LITTLE MAN'S VOICE
NYE, RUSSEL B.
Little Man's Voice HENRY GEORGE: Citizen of the World, by Anna George de Mille. Edited by Don C. Shoemaker. Introduction by Agnes de Mille. University of North Carolina Press. 276 pp....
...To destroy poverty, one must first destroy land monopoly by confiscating unearned "rent," that is, profit which accrued simply by reason of ownership...
...Fortunately, the late Mrs...
...Thus he evolved the "Single Tax," which wrould return to the state all such unearned income...
...To this day the Single Tax still retains supporters in high places...
...He contributed much to the argument over the Irish land question, and much to British economic radicalism of the late 19th Century...
...Henry George, both by reason of his ideas and his example, aroused people, and nearly every political and economic liberal since his death owes him something...
...de Mille's book stresses George's influence abroad, a fact often underemphasized in studies of him...
...Not a socialist himself (he thought Marx "a superficial thinker"), he gave impetus to the socialist movement that grew out of British Fabianism, as both Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw have attested...
...The answer to the paradox of poverty came to him one day in a sort of "ecstatic vision"—the cause lay in a monopoly which deprived the majority of the use of the land, a monopoly that enabled the few to attach, in the form of rent, the earnings of the many...
...3.50...
...Henry George was born in Philadelphia, and after a short period at sea settled in California to make his way as a printer, writer, and editor...
...de Mille shows, Henry George's influence on the thought of his times was so pervasive that it is not an easy matter to assess it...
...He set me thinking...
...He represented the little man caught in the web of want, and although the Single Tax never became legal reality, the Georgist idea profoundly affected the drift of social and economic thinking of his times...
...Populism absorbed a good many of them...
...Reviewed by Russel B. Nye ABIOGRAPHY of an influential and famous man by his daughter may suffer from an excess of adulation or irrelevant recollection...
...Single Tax Clubs sprang up in the '80s, and George's paper, The Standard, went into thousands of homes...
...II The real importance of Henry George, as this biography shows, lies not in any specific tax scheme he rightfully or wrongfully proposed, but in the fact that in a time of suffering, unrest, and dislocation he insisted it was the duty of the state to guarantee social and economic justice to all...
...As a nameless Midwestern farmer put it in the '80s, "If I hadn't read Henry George I should have grubbed along and never thought anything was wrong...
...So poor that he actually panhandled on San Francisco streets to support his family, he was struck by the fact that while California land sold at a thousand dollars an acre and millionaires mushroomed, poverty-stricken men like himself walked the nation in ever increasing numbers...
...By the turn of the century the sale of Progress and Poverty had reached five million copies here and abroad, and Georgist converts must have numbered nearly as many...
...After publishing Progress and Poverty in 1880, George dropped all else to crusade for his cause...
...Mrs...
...de Mille's study of her father is afflicted with neither...
...It is a sympathetically handled, authoritative account of Henry George's life, with a fairly comprehensive discussion of Georg-ism, its influence, and its principles, all done with respect and skill...
...His influence can be traced in Asia, Australia, Europe, and especially in Denmark, and his thinking impressed such diverse personalities as Tolstoy and Sun Yat-sen...
...The Single Tax movement left practically no mark on either Federal or state economic legislation, but, as Mrs...
...He lectured in Ireland, England, and Australia, ran twice for mayor of New York, and before his death in 1897 had built up a significant national political following...
Vol. 14 • May 1950 • No. 5
