Henry George

Henry George:

Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society. George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.

His most famous work, Progress and Poverty (1879), sold millions of copies worldwide.

. . . George was a journalist for many years, and the popularity of his writing and speeches brought him to run for election as Mayor of New York City in 1886. PAs the United Labor Party nominee in 1886 and in 1897 as the Jefferson Democracy Party nominee, he received 31 percent and 4 percent of the vote respectively and finished ahead of former New York State Assembly minority leader Theodore Roosevelt in the first race. After his death during the second campaign, his ideas were carried forward by organizations and political leaders through the United States and other Anglophone countries. The mid-20th century labor economist and journalist George Soule wrote that George was by far “the most famous American economic writer” and “author of a book which probably had a larger world-wide circulation than any other work on economics ever written.”

. . .George was opposed to tariffs, which were at the time both the major method of protectionist trade policy and an important spppource of federal revenue, the federal income tax having not yet been introduced. He argued that tariffs kept prices high for consumers, while failing to produce any increase in overall wages. He also believed that tariffs protected monopolistic companies from competition, thus augmenting their power. Free trade became a major issue in federal politics and his book Protection or Free Trade was the first book to be read entirely into the Congressional Record. It was read by five Democratic congressmen.

In 1997, Spencer MacCallum wrote that Henry George was “undeniably the greatest writer and orator on free trade who ever lived.

. . .George was one of the earliest and most prominent advocates of the secret ballot in the United States. Harvard historian Jill Lepore asserts that Henry George’s advocacy is the reason Americans vote with secret ballots today. George’s first article in support of the secret ballot was entitled “Bribery in Elections” and was published in the Overland Review of December 1871. His second article was “Money in Elections,” published in the North American Review of March 1883. The first secret ballot reform approved by a state legislature was brought about by reformers who said they were influenced by George. The first state to adopt the secret ballot, also called The Australian Ballot, was Massachusetts in 1888 under the leadership of Richard Henry Dana III. By 1891, more than half the states had adopted it too.

. . .In 1892, Alfred Russel Wallace stated that George’s Progress and Poverty was “undoubtedly the most remarkable and important book of the present century,” implicitly placing it above even The Origin of Species, which he had earlier helped develop and publicize.

Franklin D. Roosevelt praised George as “one of the really great thinkers produced by our country” and bemoaned the fact that George’s writings were not better known and understood. George’s views influenced the New Deal. Yet even several decades earlier, William Jennings Bryan wrote that George’s genius had reached the global reading public and that he “was one of the foremost thinkers of the world.”

John Dewey wrote, “It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with him,” and that “No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker.” Albert Jay Nock wrote that anyone who rediscovers Henry George will find that “George was one of the first half-dozen [greatest] minds of the nineteenth century, in all the world.” The anti-war activist John Haynes Holmes echoed that sentiment by commenting that George was “one of the half-dozen great Americans of the nineteenth century, and one of the outstanding social reformers of all time.” Edward McGlynn said, “[George] is one of the greatest geniuses that the world has ever seen, and … the qualities of his heart fully equal the magnificent gifts of his intellect. … He is a man who could have towered above all his equals in almost any line of literary or scientific pursuit.” Likewise, Leo Tolstoy wrote that George was “one of the greatest men of the 19th century.”

Sun Yat-sen – Father of Modern China:

Sun Yat-sen (/ˈsʊnˈjɑːtˈsɛn/; traditional Chinese: 孫逸仙; simplified Chinese: 孙逸仙; pinyin: Sūn Yìxiān; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang (KMT). Unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders, Sun is revered by both the Republic of China on Taiwan (where he is officially the “Father of the Nation”), as well as the People’s Republic of China (where he is officially the “Forerunner of the Revolution”) for his instrumental role in the 1911 Revolution that successfully overthrew the Qing dynasty.

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Sun promoted the ideas of the economist Henry George and was influenced by Georgist ideas on land ownership and a land value tax.

Video Title: Smart talk with Dr. Alexandra W. Lough discussing Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty.” Source: Henry George School of Social Science. Date Published: June 11, 2015. Description:

Dr. Alexandra (Alex) W. Lough holds a PhD in American History from Brandeis University where she completed a dissertation titled, “The Last Tax: Henry George and the Social Politics of Land Reform” (2013). While completing her dissertation, Alex worked as a teaching fellow and instructor in the History and University Writing Departments. Alex is currently the director of Henry George Birthplace, Archive & Historical Research Center in Philadelphia. She is currently writing a social biography of the single tax and can be reached by email at awlough@hgsss.org. 

Henry George, was an American economist and social philosopher born in Philadelphia in 1839 and died in New York in 1897. His main works include: The Science of Political Economy, Progress & Poverty, Protection or Free Trade, The Condition of Labor, A Perplexed Philosopher, Social Problems. He brought changes in politics and eco-political theories in America. Henry George was the first economist to demonstrate that taxes based on resources, which he called land tax, or single tax, produced the greatest prosperity with the least adverse effects. He also showed how poverty and unemployment could be destroyed by the removal of all current taxation and the replacement with the single tax.