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Vol. XIV. LINCOLN, NEB., MAY 14, 1903. . No. 51.
THE PHILOSOPHER OF FREEDOM
"V" BY HENRY GEORGE Jr
Henry George, the second child and
oldest son In a family of ten, was
born in modest circumstances in the
city of Philadelphia, Pa., September
2, 1839. His father and mother were
both, American born, but of British
extraction, the father's side coming
from Yorkshire, the mother's from
Scotland. His father, Richard Samuel
Henry George, was in the Episcopal
church book publishing business in a
small way when Henry was born, but
soon afterward -withdrew and obtainei
a position in the custom house at
Philadelphia, which he held for many
years.
Henry George received education in
public and private schools until he
was- in his fourteenth year, when he
went to work as errand boy in an
importing house. In his sixteenth
year he went to sea, sailing as cabin
boy in an old sailing vessel and
bound for Au&traJIa and India. Re
turning to Philadelphia after a voy
age of a year and two months, he was
placed by his father in a printing
office to learn the trade. But the rov
ing spirit was in him, and in Decem
ber, 1857, he sailed from Philadelphia
iru. a little United States government
light (house tender, the Shubrick, as
ship's steward or storekeeper, for Cal
ifornia, where he was attracted by
the gold discoveries. There he met
with the fate of many. Instead of
finding gold, he found only hardship
and misfortune. He worked his way
, as seaman on a topsail schooner to
British Columbia, hoping to do bet
ter at Frazer river, where recent dis
coveries1 had caused much excitement
But no better fortune attended hi in.
He returned - to San Francisco anl
went to type-setting, but was restlefs
and for a number of years struggle J
"against hardships. ? - ; - -"
While he was getting, but a pre
carious living he married Miss Annie
Corsina Fox. Owing to opposition of
'the lady's family to him, the mar
riage was precipitate. Henry Grorge
was then twenty-two. He followed
the vocation of printer, and set type
on a number of the newspapers of San
Vrancisco and Sacramento. Venturing
with two others to establish a little
"job printing office, he was reduced to
sore straits of poverty and when his
second son was coming into the world
he went out into the street, stopped a
.stranger and demanded five dollars
with which to obtain living necessar
ies for the wife.
Soon after this his fortune changed.
On news of'the shooting of President
Lincoln, he wrote a letter to the edi
tor of the newspaper on which he
-was setting type in San Francisco.
This communication showed, in the
judgment of the editor, such marked'
.ability that the young printer was in
vited into the editorial room and ha
never went to the printer's case again,
until years afterward when he set
up the first stickful of type for the
book that was to make him world
famous, "Progress and Poverty."
Henry George filled various editor
ial positions until December, . 18C8,
when he weat to New York to try to
obtain a telegraphic news service for
a revived San Francisco daily, the
Herald. , The combination of the As
sociated press and the Western Union
Telegraph company was too much for
him and his trip was only partially
successful. But it had significance in
. two other ways. While in New York
.he wrote a, comprehensive article on
the Chinese question on the Pacific
coast, taking , the position that the
Chinese are non-assimilable, to which
view lfe always adhered. ' This article
attracted some attention in the east
and was reprinted and extensively cir
culated on the west coast.
But more significant than this was
a task he deliberately set himself to
solye the enigma of wealth and pov
erty, side by. side in our civilization.
He said of this in a speech at the
- time he was first nominated for the
New York mayoralty, in 1886: .
-. Years ago I came to this city
from the west, unknown, know
ing nobody, and I saw and rec
ognized for the first time the
shocking contrast between mon
strous wealth and debasing want
And here I made a vow from
jwhich i have never faltered to
seek out, and remedy, if I could,
; the cause that condemned little
children to lead such a life as you
know them to lead In the squalid
, districts. .
And to a Catholic priest, Rev.
Thomas Dawson of Glencree, Ireland,
he wrote touching this matter:
Because you are not only my,
y friend, but a priest and a religious, ;
I shall say something that I don't
like to speak of that I never be
fore have told any one. Once, in
daylight, and in a city street,
there came to me a thought, a
vision, a call give it what name
you please, But , every , nerve
quivered. And there and then I
made a vow.' Through evil and
through good, whatever I have
land, irrespective of improvements,
would reduce rent and increase wages
and interest
A thousand or more copies of this
pamphlet .were sold, but as Mr. George
himself said, "I saw that .to command
attention the work must ; be done
more thoroughly."
The work was done more thorough
ly later in the form of "Progress and
Poverty," the writing of which was
begun in September, .1877, and the
publication of which occurred in 1879,
although none of the larger eastern
publishing houses would touch It at
thoir own expense. D. Appleton &
Co. of New York made the most lib
eral offer, which was to print and
publish the book if the author would
make the , plates. This offer Mr.
George accepted and he had the type
set and the plates made in San Fran-
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done and whatever I have left un
done, to that I have been true.
That vow bore its first fruits in San
Francisco in 1S71. Mr. George wrote
and published at his own expense a
forty-eight paged pamphlet entitled
"Our Land and Land Policy." This
he divided into five parts, namely:
"The Lands ' of the United . States,"
"The Lands of California," "Land and
Labor," "The Tendency of Our Pres
ent Land Policy," and 'What Our
Land Policy Should Be.'. In this
pamphlet he set forth the idea, en
tirely original so far as he was con
cerned, although he found later that
others had conceived it also, that the
value of land, irrespective of improve
ments, being a value that is due to
tle growth of population, is a com
mon value and should be taken for
public purposes; and that this ap
propriation should occur through the
existing medium of taxation, all taxes
other than this one tax to be abol
ished. He also showed that the three
factors in production land, labor and
capital correlate, and that where
land is permitted to become the sub
ject of speculation, speculative rent
causes land to obtain more than its
legitimate share in the distribution
of wealth, so that wages and inter
est, the shares respectively of labor
and capital, become correspondingly
and illegitimately lessened. The tax
on the value of land would, he ar
gued, destroy land speculation, and
thus preventing speculative rent,
would restrain the factor land from
obtaining more than its natural share
in the division of the produce, and
correspondingly protect the shares of
labor and capital.- He held, in other
words, that to destroy land specula
tion bvconcentrating the whole bur
den of taxation upon the value of
Cisco. The plates were then shipped
to New York, and soon afterward be
gan the 'phenomenal sale of the book
by the man, whqm the Duke of Ar
gyll later derisively called "The
Prophet of San Francisco." The book
received wide notice in the press and
soon was translated into many foreign
tongues. Cheap editions were pub
lished In this country and England
and were extensively circulated.
Henry George went to New York
to live in the early eighties, and in
the fall of 1881 went to Ireland as
special correspondent of "The Irish
World." This was during the Land
League days and he took an active
part in that agitation. He visited
Great Britain in 1883, 1885, and 1889,
and made extensive lecturing trips,
the land question being his theme. He
had large audiences and great stim
ulus was given to general thought
along this line. In England and Scot
land large and active propaganda or
ganizations were formed under tho
name of the Land Restoration league,
the pioneers in the present single tax
movements in that country. ,
In 1886 Mr. George became the may
oralty candidate of the trade union
organizations of the city of -New York
against Abram S. Hewitt and Theo
dore Roosevelt, the democratic and
republican candidates, respectively.
Without political organization, news
paper support or money for any but
the barest campaign necessities, he
was accorded second place at the
polls with 68.C00 votes, Hewitt being
credited with $3,000 and Roosevelt
with less than 60,000. Thl3 was in
the days of the separate ballots and
Mr. George always believed that he
was "counted out" of the election, a
judgment which has since been con
firmed In the minds of many.
This mayoralty election experience
caused Mr. George to start an active
agitation for the adoption of the Aus
tralian ballot system in this country,
which idea was quickly adopted by
Individuals and parties and it soon
became enacted into the political ma
chinery of all the states.
One of the ways in which Mr.
George advocated this reform was
through the columns of a weekly po
litical and economic newspaper. The
Standard, which he started early in
1887. y..
In that paper he also made a mas
terly defense of Rev. Dr. Edward Mc
Glynn, who for openly supporting the
candidacy of George for the mayor
alty the year before was suspended
from his pulpit by Archbishop Corri
gan, although other Catholic priests
had been permitted openly to aid the
candidature of Mr. Hewitt. The arch
bishop subsequently ordered Dr. Mc
Glynn to renounce as opposed to the
teachings of the Catholic church his
doctrines on the land question which
were the same as those set forth in
George's book, "Progress and ; Pov
erty." McGlynn refusing, the arch
bishop procured his excommunica
tion. But the papal legate, Arch
bishop Satolli, reopening the case in
1892 had a committee of the profes
sors of the Catholic university at
Washington consider a written state
ment by Dr. McGlynn of his views on
the land question. The committee re
ported that there was nothing in them
opposed to the doctrines of the church,
whereupon the legate removed the
ban of excommunication and the Doc
tor was soon after appointed by Arch
bishop Corrigan to the charge of a
little church at Newburg on the Hud
son river. ' ::; . -
: Henry George made a lecturing tour
of Australia 1c 1890 and on his return
to New York suffered a stroke of
aphasia from his years of intense
work. He soon recovered from this,
however, and in 1892 published his
fifth book, entitled: "A Perplexed
Philosopher," being an examination
of Mr. Herbert Spencer's various ut
terances on the land question, with
some incidental reference to his syn
thetic philosophy. George's second
book, "The Land Question," had ap
peared in 1881, his third, " "Social
Problems," in 1884, and his fourth,
"Protection or Free Trade?" in 1886.
In 1891 Mr. George published a
brochure called "The Condition of
Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII.," being an answer to the pope's
encyclical and an exposition of
George's land doctrines. But before
writing this he had begun work on
the most profound and, what he es
teemed to be, the most ambitious of all
his writings, "The Science of Political
Economy," a book on which he was
still writing when death overtook him
in 1897.
Mr. George had always taken an
intense Interest and a more or less"
active part in politics. He was a
democrat of the Thomas - Jefferson
type and he voted for Grover Cleve
land, expecting him to raise the tar
iff issue on ; radical lines, but when
Cleveland sent federal troops to Chi
cago during the railroad strike George
openly denounced the president as the
man who had done most up to his time
toward the establishment of a dicta
torship. Mr. George strongly sup
ported Mr, Bryan for the presidency
in 1896, and himself became a candi
date for the New York mayoralty the
next year. Worn out by long years
of intense work and had fallen into
ill health, he was warned by medical
advisors against the fatigue and ex
citement of a i campaign, but he
brushed warnings aside with the
statement that if the people called
him to lead he would go forth regard
less of personal consequences. The
warnings were not idle, for early in
the morning of October 29, 1897, four
days preceding the election, he was
stricken with apoplexy and he died
before daylight came.
. His funeral was one of the most
remarkable tributes ever accorded a
private citizen and hi3 burial was in
Greenwood Cemetery, in a lot beside
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