
And, since we are imagining conditions, imagine laborsaving inventions to
go to the farthest imaginable point, that is to say, to perfection. What
then? Why then, the necessity for labor being done away with, all the wealth
that the land could produce would go entire to the landowners. None of it
whatever could be claimed by any one else. For the laborers there would be
no use at all. If they continued to exist, it would be merely as paupers
on the bounty of the landowners! ... read the whole article
Henry George: The
Land Question (1881)
I doubt not that whichever way a
man may turn to inquire of
Nature, he will come upon adjustments which will arouse not merely
his wonder, but his gratitude. Yet what has most impressed me with
the feeling that the laws of Nature are the laws of beneficent
intelligence is what I see of the social possibilities involved in
the law of rent. Rent (4)
springs from natural causes. It arises, as society develops, from the
differences in natural opportunities and the differences in the
distribution of population. It increases with the division of labor,
with the advance of the arts, with the progress of invention. And
thus, by virtue of a law impressed upon the very nature of things,
has the Creator provided that the natural advance of mankind shall be
an advance toward equality, an advance toward cooperation, an advance
toward a social state in which not even the weakest need be crowded
to the wall, in which even for the unfortunate and the cripple there
may be ample provision. For this revenue, which arises from the
common property, which represents not the creation of value by the
individual, but the creation by the community as a whole, which
increases just as society develops, affords a common fund, which,
properly used, tends constantly to equalize conditions, to open the
largest opportunities for all, and utterly to banish want or the fear
of want.
(4) I, of course, use the
word in its
economic, not in its common sense, meaning by it what is commonly
called ground-rent.
The squalid poverty that festers
in the heart of our civilization,
the vice and crime and degradation and ravening greed that flow from
it, are the results of a treatment of land that ignores the simple
law of justice, a law so clear and plain that it is universally
recognized by the veriest savages. What is by nature the common
birthright of all, we have made the exclusive property of
individuals; what is by natural law the common fund, from which
common wants should be met, we give to a few that they may lord it
over their fellows. And so some are gorged while some go hungry, and
more is wasted than would suffice to keep all in luxury. ...
We have here abolished all
hereditary privileges and legal
distinctions of class. Monarchy, aristocracy, prelacy, we have swept
them all away. We have carried mere political democracy to its
ultimate. Every child born in the United States may aspire to be
President. Every man, even though he be a tramp or a pauper, has a
vote, and one man's vote counts for as much as any other man's vote.
Before the law all citizens are absolutely equal. In the name of the
people all laws run. They are the source of all power, the fountain
of all honor. In their name and by their will all government is
carried on; the highest officials are but their servants.
Primogeniture and entail we have abolished wherever they existed. We
have and have had free trade in land. We started with something
infinitely better than any scheme of peasant proprietorship which it
is possible to carry into effect in Great Britain. We have had for
our public domain the best part of an immense continent. We have had
the preemption law and the homestead law. It has been our boast that
here every one who wished it could have a farm. We have had full
liberty of speech and of the press. We have not merely common
schools, but high schools and universities, open to all who may
choose to attend. Yet here the same social difficulties apparent on
the other side of the Atlantic are beginning to appear. It is already
clear that our democracy is a vain pretense, our make-believe of
equality a sham and a fraud.
Already are the sovereign people
becoming but a roi
fainéant, like the Merovingian kings of France, like the
Mikados of Japan. The shadow of power is theirs; but the substance of
power is being grasped and wielded by the bandit chiefs of the stock
exchange, the robber leaders who organize politics into machines. In
any matter in which they are interested, the little finger of the
great corporations is thicker than the loins of the people. Is it
sovereign States or is it railroad corporations that are really
represented in the elective Senate which we have substituted for an
hereditary House of Lords? Where is the count or marquis or duke in
Europe who wields such power as is wielded by such simple citizens as
our Stanfords, Goulds, and Vanderbilts? What does legal equality
amount to, when the fortunes of some citizens can be estimated only
in hundreds of millions, and other citizens have nothing? What does
the suffrage amount to when, under threat of discharge from
employment, citizens can be forced to vote as their employers
dictate? when votes can be bought on election day for a few dollars
apiece? If there are citizens so dependent that they must vote as
their employers wish, so poor that a few dollars on election day seem
to them more than any higher consideration, then giving them votes
simply adds to the political power of wealth, and universal suffrage
becomes the surest basis for the establishment of tyranny. "Tyranny"!
There is a lesson in the very word. What are our American bosses but
the exact antitypes of the Greek tyrants, from whom the word comes?
They who gave the word tyrant its meaning did not claim to rule by
right divine. They were simply the Grand Sachems of Greek Tammanys,
the organizers of Hellenic "stalwart machines." ... read the whole article
Henry George: What
the Railroad Will Bring Us [Californians, and
particularly San Franciscans] (1868)
The truth is, that the
completion of the railroad and the consequent great increase of
business and population, will not be a benefit to all of us, but only
to a portion. As a general rule (liable of course to exceptions) those
who have it will make wealthier; for those who have not, it will make
it more difficult to get. Those who have lands, mines, established
businesses, special abilities of certain kinds, will become richer for
it and find increased opportunities; those who have only their own
labor will be come poorer, and find it harder to get ahead -- first,
because it will take more capital to buy land or to get into business;
and second, because as competition reduces the wages of labor, this
capital will be harder for them to obtain.
What, for instance, does the rise in land mean? Several things,
but certainly and prominently this: that it will be harder in future
for a poor man to get a farm or a homestead lot. In some sections of
the State, land which twelve months ago could have been had for a
dollar an acre, cannot now be had for less than fifteen dollars. In
other words, the settler who last year might have had at once a farm of
his own, must now either go to work on wages for some one else, pay
rent or buy on time; in either case being compelled to give to the
capitalist a large proportion of the earnings which, had he arrived a
year ago, he might have had all for of himself. And as proprietorship
is thus rendered more difficult and less profitable to the poor, more
are forced into the labor market to compete with each other, and cut
down the rate of wages -- that is, to make the division of their joint
production between labor and capital more in favor of capital and less
in favor of labor.
And so in San Francisco the rise in building lots means, that it
will be harder for a poor man to get a house and lot for himself, and
if he has none that he will have to use more of his earnings for rent;
means a crowding of the poorer classes together; signifies courts,
slums, tenement-houses, squalor and vice.
San Francisco has one great advantage -- there is probably a
larger proportion of her population owning homesteads and homestead
lots than in any other city of the United States. The product of the
rise of real estate will thus be more evenly distributed, and the great
social and political advantages of this diffused proprietorship cannot
be over-estimated. Nor can it be too much regretted that the princely
domain which San Francisco inherited as the successor of the pueblo was
not appropriated to furnishing free, or almost free, homesteads to
actual settlers, instead of being allowed to pass into the hands of a
few, to make more millionaires. Had the matter been taken up in time
and in a proper spirit, this disposition might easily have been
secured, and the great city of the future would have had a population
bound to her by the strongest ties-a population better, freer, more
virtuous, independent and public spirited than any great city the world
has ever had.
To say that "Power is constantly stealing from the many
to the few," is only to state in another form the law that wealth tends
to concentration. In the new era into which the world has entered since
the application of steam, this law is more potent than ever; in the new
era into which California is entering, its operations will be more
marked here than ever before. The locomotive is a great centralizer. It
kills towns and builds up great cities, and in the same way kills
little businesses and builds up great ones. We have had comparatively
but few rich men; no very rich ones, in the meaning "very rich" has in
these times. But the process is going on. The great city that is to be
will have its Astors, Vanderbilts, Stewarts and Spragues, and he who
looks a few years ahead may even now read their names as he passes
along Montgomery, California or Front streets. With the
protection which property gets in modern times -- with stocks, bonds,
burglar-proof safes and policemen; with the railroad and the telegraph,
after a man gets a certain amount of money it is plain sailing, and he
need take no risks. Astor said that to get his first thousand dollars
was his toughest struggle; but when one gets a million, if he has
ordinary prudence, how much he will have is only a question of life.
Nor can we rely on the absence of laws of primogeniture and entail to
dissipate these large fortunes so menacing to the general weal. Any
large fortune will, of course, become dissipated in time, even in spite
of laws of primogeniture and entail; but every aggregation of wealth
implies and necessitates others, and so that the aggregations remain,
it matters little in what particular hands. Stewart, in the natural
course of things, will die before long, and being childless, his wealth
will be dissipated, or at least go out of the dry goods business. But
will this avail the smaller dealers whom he has crushed or is crushing
out? Not at all. Some one else will step in, take his place in the
trade, and run the great money-making machine which he has organized,
or some other similar one. Stewart and other great houses have
concentrated the business, and it will remain concentrated.
Nor is it worth while to shut our eyes to the effects of this
concentration of wealth. One millionaire involves the little existence
of just so many proletarians. It is the great tree and the saplings
over again. We need not look far from the palace to find the hovel.
When people can charter special steamboats to take them to
watering places, pay four thousand dollars for the summer rental of a
cottage, build marble stables for their horses, and give dinner parties
which cost by the thousand dollars a head, we may know that there are
poor girls on the streets pondering between starvation and
dishonor.
When liveries appear, look out for bare-footed children. A few
liveries are now to be seen on our streets; we think their appearance
coincides in date with the establishment of the almshouse. They are
few, plain and modest now; they will grow more numerous and gaudy --
and then we will not wait long for the children -- their corollaries.
But there is another side: we are to become a great, populous,
wealthy community. And in such a community many good things are
possible that are not possible in a community such as ours has been.
There have been artists, scholars, and men of special knowledge and
ability among us, who could and some of whom have since won distinction
and wealth in older and larger cities, but who here could only make a
living by digging sand, peddling vegetables, or washing dishes in
restaurants. It will not be so in the San Francisco of the future. We
shall keep such men with us, and reward them, instead of driving them
away. We shall have our noble charities, great museums, libraries and
universities; a class of men who have leisure for thought and culture;
magnificent theatres and opera houses; parks and pleasure gardens. ...
The same law of concentration will work in other businesses in
the
same way. The railroads may benefit Sacramento and Stockton by making
of them workshops, but no one will stop there to buy goods when he
can go to San Francisco, make his choice from larger stocks, and
return the same day. ...
That we can look forward to any political improvement is, to say
the least, doubtful. There is nothing in the changes which are coming
that of itself promises that. There will be a more permanent
population, more who will look on California as their home; but we
would not aver that there will be a larger proportion of the population
who will take an intelligent interest in public affairs. In San
Francisco the political future is full of danger. As surely as San
Francisco is destined to become as large as New York, as certain is it
that her political condition is destined to become as bad as that of
New York, unless her citizens are aroused in time to the necessity of
preventive or rather palliative measures. And in the growth of large corporations and
other special interests is an element of great danger. Of these great
corporations and interests we shall have many. Look, for
instance, at the Central Pacific Railroad Company, as it will be, with
a line running to Salt Lake, controlling more capital and employing
more men than any of the great eastern railroads who manage
legislatures as they manage their workshops, and name governors,
senators and judges almost as they name their own engineers clerks! Can
we rely upon sufficient intelligence, independence and virtue among the
many to resist the political effects of the concentration of great
wealth in the hands of a few?
And this in general is the
tendency of the time, and of the new era opening before us: to the
great development of wealth; to concentration; to the differentiation
of classes; to less personal independence among the many and the
greater power of the few. We shall lose much which gave a charm
to California life; much that was valuable in the character of our
people, while we will also wear off defects, and gain some things that
we lacked. ...
And as California becomes populous rich, let us not forget that
the character of a people counts for more than their numbers; that
the distribution of wealth is even a more important matter than its
production. Let us not imagine ourselves in a fools' paradise, where
the golden apples will drop into our mouths; let us not think that
after the stormy seas and head gales of all the ages, our ship has at
last struck the trade winds of time. The future of our State, of our
nation, of our race, looks fair and bright; perhaps the future looked
so to the philosophers who once sat in the porches of Athens -- to the
unremembered men who raised the cities whose ruins lie south of us.
Our modern civilization strikes broad and deep and looks high. So did
the tower which men once built almost unto heaven. ... read the whole article
Henry George: Moses,
Apostle of Freedom (1878 speech)
We boast of equality before the
law; yet notoriously justice is deaf to the call of those who have no
gold and blind to the sin of those who have.
We pride ourselves upon our common schools; yet after our boys
and girls are educated we vainly ask: "What shall we do with them?" And
about our colleges children are growing up in vice and crime, because
from their homes poverty has driven all refining influences. We pin our
faith to universal suffrage; yet with all power in the hands of the
people, the control of public affairs is passing into the hands of a
class of professional politicians, and our governments are, in many
cases, becoming but a means for robbery of the people.
We have prohibited hereditary distinctions, we have forbidden
titles of nobility; yet there is growing up an aristocracy of wealth as
powerful and merciless as any that ever held sway. ... read the whole speech
Henry George: Thou Shalt Not Steal (1887
speech)
Not work enough! Why, what is
work? Productive work is simply the
application of human labor to land, it is simply the transforming, into
shapes adapted to gratify human desires, of the raw material that the
Creator has placed here. Is there not opportunity enough for work in
this country? Supposing that, when
thousands of men are unemployed and there are hard times everywhere, we
could send a committee up to the high court of heaven to represent the
misery and the poverty of the people here, consequent on their not
being able to find employment.
What answer would we get?
- "Are your lands all in use?
- Are your mines all worked out?
- Are there no natural opportunities for the employment of
labor?"
What
could we ask the Creator to
furnish us with that is not already here in abundance? He has given us
the globe amply stocked with raw materials for our needs. He has given
us the power of working up this raw material.
If there seems scarcity, if there is want, if there are people
starving in the midst of plenty, is it not simply because what the
Creator intended for all has been made the property of the few? And
in moving against this giant wrong, which denies to labor access to the
natural opportunities for the employment of labor, we move against the
cause of poverty. ... read the whole article
Henry
George: The Wages of Labor
We see that the law of justice,
the law of the Golden Rule,
is not a mere counsel of perfection, but indeed the law of social life.
We see that, if we were only to observe it, there would be work for
ail, leisure for all, abundance for all; and that civilisation would
tend to give to the poorest not only necessaries, but all reasonable
comforts and luxuries.
We see that Christ was not a mere
dreamer when He told men
that if they would seek the kingdom of God and its right doing they
might no more worry about material things that do the lilies of the
field about their raiment; but that He was only declaring what
political economy in the light of modern discovery shows to be a sober
truth.
There are many who, feeling
bitterly the monstrous wrongs of
the present distribution of wealth, are animated only by a blind hatred
of the rich and 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. ...
The organisation of man is such, his
relations to the world in which he is placed are such – that is to say,
the immutable laws of God are such that it is beyond the power of human
ingenuity to devise any way by which the evils born of the injustice
that robs men of their birthright can be removed otherwise than by
opening to all the bounty that God has provided for all!
Since man can live only on land
and from land since land is
the reservoir of matter and force from which man’s body itself is
taken, and on which he must draw for all that he can produce – does it
not irresistibly follow that to give the land in ownership to some men
and to deny to others all right to it is to divide mankind into the
rich and the poor, the privileged and the helpless?
Does it not follow that those
who have no rights to the use of
land can live only by selling their labor to those who own, the land?
Does it not follow that what the
Socialists call “the iron law
of wages,” what the political economists term “the tendency of wages to
a minimum,” must take from the landless mass of mere laborers – who of
themselves have no power to use their labor – the benefits of any
advance or improvement that does not alter this unjust division of land?
Having
no Power to employ themselves, they must, either as labor-sellers or
land-renters, compete with one another for permission
to labor; and this competition with one another of men shut out from
God’s inexhaustible storehouse, must ultimately force wages to their
lowest point, the point at which life can just be maintained. ...
It is assumed that there are in
the natural order two classes,
the rich and the poor, and that laborers naturally belong to the poor.
It is true that there are differences in capacity, in diligence, in
health and in strength, that may produce differences in fortune. These,
however, are not the differences that divide men into rich and poor.
The natural differences in powers and aptitudes are certainly not
greater than are natural differences in stature. But while it is only
by selecting giants and dwarfs that we can find men twice as tall as
others, yet in the difference between rich and poor that exists today
we find some men richer than others by the thousand-fold and the
million-fold!
Nowhere do these differences
between wealth and poverty
coincide with differences in individual powers and aptitudes. The real
difference between rich and poor is the difference between those who
hold the toll gates and those who pay toll; between tribute receivers
and tribute yielders.
To assume that laborers, even
ordinary manual laborers,
are naturally poor is to ignore the fact that labor is the producer of
wealth, and to attribute to the Natural Law of the Creator an injustice
that comes from man’s impious violation of His benevolent intention.
In the rudest stage of the arts it
is possible, where justice
prevails, for all well men to earn a living. With the labor-saving
appliances of our time, it should be possible for all to earn much
more. And so, to say that poverty is no disgrace, is to convey an
unreasonable implication; since, in a condition of social justice, it
would, except where sought from religious motives or imposed by
unavoidable misfortune, imply recklessness or laziness. ... read
the whole article
Henry
George: The Single Tax: What
It Is and Why We Urge It (1890)
From the Single Tax
we
may expect these
advantages:
1. It would dispense with a whole army of tax gatherers and
other officials which present taxes require, and place in the treasury
a much larger portion of what is taken from people, while by making
government simpler and cheaper, it would tend to make it purer. ...
2. It would enormously increase the production of wealth--
(a) By the removal of the burdens that now weigh upon industry
and thrift. ...
(b) On the contrary, the taxation of land values has the effect
of making land more easily available by industry, since it makes it
more difficult for owners of valuable land which they themselves do not
care to use to hold it idle for a large future price. ...
(c) The taxation of the
processes and products of labor on one hand, and the insufficient
taxation of land values on the other, produce an unjust distribution of
wealth which is building up in the hands of a few, fortunes more
monstrous than the world has ever before seen, while the masses of our
people are steadily becoming relatively poorer. These taxes necessarily
fall on the poor more heavily than on the rich; by increasing prices,
they necessitate a larger capital in all businesses, and consequently
give an advantage to large capitals; and they give, and in some cases
are designed to give, special advantage and monopolies to combinations
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