Progress, and Poverty — how do they relate?

I suspect that many people relate these two words, without quite knowing why. A google alert on the two words brings me 4 to 6 items a day which mention the two words fairly close together. In many the context is “We’re making progress against poverty.” In others, the context is more like “we’re making progress in many areas, but little progress against poverty.”

Putting those two words into the search field at Amazon yields these books:

The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century by E. Bradford Burns (1983)
Progress, Poverty and Exclusion: An Economic History of Latin America in the Twentieth Century (Inter-American Development Bank) by Rosemary Thorp (1998)
Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Joint Center for Urban Studies) by Stephan Thernstrom (1981)
Poverty, Progress, and Population by E. A. Wrigley (2004)
Poverty and Economic Issues (Africa: Progress & Problems) by Tunde Obadina (2006)
Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-1850 by Martin Daunton (1995)
The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 by Harvard University Press (1999)
Poverty and social progress, by Maurice Parmelee (1926)
Poverty and Progress (Down to Earth) by Fred Martin and Aubrey Whittle (1990)
Poverty and Progress in the Caribbean, 1800-1960 (Studies in Economic & Social History) by J.R. Ward (1985)
Progress, Poverty and Population: Re-reading Condorcet, Godwin and Malthus by John Avery (1997)
The Time Has Come: To Confront the Tragedy of World Poverty Through Centers of Village Progress by James Mayfield (2006)
Poverty and Progress in the U.S. South since 1920 (European Contributions to American Studies) by Suzanne W. Jones and Mark Newman (2006)
Profits, Progress and Poverty by Richard N. Farmer (1985)
Poverty and progress;: An ecological perspective on economic development by Richard G Wilkinson (1973)
Poverty Reduction and the World Bank: Progress in Operationalizing the Wdr 2000/2001 by World Bank (2002)
The Developing Nations Poverty and Progress (Volume 41, Number 1) by Irwin (Editor) Isenberg (1969)
Poverty and Progress in New Zealand by W. B. Sutch (1969)

All of these books together can not have come close to the sales of Henry George’s 1879 book, Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth; the remedy. By the turn of the century, over 6 million copies had been sold, it had been translated into 30 or so languages, serialized in newspapers in a number of countries. [6 million copies would be a large number today … think of it in 1885!] Today, there are at least two foundations, created by industrialists of another era (using identical language), whose missions are to share Henry George’s ideas, as expressed in Progress & Poverty – the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation (based in NYC) and the Lincoln Foundation (with offices in Cambridge, MA), founded, respectively, by a printer and an electric utility magnate. Joseph Fels, of the Fels Naptha soap company (and brother of the endower of the Fels Planetarium at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute) also devoted much of his mature years to promoting these ideas.

George’s Progress & Poverty was the #2 best seller of its decade, second only to the Bible, and the “progress” in its title helped inspire the Progressive movement. Anyone in English-speaking countries who read at all was likely to be familiar with its ideas, and George was an effective speaker who traveled widely. In NYC, he ran twice for mayor; the first time, he lost to Abram Hewitt (the Tammany Hall candidate) in 1886, but beat out the 29-year-old Theodore Roosevelt (whose Bull Moose Party platform about 25 years later looked remarkably Georgist; it is said TR learned his George at San Juan Hill, from a hero who died there); the second time, he died a few days before election day in 1897. His funeral was among the largest ever in NYC. (Search the NYT’s free archives for articles.)

So what sets Henry George’s Progress & Poverty apart from the other books which mention those two words in their titles? Why did he choose that title? What is the relationship between these two aspects of our society? Is it a necessary relationship, ordained by immutable natural forces or laws of economics, or is it something created by human structures, and therefore something we can alter?George saw clearly something that others had seen through a glass darkly. He laid it out clearly in Progress & Poverty. Extend your education by reading this book. It will probably change your mind and your vision forever, and if enough of us understand the workings of the poverty machine, we will be able to retool it, and leave our children a better world, and a country which genuinely lives up to its ideals.

Progress and Poverty. You might also want to go read the first essay in George’s second book, Social Problems. It is very timely.