Seeing the Cat

Bastiat, quoting Proudhon: "to whom belongs the rent of land?"

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 14:32:00 +0000

Dr. McGlynn's Lesson from the 1886 New York City Election

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 17:48:00 +0000

What follows is one of three analyses of the 1886 Mayoral election in Manhattan, which appeared in the December, 1886, issue of North American Review (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25101145.pdf) under the title “Lessons of the New York City Election.” The authors are listed as “A Republican, Edward McGlynn and S. S. Cox.”

One might consider this a supplement to Post & Leubuscher’s December 1886 book, *Henry George’s 1886 Campaign,*online at

II. THE LABOR PARTY VIEW.

The late contest for the chief municipal office of New York marks an historical epoch. The movement to elect Henry George to that office has been something exceptional, in fact, unique, in its inception, in its growth, and in its results, in the character of its originators, in the sympathies it won, and in the opposition it evoked. It has had an unprecedented effect in confusing and disabling political plans and factions; and it has rendered inevitable, has, in fact, already begun, the disintegration and reconstruction of political parties. It is the beginning of a pacific revolution which is destined to have upon the whole world a more beneficent effect than our first Revolution and the great Declaration which gave it its justification and battle-cry.

All this was substantially said by me at the meeting in Chickering Hall a month before the election, and was then no doubt regarded by not a few as but a campaign extravagance — a mere rhapsody inspired by foolish hopefulness of the perfectibility of human society, and by a simple but absurdly enthusiastic hero-worship. Events, however, have largely justified tho declaration made at that meeting.

After our mighty civil struggle had ended, with a Union restored and a race emancipated; after the question of reconstruction had been settled, and a large part of the burdens of the war discharged; after its deepest wounds had been healed, and even their scars obliterated, everything might have seemed to promise a long period of unexampled national prosperity and contentment. Instead of this, a new sense of disappointment and discontent began to steal over the workers of the country. With increasing wealth, they felt the pressure of increasing want. Labor in mill and mine, on railroad and farm, became more and more conscious of a wrong, in the want of opportunity to employ itself, and in the inadequate share of the product of his toil which came back to the toiler. Maddened and blinded, the giant Labor too often struck out wildly to his own hurt, and eagerly snatched at such panaceas as “protection,” urged on him by the quacks, who found profit in his ignorance. Strikes, wasteful and sometimes violent; lock-outs, long and heartless, increased and multiplied. Waves of industrial depression followed each other with a regular periodicity which suggested a law of nature. The cry was heard everywhere, “the rich were becoming richer and the poor poorer.” “Hail, Columbia, happy land!” was no longer sung with the same heartiness as in the childhood of the nation, and even the Fourth of July seemed to have lost the freshness of its charm. In the reading of the magnificent assertion of the natural equality of man, and his inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there seemed to many an undertone of mockery. But deeply as the growing wrong was felt, there was a failure to clearly see its cause. Voices many were raised in complaint, but they were now the roar of a strong lion helpless in the toils, and now the wail of a child crying in the night. There was lacking the clear articulate speech of a man who, seeing a great truth, sounds a trumpet-call to all who would taste the fierce delight of battle against wrong.

But the hour came at last, and with it the man. The Duke of Argyll spoke better than he knew, when he sneeringly called Henry George the “Prophet of San Francisco.” No heart has sympathized more keenly with the sufferings of the toiler, no other pen has defined the wrong so clearly, and portrayed with such force and pathos the poverty that haunts progress like a spectre. No other voice has rung so loud and clear in calling men to take up the cross of a new crusade for justice, to proclaim the glad tidings of a new evangel to the poor, that shall relieve them from the degradation of want, and the deeper degradation of the fear of want. His cry rang forth, calling on the conscience of men to restore to the disinherited their equal share in the bounties of nature, and thus to fit their hearts and minds the better to receive and act out the old evangel of Him, who taught the universal Fatherhood of God and the equal Brotherhood of men. The common people of old heard the Christ gladly as He preached to them the blessedness of those that hunger and thirst after justice; and in the common people of today the same sure instinct responds to the call for social right-doing.

What gives to the late election its deep importance is that it marks the coming of a great principle into our politics; that it is a flashing into action of sentiments that have spread and are yet spreading wide and deep throughout the land and over the world. Henry George’s nomination was no accident. The working-people of New York, like their fellows throughout the country, have been reading and talking over his books, and are better acquainted with them, and have a keener appreciation of them, than most men of leisure and culture. They have learned from Henry George’s teachings an effectual and peaceful method of righting their wrongs, by the reformation of law on the lines of justice. They have got from him a new hope and courage; they have learned that the remedy must be political, since the wrong is political, proceeding from enactments that give to a few that which belongs to all. Henry George has taught them that it is not desirable nor possible to divide land equally; that the right of the individual is not to an equal division, but to an equal benefit from a common ownership. Henry George has shown that the beautiful economic law of rent suggests a simple and peaceful means of giving to every human being just what belongs to him of the common estate. He shows that rent is a good, not a bad, thing; that it is a gauge of the degree of progress from semi-barbaric, nomadic conditions up to conditions of the highest civilization. He shows that economic rent — that “unearned increment” which attaches to land by reason of the growth of population and the progress of civilization — is a value produced by the social aggregate, as distinguished from the value produced by the individual, and that thus is provided, by natural law, a common fund which may be drawn on for common needs without hampering capital or oppressing labor by taxes which check production and raise prices. He shows that it is just that he who is permitted to enjoy the advantage or privilege of occupying a larger or choicer portion of the common estate than is open to another, should pay the highest market price for this advantage: that is rent. The wrong is not in the payment of rent, but in its diversion from a common treasury into private pockets, and in the locking up of natural opportunities by the speculation which the possibility of appropriating this public revenue provokes. Henry George has taught that in this appropriation of rent by private persons, and in the forestalling which it engenders, is to be found the cause of that increasing poverty which is the dark side of progressing civilization, the true cause of the industrial depressions in which productive power is so enormously wasted, and in which willing hands cannot clothe the naked back, or feed the hungry stomach, because labor is shut out from natural opportunies for its employment by the speculation that holds land idle until it can get a blackmail price.

How this speculation in land grinds down the wages of labor, cuts down the profits of capital, and brings about these periodical industrial depressions, “Progress and Poverty” and “Social Problems” have taught the thousands on thousands who have read them. They have shown how the simple remedy of the appropriation of economic rent to its proper purpose, the public use, would destroy speculation in the elements of nature, and thus open to labor the natural opportunities which are required for the production of wealth; how in reality there is no conflict between labor and capital, but that the real conflict is between labor and monopoly. Workingmen have learned from Henry George that the simple reform which would thus give them the highest possible wages would make the cost of living much lower, since the enormous taxes which now fall with oppressive weight on the poor, and are a fruitful source of political corruption, could be entirely remitted, as no longer necessary. All the public needs that are now supplied by taxation, and many public conveniences and advantages which we have not yet become civilized enough to supply at public cost, could be provided for out of the common fund — the rent which individuals would pay to a community that included themselves. When, therefore, organized labor, as represented in the Central Labor Union of New York City, determined to take political action, it was necessary and fitting that the doctrine of “the land for the people” — the doctrine that all are entitled to share in the benefits provided by their Creator, and the advantages which come with social growth and improvement — should be made, as it was, the chief principle of their platform, — a platform which, in its bold simplicity, is in inspiriting contrast to the straddling duplicities of the old party declarations. And it was equally fitting that they should call on Henry George to become their spokesman and standard-bearer. No other man could so well fit the platform.

When, some three or four months ago, members of the Central Labor Union began to talk among themselves of the propriety of political action, the most sanguine among them had little hope of doing more than making a small beginning. Mr. George from the first was spoken of as the candidate who could command the strongest following; yet the best they hoped for was that an independent Labor candidate might get some 15,000 votes. For they sadly remember how, a few years ago, a Labor candidate for Mayor polled only 87 votes. They knew by experience how strong were the political organizations of New York, how potent the “influences” on which these relied, and how general was the indisposition of men to “throw their votes away” on a candidate who had not a “regular” nomination. Mr. George’s own friends felt that his world-wide reputation, and the cause with which he, more than any other man, is identified, should not be subjected to the risk of being made ridiculous by a hopeless canvass. But pressed to accept the nomination, and anxious to maintain the dignity of his cause, and to inspire those disposed to vote for him with confidence in themselves, Mr. George conditioned his acceptance on a pledge from 30,000 voters, explaining the significance of the movement and of his candidacy in his now famous letter to the Secretary of the Labor Union Conference. That letter began the campaign. It infused into the movement a peculiar dignity and enthusiasm. Clergymen, lawyers, teachers, authors, business men of all kinds, joined the Labor men in requesting Mr. George to be a candidate, and crowded the meetings held to ratify his nomination.

The campaign is so recent that it would be useless to recount it here. Great as must have been the growth in economic and political education, in self-respect and self-restraint, in the ranks of organized labor to produce the astonishing result, yet it must be conceded that no other platform and no other candidate could have secured such a tremendous moral victory. It is the reputation of the candidate, his high genius and exalted character, his practical wisdom and masterly leadership, his tireless energy, the strange fascination his personality exerts, and the almost religious enthusiasm which he has been able to inspire by his presentation of the cause, that have given to the 68,000 men, who, in spite of all difficulties, voted for him, and to the thousands more in New York who are now prepared to join them, the consciousness of power, the conviction of duty, and the confidence of ultimate success. Thus has come to the front a new Land and Labor party, from henceforth utterly distinct from all other parties, prepared to go forth conquering and to conquer; and on the same platform and under the same leader to repeat, at the earliest possible moment, in the State and in the nation, this magnificent canvass, and to more than repeat the moral victory of the late municipal election in New York.

Edward McGlynn.

Marmontel: The land is a solemn gift

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 16:29:00 +0000

The land is a solemn gift, which nature has made to man; to be born, then, is for each of us a title of possession. The child has no better birthright to the breast of its mother.

Jean-Francois Marmontel, 1757: Address in Favor of the Peasants of the North, Euvres, Vol. X, p.56.

Nicholas Murray Butler: Prophetic Words from 1877

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:38:00 +0000

from Land and Freedom, January-February 1940, at https://cooperative-individualism.org/land-and-freedom-1940-jan-feb.pdf

Prophetic Words

I CAME upon a sentence which I submit is prophetic in high degree:

“Is it too soon to hope that it may be the mission of this Republic to unite all nations of English speech, whether they grow beneath the Northern Star or Southern Cross, in a league, which, by insuring justice, promoting peace and liberating commerce, will be the forerunner of a world-wide federation that will make war the possibility of a past age and turn to works of usefulness the enormous forces now dedicated to destruction?”

Those words were spoken in San Francisco by Henry George in a Fourth of July oration, 1877. They are prophetic in their insight and prophetic in their appeal.

Shall we sit still indefinitely and let the world drift with all which that may mean, or shall we concern ourselves with the task of leadership in a broken, impoverished, and war-torn world? Shall we lead, or shall we sit and watch and wait and take the consequences?

—Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler.

Dr. Butler (1862-1947) was president of Columbia University from 1901 to 1945. His 1931 commencement address was centered around Progress and Poverty, and ended with this quote from Disraeli:

“We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.”

Henry George’s 1877 Fourth of July oration follows, and the thoughts of the San Francisco Examiner are the two posts after the speech itself.

Henry George's 1877 Oration, Fourth of July, San Francisco

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:30:00 +0000

The American Republic: Its Dangers and Possibilities.

[An oration delivered in the California Theatre, San Francisco, on the celebration of the 4th of July, 1877, by Henry George.]

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is under circumstances that inspire gratitude and renew patriotism that we celebrate the completion by the American Republic of the first year of her second century. How much that year has held of the possibilities of dire calamity it may be too soon to speak.1 But for the deliverance let us give thanks. Through the web woven by passion and prejudice has run the woof of a beneficent purpose. Through clash of plans and conflict of parties; through gateways hung with cloud and by paths we knew not of, have we come to this good estate!

1Hayes-Tilden Presidential contest.

As, when the long struggle was over, the men of the Revolution turned to pour forth their thanks to Him in whose hands are the nations, so let us turn today. Last year was the Centennial; but this year, if we read the times aright, marks the era, and with 1877 will the historian, in future ages, close the grand division of our history that records the long, sad strife of which slavery was the cause. Most gracious of our national anniversaries is that we keep. Never before has the great Declaration rung through the land as today. For the first time have its words neither fallen on the ears of a slave nor been flung back by a bayonet-guarded State House!

For year after year, while they who won our independence faded away; for year after year, while their sons grew old, and in their turn taught us to light the altar fires of the Republic, at every recurring anniversary of the nation’s birth, the unexpressed thought of an inherited curse that was sowing the land with dragon’s teeth, checked the pride and gave to the rejoicings of the thoughtful a sombre background, and between thunder of gun and voice of trumpet, the black shadow of a great wrong mocked in silence the burning words that protested to the world the inalienable rights of man. To this there came an end. In the deadly close of civil war, when all fierce and wicked “passions were loosed, while the earth shook with the tread of fratricidal armies, and the heavens were red with the blaze of burning homes, amid the groans of dying men and the cry of stricken women, the great curse passed away. But still the shadow. Could we boast a Union in which State Governments were maintained by extra-State force, or glory in a republic whose forms were mocked in virtual provinces?

But all this is of the past. The long strife is over. The cancer has been cut out. And may we not also say today that the wound of the knife has healed? Today we celebrate the nation’s birth, more truly one people than for years and years. Again in soul as in form, the many are one. Over palmetto as over pine floats the flag that typifies the glory of our common past, the promise of our common future — the flag that rose above the blood-stained snow at Valley Forge, that crossed with Washington the icy Delaware — the flag that Marion bore, that Paul Jones nailed to the mast, that Lafayette saluted! Over our undivided heritage of a continent it floats today, with the free will of a united people — under its folds no slave, and in its blue no star save that of a free and sovereign State. And, as in city and town and hamlet, today, has been read once more the declaration of a nation’s birth, again, I believe me, in the hearts of their people, has Adams signed with Jefferson and Rutledge with Livingston, pledging to the Republic one and indivisible, life and fortune and sacred honour!

Beside me on this platform, around me in this audience, sit men who have borne arms against each other in civil strife, again united under the folds of that flag. Men of the South and men of the North, do I not speak what is in your hearts, do I not give voice to your hope and your trust, when I say that the Union is again restored in spirit as in form — not a union of conquerors and conquered, but the union of a people — one in soul as one in blood; one in destiny as one in heritage!

Let our dead strifes bury their dead, while we cherish the feeling that makes us one. Let us spare no myrrh nor frankincense nor costly spices as we feed the sacred fire. It is not a vain thing these flags, these decorations, these miles of marching men. Stronger than armies, more potent than treasure is the sentiment of nationality they typify and inculcate!

Yet to more than the sentiment of nationality is this day sacred. It marks more than the birth of a nation — it marks a step in the progress of the race. More than national independence, more than national union, speaks out in that grand document to which we have just listened; it is the declaration of the fundamental principle of liberty — of a truth that has in it power to renovate the world.

It is meet that on this day the flags of all nations should mingle above our processions and wreathe our halls. For this is the festival of her to whom under all skies eyes have turned and hands been lifted — of her who has had in all lands her lovers and her martyrs — of her who shall yet unite the nations and bid the war drums cease! It is the festival of Liberty!

And in keeping this day to Liberty, we honour all her sacred days — those glorious days on which she has stepped forward, those sad days on which she has been stricken down by open foes, or fallen wounded in the house of her friends. Far back stretches the lineage of the Republic at whose birth Liberty was invoked — from every land have been gathered the gleams of light that unite in her beacon fire. It is kindled of the progress of mankind; it witnesses to heaven the aspirations of the ages; it shall light the nations to yet nobler heights!

Let us keep this day as the day sacred to Union and to Liberty should be kept. Let us draw closer the cords of our common brotherhood and renew our fathers’ vows. Let it be honoured as John Adams predicted it would be honoured — with clangor of bells and roar of guns, with music and processions and assemblages of the people, with every mark of respect and rejoicing — that its memories of glory may entwine themselves with the earliest recollections of our children, that even the thoughtless may catch something of its inspiration!

Yet it is not enough that with all the marks of veneration we keep these holidays. It is possible to cherish the form and lose the spirit.

No matter how bright the lights behind, their usefulness is but to illumine the path before. Whatever be the causes of that enormous difference — almost a difference in kind — between the stationary and the progressive races, here is its unfailing indication — the one look to the past, the other to the future. The moment we believe that all wisdom was concentrated in our ancestors, that moment the petrifaction of China is upon us. For life is growth, and growth is change, and political progress consists in getting rid of institutions we have outgrown. Aristocracy, feudality, monarchy, slavery — all the things against which human progress has been a slow and painful struggle — were, doubtless, in their times relatively if not absolutely beneficial, as have been in later times things we may have to cast away. The maxim commended to us by him who must ever remain the greatest citizen of the Republic — “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” embodies a truth which goes to the very core of philosophy, which must everywhere and at all times be true. Ever and ever we sail an unknown sea. Old shapes of menace fade but to give place to others. Even new rocks lurk; ever in new guise the sirens sing!

As through the million-voiced plaudits of today we hear again the words that when first spoken were ominous of cord and gibbet, and amid a nation’s rejoicing our pulses quicken as imagination pictures the bridge of Lexington, the slender earthworks of Bunker Hill, the charge of tattered Continentals, or the swift night-ride of Marion’s men, let us not think that our own times are commonplace, and make no call for the patriotism that, as it wells up in our hearts, we feel would have been strong to dare and do had we lived then.

How momentous our own times may be the future alone can tell. We are yet laying the foundations of empire, while stronger run the currents of change and mightier are the forces that marshal and meet.

Let us turn to the past, not in the belief that the great men of the past conquered for us a heritage that we have but to enjoy, but that we may catch their heroic spirit to guide and nerve us in the exigencies of the present; that we may pass it on to our children, to carry them through the dangers of the future.

Now, as a hundred years ago, the Republic has need of that spirit — of the noble sensitiveness that is jealous for Freedom; of the generous indignation that weighs our consideration of expediency against the sacrifice of one iota of popular right; of the quick sympathy that made an attack on the liberties of one colony felt in all; of the patient patriotism that worked and waited, never nagging, never tiring, seeking not recognition nor applause, looking only to the ultimate end and to the common good; of the devotion to a high ideal which led men to risk for it all things sweet and all things dear!

We shall best honour the men of the Revolution by invoking the spirit that animated them; we shall best perpetuate their memories by looking in the face whatever threatens the perpetuity of their work. Whether a century hence they shall be regarded as visionaries or as men who gave a new life to mankind, depends upon us.

For let us not disguise it — republican government is yet but an experiment. That it has worked well so far, determines nothing. That republican institutions would work well under the social conditions of the youth of the Republic — cheap land, high wages and little distinction between rich and poor — there was never any doubt, for they were working well before. Our Revolution was not a revolution in the full sense of the term, as was that great outburst of the spirit of freedom that followed it in France. The colonies but separated from Great Britain, and became an independent nation without essential change in the institutions under which they had grown up. The doubt about republican institutions is as to whether they will work when population becomes dense, wages low, and a great gulf separates rich and poor.

Can we speak of it as a doubt? Nothing in political philosophy can be clearer than that under such conditions republican government must break down.

This is not to say that these forms must be abandoned. We might and probably would go on holding our elections for years and years after our government had become essentially despotic. It was centuries after Caesar ere the absolute master of the Roman world pretended to rule other than by authority of a Senate that trembled before him. It was not till the thirteenth century that English kings dropped the formal claim of what was once the essence of their title — the choice of the people; and to this day the coronation ceremonies of European monarchs retain traces of the free election of their leader by equal warriors.

But forms are nothing when substance has gone. And our forms are those from which the substance may most easily go. Extremes meet, and a republican government, based on universal suffrage and theoretical equality, is of all governments that which may most easily become a despotism of the worst kind. For there, despotism advances in the name of the people. The single source of power once secured, everything is secured. There is no unfranchised class to whom appeal may be made; no privileged orders, who in defending their own rights may defend those of all. No bulwark remains to stay the flood, no eminence to rise above it.

And where there is universal suffrage, just as the disparity of condition increases, so does it become easy to seize the source of power, for the greater is the proportion of power in the hands of those who feel no direct interest in the conduct of the government, nay, who, made bitter by hardships, may even look upon profligate government with the sort of satisfaction we may imagine the proletarians and slaves of Rome to have felt as they saw a Caligula or Nero raging among the rich patricians.

Given a community with republican institutions, in which one class is too rich to be shorn of their luxuries, no matter how public affairs are administered, and another so poor that any little share of the public plunder, even though it be but a few dollars on election day, will seem more than any abstract consideration, and power must pass into the hands of jobbers who will sell it, as the praetorian legions sold the Roman purple, while the people will be forced to reimburse the purchase money with costs and profits. If to the pecuniary temptation involved in the ordinary conduct of government are added those that come from the granting of subsidies, the disposition of public lands and the regulation of prices by means of a protective tariff, the process will be the swifter.

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selection by lot (the plan of some of the ancient republics) may sometimes place the wise and just in power, but in a corrupt republic the tendency is always to give power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted and unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to the bottom, the worst float to the top; and the vile can only be ousted by the viler. And as a corrupt government always tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, the fundamental cause of corruption is steadily aggravated, while as national character must gradually assimilate to the qualities that command power and consequently respect, that demoralisation of opinion goes on which in the long panorama of history we may see over and over again, transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.

As in England, in the last century, where Parliament was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt oligarchy, where it is clearly fenced off from the masses, may exist without much effect on national character; because, in that case, power is associated in the popular mind with other things than corruption; but where there are no hereditary distinctions, and men are habitually seen to raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest places to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic government must finally corrupt the people, and when a people become corrupt, there is no resurrection. The life has gone, only the carcass remains; and it is left but for the ploughshares of fate to bury it out of sight.

Secure in her strength and position from external dangers, with the cause gone that threatened her unity, the Republic begins to count the years of her second century with a future, to all outward seeming, secure. But may we not see already closing round her the insidious perils from which, since her birth, destruction has been predicted? Clearly, to him who will look, are we passing from the conditions under which republican government is easy, into those under which it becomes endangered, if not dangerous. While the possessor of a single million is ceasing to be noticeable in the throng of millionaires, and larger private fortunes are mounting towards hundreds of millions, we are all over the country becoming familiar with widespread poverty in its hardest aspects — not the poverty that nourishes the rugged virtues, but poverty of the kind that dispirits and embrutes.

And as we see the gulf widening between rich and poor, may we not as plainly see the symptoms of political deterioration that in a republican government must always accompany it? Social distinctions are sharpest in our great cities, and in our great cities is not republican government becoming a reproach? May we not see in these cities that the worst social influences are become the most potent political factors; that corrupt rings notoriously rule; that offices are virtually purchased — and, most ominous of all, may we not plainly see the growth of a sentiment that looks on all this as natural, if not perfectly legitimate; that either doubts the existence of an honest man in public place, or thinks of him as a fool too weak to seize his opportunity? Has not the primary system, which is simply republicanism applied to party management, already broken down in our great cities, and are not parties in their despair already calling for what in general government would be oligarchies and dictatorships?

We talk about the problem of municipal government! It is not the problem of municipal government that we have to solve, but the problem of republican government. These great cities are but the type of our development. They are growing not merely with the growth of the country, but faster than the growth of the country. There are children here today who in all human probability will see San Francisco a city as large as London, and will count through the country New Yorks by the score!

Fellow-citizens, the wind does not blow north or south because the weather-cocks turn that way. The complaints of political demoralisation that come from every quarter are not because bad men have been elected to office or corrupt men have taken to engineering parties. If bad men are elected to office, if corrupt men rule parties, is it not because the conditions are such as to give them the advantage over good and pure men? Fellow-citizens, it is not the glamour of success that makes the men whose work we celebrate today loom up through the mists of a century like giants. They were giants — some of them so great, that with all our eulogies we do not yet appreciate them, and their full fame must wait for yet another century. But the reason why such intellectual greatness gathered around the cradle of the Republic and guided her early steps, was not that men were greater in that day, but that the people chose their best. You will hardly find a man of that time, of high character and talent, who was not in some way in the public service. This certainly cannot be said now. And it is because power is concentrating, as it must concentrate as our institutions deteriorate. If one of those men were to come back today and were spoken of for high position — say for the United States Senate — instead of Jefferson’s three questions, the knowing ones would ask: “Has he money to make the fight?” “Are the corporations for him?” “Can he put up the primaries?” No less a man than Benjamin Franklin — a man whose fame as a statesman and philosopher is yet growing — a man whom the French Academy, the most splendid intellectual assemblage in Europe, applauded as the modern Solon — represented the city of Philadelphia in the provincial Assembly for ten years, until, as their best man, he was sent to defend the colony in London. Are there not today cities in the land which even a Benjamin Franklin could not represent in a State Assembly unless he put around his neck the collar of a corporation or took his orders from a local ring?

You will think of many things in this connection to which it is not necessary for me to allude. We all see them. Though we may not speak it openly, the general faith in republican institutions is narrowing and weakening—it is no longer that defiant, jubilant, boastful belief in republicanism as the source of all national blessings and the cure for all human woes that it once was. We begin to realise that corruption may cost as much as a royal family, and that the vaunted ballot, under certain conditions, may bring forth ruling classes of the worst kind, while we already see developing around us social evils that we once associated only with effete monarchies. Can we talk so proudly of welcoming the oppressed of all nations when thousands vainly seek for work at the lowest wages? Can we expect him, who must sup on charity, to rejoice that he cannot be taxed without being represented; or congratulate him who seeks shelter in a station-house that, as a citizen of the Republic, he is the peer of the monarchs of earth?

Is there any tendency to improvement?

Fellow-citizens, we have hitherto had an advantage over older nations which we can hardly overestimate. It has been our public domain, our background of unfenced land, that made our social conditions better than those of Europe; that relieved the labour market and maintained wages; that kept open a door of escape from the increasing pressure in older sections, and acting and reacting in many ways on our national character, gave it freedom and independence, elasticity and hope.

But with a folly for which coming generations may curse us, we have wasted it away. Worse than the Norman conqueror, we have repeated the sin of the sin-swollen Henry VIII.; and already we hear in the “tramp” of the sturdy vagrant of the sixteenth century, the predecessor of the English pauper of this. We have done to the future the unutterable wrong that English rule and English law did to Ireland, and already we begin to hear of rack-rents and evictions. We have repeated the crime that filled Italy with a servile population in place of the hardy farmers who had carried her eagles to victory after victory — the crime that ate out the heart of the Mistress of the World, and buried the glories of ancient civilisation in the darkness of mediaeval night. Instead of guarding the public domain as the most precious of our heritages; instead of preserving it for our poorer classes of today and for the uncounted millions who must follow us, we have made it the reward of corruption, greed, fraud and perjury. Go out in this fair land today and you may see great estates tilled by Chinamen, while citizens of the Republic carry their blankets through dusty roads begging for work; you may ride for miles and miles through fertile land and see no sign of human life save the ghastly chimney of an evicted settler or the miserable shanty of a poverty-stricken renter. Cross the bay, and you will see the loveliest piece of mountain scenery around this great city, though destitute of habitation, walled in with a high board fence, that none but the owner of 20,000 acres of land may look upon its beauties. Pass over these broad acres which lie as they lay ere man was born on this earth, and under penalty of fine and imprisonment you must confine yourself to the road, purchased of him with poll taxes of four dollars a head wrung from men packing their blankets in search of work at a dollar a day.

Fellow-citizens, the public domain fit for homes is almost gone, and at the rate we are parting with the rest, it is certain that by the time children now in our public schools come of age, the pre-emption law and the homestead law will remain on our statute books only to remind them of their squandered birthright. Then the influences that are at work to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, and make dependence the lot of the many, will have free play.

How potent are these influences! Though in form everything seems tending to republican equality, a new power has entered the world that, under present social adjustments, is working with irresistible force to subject the many to the few. The tendency of all modern machinery is to give capital an overpowering advantage and make labour helpless. Our boys cannot learn trades, because there are few to learn. The journeyman who, with his kit of tools, could make a living anywhere, is being replaced by the operative who performs but one part of a process, and must work with tools he can never hope to own, and who consequently must take but a bare living, while all the enormous increase of wealth which results from the economy of production must go to increase great fortunes. The undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us back again to the old conditions from which we dreamed we had escaped. The development of the artisan and commercial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it had become so complete that men thought of heaven as organised on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and second persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and Tenant-in-Chief. But now the development of manufacture and exchange has reached a point which threatens to compel every worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed the final break up of the Roman Empire compelled every freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this tendency. Even errands are run by a corporation, and one company carries carpet-sacks, while another drives the hack. It is the old guilds of the middle ages over again, only that instead of all being equal, one is master and the others serve. And where one is master and the others serve, the one will control the others, even in such matters as votes.

In our constitution is a clause prohibiting the granting of titles of nobility. In the light of the present it seems a good deal like the device of the man who, leaving a big hole for the cat, sought to keep the kitten out by blocking up the little hole. Could titles add anything to the power of the aristocracy that is here growing up? Six hundred liveried retainers followed the great Earl of Warwick to Parliament; but in this young State there is already a simple citizen who could discharge any one of thousands of men from their employment, who controls 2200 miles of railroad and telegraph, and millions of acres of land, and has the power of levying toll on traffic and travel over an area twice that of the original thirteen States. Warwick was a king-maker. Would it add to the real power of our simple citizen were we to dub him an earl?

Look at the social conditions which are growing up here in California. Land monopolised; water monopolised; a race of cheap workers crowding in, whose effect upon our own labouring classes is precisely that of slavery; all the avenues of trade and travel under one control, all wealth and power tending more and more to concentrate in a few hands. What sort of a republic will this be in a few years longer if these things go on? The idea would be ridiculous, were it not too sad.

Fellow-citizens, I am talking of things not men. Most irrational would be any enmity towards individuals. How few are there of us who under similar circumstances would not do just what those we speak of as monopolists have done. To put a saddle on our back is to invite the booted and spurred to ride. It is not men who are to blame but the system. And who is to blame for the system, but the whole people? If the lion will suffer his teeth to be pulled and his claws to be pared, he must expect every cur to tease him.

But, fellow-citizens, while it is true that a republican government worth the name cannot exist under the social conditions into which we are passing, it is also true that under a really republican government such conditions could not be.

I do not mean to say we have not had enough government; I mean to say that we have had too much. It is a truth that cannot be too clearly kept in mind that the best government is that which governs least, and that the more a republican government undertakes to do, the less republican it becomes. Unhealthy social conditions are but the result of interferences with natural rights.

There is nothing in the condition of things (it were a libel on the Creator to say so) which condemns one class to toil and want while another lives in wasteful luxury. There is enough and to spare for us all. But if one is permitted to ignore the rights of others by taking more than his share, the others must get less; a difference is created which constantly tends to become greater, and a greedy scramble ensues in which more is wasted than is used.

If you will trace out the laws of the production of wealth and see how enormous are the forces now wasted, if you will follow the laws of its distribution, and see how, by human laws, one set of men are enabled to appropriate a greater or less part of the earnings of the others; if you will think how this robbery of labour degrades the labourer and makes him unable to drive a fair bargain, and how it diminishes production, you will begin to see that there is no necessity for poverty, and that the growing disparity of social conditions proceeds from laws which deny the equal rights of men.

Fellow-citizens, we have just listened again to the Declaration, not merely of national independence, but of the rights of man.

Great was Magna Charta — a beacon of light through centuries of darkness, a bulwark of the oppressed through ages of wrong, a firm rock for Liberty’s feet, as she still strove onward!

But all charters and bills of right, all muniments and titles of Liberty, are included in that simple statement of 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 them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

In these simple words breathes not only the spirit of Magna Charta, but the spirit which seeks its inspiration in the eternal facts of nature — through them speak not only Stephen Langton and John Hampton, but Wat Tyler and the Mad Priest of Kent.

The assertion of the equal rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the assertion of the right of each to the fullest, freest exercise of all his faculties, limited only by the equal right of every other. It includes freedom of person and security of earnings, freedom of trade and capital, freedom of conscience and speech and the press. It is the declaration of the same equal rights of all human beings to the enjoyment of the bounty of the Creator — to light and to air, to water and to land. It asserts these rights as inalienable — as the direct grant of the Creator to each human being, of which he can be rightfully deprived neither by kings nor congresses, neither by parchments nor prescriptions — neither by the compacts of past generations nor by majority votes.

This simple yet all-embracing statement bears the stamp royal of primary truth — it includes all partial truths and co-ordinates with all other truths. This perfect liberty, which, by giving each his rights, secures the rights of all — is order, for violence is the infringement of right; it is justice, for injustice is the denial of right; it is equality, for one cannot have more than his right, without another having less. It is reverence towards God, for irreverence is the denial of His order; it is love towards man, for it accords to others all that we ask for ourselves. It is the message that the angels sang over Bethlehem in Judea — it is the political expression of the Golden Rule!

Like all men who build on truth, the men of the Revolution builded better than they knew. The Declaration of Independence was ahead of their time; it is in advance of our time; it means more than perhaps even he saw whose pen traced it — man of the future that he was and still is! But it has in it the generative power of truth; it has grown and still must grow.

They tore from the draft of the Declaration the page in which Jefferson branded the execrable crime of slavery. But in vain! In those all-embracing words that page was still there, and though it has taken a century, they are, in this respect, vindicated at last, and human flesh and blood can no longer be bought and sold.

It is for us to vindicate them further. Slavery is not dead, though its grossest form be gone. What is the difference, whether my body is legally held by another, or whether he legally holds that by which alone I can live. Hunger is as cruel as the lash. The essence of slavery consists in taking from a man all the fruits of his labour except a bare living, and of how many thousands miscalled free is this the lot? Where wealth most abounds there are classes with whom the average plantation negro would have lost in comfort by exchanging. English villeins of the fourteenth century were better off than English agricultural labourers of the nineteenth. There is slavery and slavery! “The widow,” says Carlyle, “is gathering nettles for her children’s dinner; a perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil de Boeuf, has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and call it rent!”

Fellow-citizens, let us not be deluded by names. What is the use of a republic if labour must stand with its hat off begging for leave to work, if “tramps” must throng the highways and children grow up in squalid tenement houses? Political institutions are but means to an end — the freedom and happiness of the individual; and just so far as they fail in that, call them what you will, they are condemned.

Our conditions are changing. The laws which impel nations to seek a larger measure of liberty, or else take from them what they have, are working silently but with irresistible force. If we would perpetuate the Republic, we must come up to the spirit of the Declaration, and fully recognise the equal rights of all men. We must free labour from its burdens and trade from its fetters; we must cease to make government an excuse for enriching the few at the expense of the many, and confine it to necessary functions. We must cease to permit the monopolisation of land and water by non-users, and apply the just rule, “No seat reserved unless occupied.” We must cease the cruel wrong which, by first denying their natural rights, reduces labourers to the wages of competition, and then, under pretence of asserting the rights of another race, compels them to a competition that will not merely force them to a standard of comfort unworthy the citizen of a free republic, but ultimately deprives them of their equal right to live.

Here is the test: whatever conduces to their equal and inalienable rights to men is good — let us preserve it. Whatever denies or interferes with those equal rights is bad — let us sweep it away. If we thus make our institutions consistent with their theory, all difficulties must vanish. We will not merely have a republic, but social conditions consistent with a republic. If we will not do this, we surrender the Republic, either to be torn by the volcanic forces that already shake the ground beneath the standing armies of Europe, or to rot by slow degrees, and in its turn undergo the fate of all its predecessors.

Liberty is not a new invention that, once secured, can never be lost. Freedom is the natural state of man. “Who is your lord?” shouted the envoys of Charles the Simple to the Northmen who had penetrated into the heart of France. “We have no lord; we are all free men!” was their answer; and so in their time of vigour would have answered every people that ever made a figure in the world. But at some point in the development of every people freedom has been lost, because as fresh gains were made, or new forces developed, they were turned to the advantage of a few.

Wealth in itself is a good, not an evil; but wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, corrupts on one side, and degrades on the other. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and the ultimate condition of any people must be the condition of its lowest class. If the low are not brought up, the high must be brought down. In the long run, no nation can be freer than its most oppressed, richer than its poorest, wiser than its most ignorant. This is the fiat of the eternal justice that rules the world. It stands forth on every page of history. It is what the Sphinx says to us as she sitteth in desert sand, while the winged bulls of Nineveh bear her witness! It is written in the undecipherable hieroglyphics of Yucatan; in the brick mounds of Babylon; in the prostrate columns of Persiopolis; in the salt-sown plain of Carthage. It speaks to us from the shattered relics of Grecian art; from the mighty ruins of the Coliseum! Down through the centuries comes a warning voice from the great Republic of the ancient world to the great Republic of the new. In three Latin words Pliny sums up the genesis of the causes that ate out the heart of the mightiest power that the world ever saw, and overwhelmed a widespread civilisation: “Great estates ruined Italy!”

Let us heed the warning by laying the foundations of the Republic upon the work of the equal, inalienable rights of all. So shall dangers disappear, and forces that now threaten turn to work our bidding; so shall wealth increase, and knowledge grow, and vice, and crime and misery vanish away.

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 every-day 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. It was for more than this that matrons handed the Queen Anne musket from its rest, and that maids bid their lovers go to death!

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. She is to virtue what light is to colour, to wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to the sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of national independence! Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbours as Saul amid his brethren — taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians!

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed among men, yet all progress hath she called forth.

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyptian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage. She hardened them in the desert and made of them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the unity of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Liberty dawned on the Phoenician coast, and ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plough the unknown sea. She broke in partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of ideal beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great King broke like surges against a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power came forth that conquered the world! She glinted from shields of German warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of the night that followed her eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, modern civilisation began, a new world was unveiled; and as Liberty grew so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge and refinement. In the history of every nation we may read the same truth. It was the strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and Agincourt. It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that glorified the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a crowned tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of a mighty tree. It was the energy of ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity, made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth of weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all intellectual vigour dying under the tyranny of the seventeenth century to revive in splendour as Liberty awoke in the eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of the French peasants in the great revolution, basing the wonderful strength that has in our time laughed at disaster.

What Liberty shall do for the nation that fully accepts and loyally cherishes her, the wondrous inventions, which are the marked features of this century, give us but a hint. Just as the condition of the working classes is improved, do we gain in productive power. Wherever labour is best paid and has most leisure, comfort, and refinement, there invention is most active and most generally utilised. Short-sighted are they who think the reduction of working hours would reduce the production of wealth. Human muscles are one of the tiniest of forces; but for the human mind the resistless powers of nature work. To enfranchise labour, to give it leisure and comfort and independence, is to substitute in production mind for muscle. When this is fully done, the power that we now exert over matter will be as nothing to that we shall have.

It has been said that, from the very increase of our numbers, the American Union must in time necessarily break up. I do not believe it. Even now, while the memories of a civil war are fresh, I do not think any part of our people regret that this continent is not bisected by an imaginary line, separating two jealous nations, two great standing armies. If we respect the equal rights of all, if we reduce the operation of our national Government to the purposes for which it is alone fitted, the preservation of the common peace, the maintenance of the common security and the promotion of the common convenience, there can be no sectional interest adverse to unity, and the blessings of the bond that makes us a nation must become more apparent as years roll on.

So far from this Union necessarily falling to pieces from its own weight, it may, if we but hold fast to justice, not merely embrace a continent, but prove in the future capable of a wider extension than we have yet dreamed.

The crazy king, the brutal ministers, the rotten Parliament, the combination of tyranny, folly, corruption and arrogance that sundered the Anglo-Saxon race, is gone, but stronger and stronger grows the influence of the deathless minds that make our common language classic. The republic of Anglo-Saxon literature extends wherever the tongue of Shakespeare is spoken. The great actors who from time to time walk this stage, find their audiences over half the globe; it is to one people that our poets sing; it is one mind that responds to the thought of our thinkers. The old bitternesses are passing away. With us the hatreds, born of two wars, are beginning to soften and die out, while Englishmen, who this year honour us in honouring the citizen whom we have twice deemed worthy of our foremost place, are beginning to look upon our Revolution as the vindication of their own liberties.

A hundred years have passed since the fast friend of American liberty — the great Earl Chatham — rose to make his last appeal for the preservation, on the basis of justice, of that English-speaking empire, in which he saw the grandest possibility of the future. Is it too soon to hope that the future may hold the realisation of his vision in a nobler form than even he imagined, and that it may be the mission of this Republic to unite all the nations of English speech, whether they grow beneath the Northern Star or Southern Cross, in a league which, by insuring justice, promoting peace, and liberating commerce, will be the forerunner of a world-wide federation that will make war the possibility of a past age, and turn to works of usefulness the enormous forces now dedicated to destruction.

And she to whom on this day our hearts turn, our ancient ally, our generous friend — thank God we can say, our sister Republic of France! It was not alone the cold calculations of kingcraft that when our need was direst, helped us with money and supplies, with armies and fleets. The grand idea of the equal rights of man was stirring in France, her pulses were throbbing with the new life that was soon to shake the thrones of Europe as with an earthquake, and French sympathy went out where Liberty made her stand. “They are a generous people,” wrote Franklin, “they do not like to hear of advantages in return for their aid. They desire the glory of helping us.” France has that glory, and more. Let her column Vendome fall, and the memory of the butchers of mankind fade away; the great things that France has done for freedom will make her honoured of the nations, while, with increasing and increasing meaning, rings through the ages the cry with which she turned to the thunder-burst of Valmy: “Live the people!”

Beset by difficulties from which we are happily exempt — on the one side those who dream of bringing back the middle ages, on the other the red spectre; compelled, or in fancy compelled, by the legacy of old hates to maintain that nightmare of prosperity and deadly foe of freedom, a large standing army — France has yet steadily made progress. Italy is one; the great Germanic race at last have unity; as out of a trance, life stirs in Spain; Russia moves as she marches. May it not be France’s to again show Europe the way?

Fellow-citizens: If I have sought rather to appeal to thought than to flatter vanity, it is not that I do not see the greatness and feel the love of my country. Drawing my first breath almost within the shadow of Independence Hall, the cherished traditions of the Republic entwine themselves with my earliest recollections, and her flag symbolises to me all that I hold dear on earth. But for the very love I bear her, for the very memories I cherish, I would not dare come before you on this day and ignore the dangers I see in her path.

If I have not dwelt on her material greatness or pictured her future growth, it is because there rises before me a higher ideal of what this Republic may be than can be expressed in material symbols — an ideal so glorious that, beside it, all that we now pride ourselves on seems mean and pitiful. That ideal is not satisfied with a republic where, with all the enormous gains in productive power, labour is ground down to a bare living and must think the chance to work a favour; it is not satisfied with a republic where prisons are crowded and almshouses are built and families are housed in tiers. It is not satisfied with a republic where one tenant for a day can warn his co-tenants off more of the surface of this rolling sphere than he is using or can use, or compel them to pay him for the bounty of their common Creator; it is not satisfied with a republic where the fear of poverty on the one hand and the sight of great wealth on the other makes the lives of so many such a pitiful straining, keeps eyes to the ground that might be turned to the stars, and substitutes the worship of the Golden Calf for that of the Living God!

It hopes for a republic where all shall have plenty, where each may sit under his vine and fig tree, with none to vex him or make him afraid; where with want shall gradually disappear vice and crime; where men shall cease to spend their lives in a struggle to live, or in heaping up things they cannot take away; where talent shall be greater than wealth and character greater than talent, and where each may find free scope to develop body, mind and soul.

Is this the dream of dreamers? One brought to the world the message that it might be reality. But they crucified him between two thieves.

Not till it accepts that message can the world have peace. Look over the history of the past. What is it but a record of the woes inflicted by man on man, of wrong producing wrong, and crime fresh crime? It must be so till justice is acknowledged and liberty is law.

Some things have we done, but not all. In the words with which an eminent Frenchman closes the history of that great revolution that followed ours: “Liberty is not yet here; but she will come!”

Fellow-citizens, let us follow the star that rose above the cradle of the Republic; let us try our laws by the test of the Declaration. Let us show to the nations our faith in Liberty, nor fear she will lead us astray.

Who is Liberty that we should doubt her; that we should set bounds to her, and say, “Thus far shall thou come and no further!” Is she not peace? is she not prosperity? is she not progress? nay, is she not the goal towards which all progress strives?

Not here; but yet she cometh! Saints have seen her in their visions; seers have seen her in their trance. To heroes has she spoken, and their hearts were strong; to martyrs and the flames were cool!

She is not here, but yet she cometh. Lo! her feet are on the mountains — the call of her clarions ring on every breeze; the banners of her dawning fret the sky! Who will hear her as she calleth; who will bid her come and welcome? Who will turn to her? who will speak for her? who will stand for her while she yet hath need?

Henry George

Note: Some paragraphs here are reprised and developed further in the conclusion to Progress and Poverty, and an edited portion of this is widely reprinted under the title “Ode to Liberty.” See, for example, https://hgarchives.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/an-ode-to-liberty.pdf

1877-07-05 San Francisco Examiner: Mr. George's Oration

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:29:00 +0000

Mr. George’s Oration

California yesterday had somewhat the advantage of the rest of the country in the matter of oratory. The one great light of the East was Senator Blaine, who took advantage of the occasion to formulate his views in opposition to the Southern policy of Mr. Hayes. But California was happy in the possession of three great orators, Senator Newton Booth, Col. Ingersoll, and Mr. Henry George.

The latter may not be an “orator" in the sense that either of the others is; but in the matter of literary expression, and in the quality of his thought upon public questions, we regard hin, as at least their peer. Mr. George’s matter is better than his style of delivery, and the effect of several of the most striking passages of his oration was impaired, if not lost upon the audience, owing to a want of that skill in oratory which enables Ingersoll to make a telling point very often when he enunciates the merest platitudes. Fourth of July orations are usually too lengthy. No matter how good the ideas or their treatment may be, it should be the endeavor of the orator to condense into the smallest possible compass, with justice to his theme, whatever he has to say upon the occasion.

It is related by Plutarch that some one once saw Phocion walking with an air of deep abstraction, and ventured to address him and to ask him what he was thinking about, and that Phocion replied that he was considering how he could shorten what he had to say to the Athenians.

It would be well for our Fourth of July orators who are teeming with thoughts that breathe and consuming with words that burn, to study this little anecdote and consider how much they can say in a little time, and not how little they can say in a long time.

But the oration of Mr. George was good throughout and full of food for thought. It was not a turgid panegyric on the greatness and grandeur of the “nation,” or a recitative of the wonderful achievements of the people, but after giving due consideration to the glories of the past, it indulged in some reflections upon the lessons of the present and the tendencies of the existent conditions of the Republic. We have not space sufficient today to make extended comment upon some points suggested by this oration, but it should be circulated far and wide and read and reflected upon by our people.

1877-07-06 The San Francisco Examiner, on Henry George's July 4th Speech

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:29:00 +0000

The Great Need of the CountrySan Francisco Examiner, July 6, 1877, on Henry George’s Speech

We have already made some reference to the oration delivered by Mr. Henry George in this city on Independence Day, which we listened to at the time of its delivery, but, after reading it, we deem it worthy a more extended review. It was anything but a “Fourth of July oration" in the generic sense that has become attached to the term; and we can fancy the astonishment of those who expected to hear the usual spread-eagle fustian about the glory and greatness of the nation when they were told instead that the Republic is getting to be not much better than a name, and that in the social conditions into which we are drifting it is utterly impossible that republican institutions could be preserved.

Though throughout instinct with patriotism, it was with patriotism of the kind that does not fear to look unpleasant facts in the face, and calling an address like this “agrarian” and “communistic” does not dispose of the facts that were marshalled in such striking form.

It is true, as Mr. George declared, that a few are becoming very rich and many very poor; that republican government is becoming a reproach in our large cities; that a class is growing up who look upon political corruption as legitimate, and that we have already an aristocracy that, both in absolute and relative power, far surpasses the feudal aristocracy. His comparison between Warwick, the king maker, and the simple citizen who stands at the head of the Central Pacific Railway corporation, and his parallel between the influences that in the middle ages compelled every freeman to seek a lord, and those that are now operating to compel every workman to seek an employer, commend themselves with the power of self-evident facts. Let us here quote a paragraph or two:

“In our Constitution is a clause prohibiting the granting of titles of nobility. In the light of the present it seems a good deal like the device of the man who, leaving a big hole for the cat, sought to keep the kitten out by blocking up the little hole. Could titles add anything to the power of the aristocracy that is here growing up? Six hundred liveried retainers followed the great Earl of Warwick to Parliament; but in this young State there is already a simple citizen who could discharge any one of thousands of men from their employment, who controls 2,200 miles of railroad and telegraph, and millions of acres of land; and has the power of levying toll on traffic and travel over an area twice that of the original thirteen States. Warwick was a king-maker. Would it add to the real power of our simple citizen were we to dub him an earl?

“Look at the social conditions which are growing up here in California, Land monopolized; water monopolized; a race of cheap workers crowding in, whose effect upon our own laboring classes is precisely that of slavery; all the avenues of trade and travel under our control, all wealth and power tending more and more to concentrate in a few hands. What sort of a republic will this be in a few years longer if these things go on? The idea would be ridiculous, were it not too sad.”

Reading over these extracts one cannot help reflecting on the lessons they teach. Writers upon social economy tell us that two men working in harmony together can accomplish more than two men working separately; and that when larger numbers work in union their power increases in an accelerating ratio. No one will dispute this; and these who have observed the movements of organisations cannot fail to perceive that those who work unscrupulously have a great advantage over those who are restrained by considerations of honesty and decorum.

In political affairs a well-organised combination of persons actuated only by selfish and ambitious motives may control the action of the people of a party forty times more numerous, and it will always be more than a match for any association of men whose aim is merely to secure good government.

It is the great power of combinations of depraved men which makes all the trouble in a republic. The unorganized mass of the people may be dissatisfied with those who manage public affairs, but generally they are helpless, unless some unusual incident arouses their feelings, and in such a case they are apt to act injudiciously. What is most discouraging in contemplating measures for the purification of politics, is that the people tolerate corruption. Where it is known that an individual who holds or has held a public position, expends money freely, possesses fortune which he cannot have acquired honestly, no censure from neighbors is visited upon him, but in many cases he is more honored on account of his wealth than honest or useful man in obscure circumstances.

In this connection it is worth while to note the cogent observations of Mr. George. In speaking of the complaints of political demoralisation that come from every quarter, he says such complaints “are not because bad men have been elected to office or corrupt men have taken to engineering parties. If bad men are elected to office, if corrupt men run parties, is it not because the conditions are such as to give them the advantage over good and pure men?

It is not the glamour of success that makes the men whose work we celebrate today loom up through the mists of a century like giants. They were giants — some of them so great, that with all our eulogies we do not yet appreciate them; and their full fame must wait for yet another century. But the reason why such intellectual greatness gathered around the cradle of the Republic and guided her early steps, was not that men were greater in that day, but that the people chose their best.

You will hardly find a man that time, of high character and talent, who was not in some way in the public service. This certainly cannot be said now. And it is because power is concentrating, as it must concentrate as our institutions deteriorate. If one of those men were to come back today and were spoken of for high position — say for the United States Senate — instead of Jefferson?

Three questions the knowing ones would ask: ‘Has he money to make the fight?’ ‘Are the corporations for him?’ ‘Can he put up the primaries?’ No less a man than Benjamin Franklin — a man whose fame as a statesman and philosopher is yet growing — a man whom the French Academy, the most splendid intellectual assemblage in Europe, applauded as the modern Solon — represented the city of Philadelphia in the provincial Assembly for ten years, until, as their best man, he was sent to defend the colony in London. Are there not today cities in the land which even a Benjamin Franklin could not represent in a State Assembly unless he put around his neck the collar of a corporation or took his orders from a local ‘ring.’ "

Practically this is offering a premium for official profligacy and dishonesty, and while so low an appreciation of integrity and faithfulness exists, it is folly to hope that any measures can purify the political atmosphere. The great need of this country at the present time is a higher standard of morality; an honest pride which will make men ashamed to be rogues, and which will cause honest men to spurn villainy in ruffles and to despise the feasts of knaves.

Where is the remedy for the debased condition of moral sentiment? We have churches, schools, and associations for improvement in abundance, but with increase of wealth, vice, crime and depravity, abound more and more.

We need a system of education which will make honesty, usefulness and correct habit more honorable than the ostentation of dishonest riches. It is not by easy efforts that the tide of debasement can be stayed; and first we should recognise the fact that our present means of moral culture are sadly defective.

While the facts set forth cannot be denied, we fancy there are few who will care to directly combat the relentless logic with which Mr. George demonstrated that the concentration of wealth and power now going on must result in political corruption, and that a corrupt republican government must become a despotism of the worst kind, when jobbers sell power and “the vile can only be succeeded by the viler.”

Whether Mr. George’s theory be correct or not (and he certainly enjoys the advantage of holding a coherent and consistent one), then can be no doubt that the facts to which he calls attention demand the study of all patriotic men and it is for these who dissent from his views of the remedies to present better ones. It is true as he says, that the way we are taking of building up a republic in California — permitting land and water to be monopolised, and wealth and power to be concentrated into a few hands and then importing a servile race to come into competition with our laboring classes — “would be ridiculous were it not too sad.”

As a piece of literary composition this address was worthy of the occasion, while the striking thoughts with which it is replete are worthy of a much better fate than befalls the average Fourth of July oration — they ought to attract the attention of all thinking men.

Note: many long paragraphs in the original were broken up into shorter ones here.

A 1976 Declaration of Independence

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 19:30:00 +0000

1976 DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT:

1 - THAT all human beings are born with equal rights to the earth, which is the source of their physical needs and the field and opportunity of all their creative enterprises and labors.

2 - THAT the returns to labor in the production of goods and services are the property of the producers.

3 - THAT the land, which is not of human production but is necessary to ail life, can never be man’s property. But in order to secure the right of the producer to his product, a private and exclusive possession of land shall be conferred upon individuals, by society, on equal terms.

4 - THAT society, as a whole, by its presence and activities, gives value to land in various degrees according to where it is situated. This social value belongs to all, and should be collected and distributed annually, in equal shares, to the people so as to give to each an equal economic opportunity.

5 - THAT the present practice of allowing the landowners, by virtue of their land-titles, to keep cost of this socially-created value, gives them an unearned income which, when capitalized for sale, becomes the selling price of land.

6 - THAT this ever-increasing price of land, by fostering land monopoly and land speculation, is the origin of great fortunes and the fundamental cause of unemployment; poverty; over-taxation; inflation; business stagnation; depressions; etc. etc.

WE THEREFORE URGE:

1 - The abolition of all land-titles, to be replaced by leaseholds.

2 - The creation of a national body elected and controlled by the people to administer their common heritage. To collect and distribute the rent of land, annually, in equal, shares to all citizens living in the United States.

3 - The abolition of all indirect taxes on business; labor and labor products, now shifted to the consumers in higher prices.

4 - A direct tax levied on all adult individuals to pay the cost of the services rendered to them by government.

These measures would be the subjects of amendments to the Federal Constitution.

HOW THE FREE LAND SYSTEM WORKS:

1 - There shall be no private ownership of land, but every citizen shall be entitled to all the land needed for a home and any legitimate business, upon payment of a rent based on the superior advantages of the locations. The least advantageous locations shall pay no rent.

2 - The total rent (minus the cost of administration) shall be paid out in equal shares to every adult citizen living in the United States, thus giving to each one an equal opportunity to make an honest living.

3 - There shall be no taxation upon any legitimate business; occupation; goods or services, thus reducing prices and the cost of living.

4 -For the support of government, every adult individual shall be charged for the services he had received. There shall be no public debt.

FROM THIS PLAN THE FOLLOWING MAY BE EXPECTED:

1 - A much lower cost of living.

2 - Free land and a good home for every family.

3 - Unlimited opportunities for new enterprises with an ever-increasing demand for labor, until labor would become scarce.

4 - From then on, labor would remain scarce because, while land is available free and capital can be produced quickly, it takes twenty years or more to produce a laborer.

5 - This would, automatically, bring the wages of labor and the profits of capital to the full value of their respective contributions. And this without labor disputes and strikes, since they would no longer have to share their production with the owners of the earth.

6 - It would insure an equitable distribution of wealth and bring to an end the recurring cycles of inflation and business stagnation.

7 - It would induce a reduction of the functions and cost of government at all levels.

8 - It would pave the way for the undertaking of other much-needed reforms such as money; banking; political; labor; business; and others.

ALL CITIZENS who want a world of Peace and Plenty are invited to Join: THE FREE LAND LEAGUE Box 908 250 58th St., North St. Petersburg, Fla. 33710 There are no membership dues and no obligation whatsoever. WRITE NOW! RIGHT NOW!

Mr. Gaston Haxo is the founder of The Free Land League. He has been active in the Henry George movement for many years and has written several books on the subject. On the Board of Directors of the League are two former Trustees of the H.G.S., N.J. - C.D. Reinhart and Stewart D. Woolley.

The GARGOYLE is pleased to publish this Special Bicentennial Issue with the sincere hope that readers will seriously consider the proposed -1976 Declaration of Independence, set forth herewith.

source: https://hgarchives.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/july-1976.pdf

The Question Before the People, Henry George's election-year speech, San Francisco, 1876-08-15

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 20:30:00 +0000

144 years, another presidential election year — and weeks after the centennial.

THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PEOPLE.What is the Real Issue in the Presidential Campaign?

A SPEECH BY HENRY GEORGE,

BEFORE THE TILDEN AND HENDRICKS CENTRAL CLUB,

AT DASHAWAY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO, ON THE EVENING OF AUGUST 15th, 1876.

The Meeting being called to order, the Hon. THOMAS P. RYAN, President of the Club, came forward and introduced Mr. HENRY GEORGE, who spoke as follows:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: We are coming to another Presidential election under circumstances which ought to give a fresh impulse to patriotic feeling. We have just entered upon a new century of the Republic the Republic one and indivisible. Over the whole vast territory held by over forty-five millions of people the same flag has been given to the breeze, the same anniversaries kept, the same traditions recalled. The thrill of Lexington, the joy of Bunker Hill, the defiant thunder of Moultrie have again swept through the land, and out again with all the added meaning of a century has rung the announcement of our independence. With eyes so fixed on the old beacons; with faces so turned towards the august shapes that loom through the mists of a hundred years, cold must be the heart that has not felt the prejudices of section and the surviving animosities of civil strife melting in the glow of a patriotism that knows but one common country.

Can we not, should we not, put away from us in this Centennial year all the rancor of party feeling? Can we not, should we not, make this Presidential election in fact, what it is in theory, a great council of the nation, to which we come not as the adherents of rival factions, but in the temper of men with mutual bonds and common interests, counciling with each other as to what is best for all? For this election means much more than the choice of an Executive. We have not simply to say what man shall govern, but what ideas shall govern; not merely who shall take the helm, but in what direction the Ship of State shall be steered.

Remembering this, the political contest is lifted above the low plain of denunciation and demagoguism, and becomes not a contest for spoils in which the people are simply permitted to choose which gang shall plunder them; but a solemn momentous inquiry, demanding from each voter a conscientious judgment.

Now, however much we may differ on minor questions it seems to me that the great body of the American people must find common ground on one thing the desire to restrain political corruption and to reduce the public burdens. It is to this class that I wish to address myself.

If one party avowed itself in favor of reform and the other party avowedly opposed it, the citizen who conscientiously wished to cast his vote for reform would be in no perplexity. But as is always the case, both parties ask the suffrage of the voter with the name of reform upon their lips. Which shall we believe?

Why accept the declarations of either? You may as well set it down as an axiom that reform, simply as reform and purely for the sake of reform, you will never get from any party. Whenever any set of politicians start a party which has no other avowed object than that of reform, you may safely put them down as demagogues; for if they are not, be sure that the moment the party has any show of success, the demagogues will be found leading it with louder bawls for reform than anybody else.

The only philosophical way to look for reform is to apply to politics the same common sense method you would apply to any affair of every day life. If there is any difference at all between our parties, they must represent different policies of government. If the domain of law extend, as it surely does, to the mental and moral as well as to the physical universe, every evil of which we are conscious must have its antecedent cause. Ascertain what the policies represented by these parties are, trace back to their causes the evils you would have reformed, and then seeing how the policy of each party would affect the causes of these evils, you can tell which party is most likely to give reform, as certainly as you could tell whether irrigation or drainage would be best for a piece of land which you knew was too wet or too dry.

Parties and Party Principles.

In endeavoring to fix with certainty what these parties of ours mean that is to say, what diverse policies of government they represent, let me ask your attention if I take a somewhat wide range. Simple as the question may seem, there are many Democrats who do not appear to have the slightest idea of what Democracy really is, while there are many, very many Republicans who know as much for what they are voting as the firemen in the hold of a steamer know which way the vessel is going. Party names are frequently misleading; party platforms are proverbially framed to catch votes, and when we remember that a party line simply divides by two all the various opinions of a great community, we must expect to find on each side of it all sorts of diversities and divergences. In addition to this we are just now in a peculiar position. A question which for a whole generation has thrust itself with more and more violence into our politics, until it culminated in an appeal to actual force, has been settled. The old issues have gone, and party lines have shifted, while many people seem as yet unaware of it.

But, however we may be perplexed, if we take individual opinions or isolated acts, as to what is the real difference between the parties, or whether they differ from each other at all, if we extend our survey to a view of them as wholes, we shall be able, clearly enough, to discern their distinctive features. For great parties do not exist by accident. They can not be gotten up to order, as our friends of the late Independent party have found out. They must represent more than the desire of certain individuals for power, or they could not cohere. They must have certain principles on which, in spite of differences of opinion on other matters, the members generally agree, and on which they generally differ from the other party in short, they must have a reason for existence, or they would not exist.

Of course, when I speak of the principles of a party, I mean its distinctive principles that in which it differs from its adversary, not that in which it agrees for it is only as to these differences that parties exist. It is important to notice this, for it is a favorite device of party managers to proclaim themselves champions of principles upon which the people are substantially agreed. Thus, in England, long after the strife between Catholic and Protestant had ceased, you would find a party proclaiming itself the peculiar champion of the Protestant succession, when no one dreamed of attacking the Protestant succession; thus in this country you will find a party proclaiming that its peculiar mission is to preserve the Union, when there does not exist a sane man in all the land who has the slightest idea of attempting to break up the Union.

These feigned issues or false issues, are the chosen field of the demagogue, who always strives to hide the distinctive features of his party under features which are not distinctive, but generally popular. They are the great source of confusion and delusion to superficial observers, who frequently run away with the idea that a question must be in issue because there is so much fuss made about it, or else come to the conclusion that there is no real difference between parties after all.

But, if we look closely, we will always find that there is an essential difference between parties. The unthinking may be deluded into voting upon dead issues or false issues; but the real struggle of parties is always over the live issue made by the application of their distinctive principles to the affairs of the time.

Now, since the slavery question is settled and out of our politics, what are the questions of the time? Evidently, the general questions of the conduct of government, and the real differences between parties must be as to these.

The Two Great Parties of Every Country.

Now, wherever we look, in every country, in every time, which shows the first stir of political life, we see two great parties, which answer to the sweeping generalization that has divided all mankind politically into adherents of the rival Houses of Have and Want that is to say, the party of moneyed interests and the party of the poorer classes; the parties of capital and of labor; of aristocracy and democracy; of conservatism and progress; the party which attaches most importance to the strength of the government and that which looks most to the freedom of the individual.

As the natural political division is a dual one, so here is the natural line on which the permanent parties in every country inevitably divide. Here are the Right and Left of the French Assembly, the Cavalier and Roundhead of the England of Charles I; the Tory and Whig of the England of George III; the Conservative and Liberal of the England of Victoria.

These parties frequently change and oftentimes exchange their names; they often seem to a certain extent to exchange membership — sometimes coronet and mitre glitter in the democratic van, as when what was quaintly termed “the army of God and Holy Church” wrested from John the Great Charter of Anglo-Saxon Liberties; sometimes, even the Crown itself, as when Kings backed by Commons destroyed feudal privileges; sometimes the aristocratic party finds its strongest bulwark in the prejudices of the common people; sometimes the moneyed power avails itself successfully of the ignorance of the laboring classes. At times these parties seem to superficial observers even to have exchanged characters the party which is really conservative trying to pull down; the party which is really progressive trying to conserve; yet in any normal condition of things, by whoever looks to essentials, the identity of these two great parties can always be traced.

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “I perceive from your childish jealousy of the power of the Crown, that you are a vile Whig. The crown has not power enough.”

“Sir,” the sturdy Briton would say, were he an American of today “Sir; I perceive from your childish jealousy of the interference of the Federal Government that you are a vile Democrat. It is the pernicious doctrine of States’ Rights, not the power of the general Government, that the country has to fear.”

The Two Permanent American Parties.

Immediately upon the acknowledgment of our independence, these two natural political divisions showed themselves in the United States as the Federal and anti-Federal parties, the one anxious that the new Government should be a strong one the other looking with suspicion upon all concentration of power. Out of their clash and through their compromises grew that wondrous instrument, the Constitution of the United States itself the most striking proof of how the early republic called her best brain into her service; an instrument which, when we consider its beautiful adaptations, so strong yet so elastic, so compact yet all-embracing, so nicely poised, so well guarded, seems, looking at the times and the lack of previous experience, like the highest act of constructive statesmanship.

The Constitution adopted, we find these two parties fighting over its interpretation the party of strong government and aristocratic tendencies struggling to gain by strained constructions what had been lost in the debates of the Convention, and the party of individual rights and democratic tendencies struggling for strict construction and the curtailment of government to necessary functions. Over funding system and national bank, internal improvements and tariff, and countless minor questions, under varying names, but with clearly drawn lines, they waged the battle, until the conflict over slavery, culminating in civil war, sunk in momentous issue the questions of normal times.

The war ended, the slavery question settled, thank God, forever, what parties do we find arise? What but those that any political philosopher might have predicted would arise? It is the two old parties the two natural parties which stand fronting each other, again to struggle for the power of shaping the destinies of the Republic!

Be not deceived by the clamor upon false issues; be not confused by finding in the two parties individual opinions or acts that seem very much alike. Look below the froth of the surface and the eddies of the border for the real direction of the opposing tides. Search underneath the words of platforms for their real meaning; consider what are the principles upon which each proposes to conduct the government, and what is the real difference? You will find one party endeavoring to extend the power and functions of the General Government, the other supporting the rights of the States; one enacting and maintaining a tariff for protection, the other advocating a tariff for revenue; one party which has the support of nearly all the corporations and great moneyed interests of the country, the other naturally distrusted by them. The more carefully you look, the more clearly will you see that the distinctive features of the two parties which must divide the suffrages of the American people in this election are the distinctive features of the two old historic parties that they are in fact the same parties.

The Two Great American Party Leaders

The two great men who were the first leaders of American parties may justly be considered their best exponents; and if a great party can be personified by a man, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson may stand forth to all time as the personification of the conflicting ideas expressed in our two permanent parties. The one — pure in character, patriotic in purpose and with mental abilities which must excite the admiration even of those who differ most from his political philosophy — looked back over the history of the world and saw every attempt at self-government end in anarchy or despotism. With profound convictions of the inability of the people to govern themselves, he regarded the British Constitution, as it then existed, as the best expression of human wisdom, and to that model he aimed to conform our polity. Looking for means to forced interpretations of the Constitution, he sought to build up a strong Central Government, which, by the manifold nature of its functions, the elaborateness of its administration, the number of its employees and the amount of its revenues and expenditures, should dwarf the relative importance of the States, and become not a mere creature for specific ends, but a power in the land. By means of national banks, a national debt and funding system a network of internal improvements and a scheme of protective duties, bounties and subsidies, he strove to intertwine the interests of capital with the government, and thus build up the counterpoise to democracy which he believed necessary, and which was supplied in the English system by an hereditary executive, a landed aristocracy, an Established Church, the rotten boroughs and a vast debt.

The other great statesman, whose pen traced our Declaration of Independence, looked with fervent faith upon the possibilities of the future. The failure of all previous attempts at self-government he traced to a lack of democracy, not to an over-plus of it, and above all things he dreaded the insidious inroads of the aristocratic principle. He desired to localize government as much as possible, that it might be kept close to the people and within their control, to reduce the powers and functions and revenues and expenses of the General Government to the minimum which would enable it to perform its necessary functions, and to keep the money power out of politics by leaving everything regarding the investment of capital and the development of industry to the voluntary principle.

These two conflicting ideas can be traced broadly and clearly in the principles and actions of the two great parties all through our political history. The one the party of centralized government, of an elaborate administration, of a protective tariff, of national banks and favored corporations the party of the money power. The other, the party of States Rights and strict construction; of simple government, and free trade the party of the people.

The Genealogy of our Parties

The genealogy is clear. The anti-Federal party became first the Republican and then the Democratic party. The Federal party became the Whig party and then disappeared from sight to re-appear as the Republican party. I do not mean to say that this was the original aim of the Republican party. On the contrary, its very name was chosen to typify the revival in it of the Democracy of Jefferson, and, called into existence by the growing agitation of the slavery question, it drew from both parties without respect to what may be called the normal issues. But the Democratic party, maintaining its organization while that of the Whig party had been abandoned, it became an easy matter to impress the Whig economic policy upon the new party while the popular attention was fixed on the struggle, and the moneyed interests and protected classes having once secured the organization, have kept it.

In spite of the change in names, in circumstances, and in battle cries, were those intellectual giants of our early prime to arise from their graves tonight, can you doubt that they would know their own? That Alexander Hamilton would take his stand with the party bearing the name of that which he used to oppose; and that Thomas Jefferson, though in his lifetime he called himself a Republican, would find his place in the ranks of the Democracy?

It is not with an irrelevant purpose that I have thus sought to fix the character and trace the genealogy of the parties contending in this campaign for the possession of the Government. I wish to show clearly that the real issue between them is not upon any question growing out of the war, and has nothing to do with unionism or secession. When we see that these parties are not things of today, but have existed since the beginning of our republic; when we see that under changing names and varying circumstances they have always exhibited the same general character, we see that their real differences are permanent ones; that they represent two diverse policies of government, between which, whether wittingly or unwittingly, each voter in this election must choose.

And now that we have seen what these two parties are, and what is the policy each represents, let us turn to the evils we would have reformed.

Corruption and its Causes

It is not necessary for me to attempt to paint the state of political corruption to which we have been reduced.

We all see it; we all feel it. It is the dark background to our national rejoicing, the skeleton which has stood by us at the feast. Our Fourth of July orators do not proclaim it; our newspapers do not announce it; we hardly whisper it to one another, but we all know, for we all feel, that beneath all our centennial rejoicing there exists in the public mind today a greater doubt of the success of Republican institutions than has existed before within the memory of our oldest man. And not without reason. Before the storm the stout tree may bend yet not break. The howling winds may tear from it branch after branch; the lightning of heaven may rive it in twain, yet if it be strong of heart and sound of root it shall send up new shoots to hail the sun again in greener glory. But when the worms attack it; when a black mass of rottenness is eating out its heart, and slimy things are cutting through its roots, though the air be soft and the winds be hushed, though to the outward eye everything proclaims the strength and majesty of the monarch of the forest, we know the tree is doomed!

We are told that these evils are the natural results of the war. But I deny that they are in any sense the results of the war, except as the war has been used as a cover under which to rivet a false policy on the country while keeping the people still voting on war issues. Did the Mexican war bear any such fruit? Did the war of 1812? The close of the Revolution left the nation in a far worse condition than the close of the Civil War with resources more severely strained, with credit more impaired; with currency more disordered, and with a government yet to create instead of a government which had come intact through the severest ordeal. Yet, did any such corruptions as those which now disgrace us mark the period following the Revolution?

That war is in many ways demoralizing, it is true. But war waged for a high idea does not transmute patriotism into jobbery, statesmanship into demagoguism, virtue into corruption. On the contrary, it calls forth the highest traits of character. Who does not feel that his faith in the patriotism, in the spirit, in the endurance and devotion of the American people is stronger for what in the war they showed themselves capable of doing and suffering? What grander spectacle has history ever presented than that afforded by the uprising of the nation when the first shot which tore the flag showed there was real danger that the Union might be rent in two? “They fight but for an idea,” our foreign critics said. Yet for that idea men marched to death by hundreds of thousands; the greatest exactions, the heaviest burdens, were uncomplainingly borne; wealth was poured out as though it were water, and poverty stinted itself to send some little comfort to the boys in the field, or provide some little luxury for the wounded in the hospital. Has the war made our patriotism cold; our love of country less? Has it dampened our faith in the American people? Ah; we know now, if we never knew before, that it is not idle pageantry that makes our cities bloom with flags as in the anniversary we have just kept. Bunting and calico typify something as real as the breeze that shakes their folds. For the idea which that flag expresses every stripe has been wet with blood; for the love of it every star has been dimmed with tears!

And, gentlemen, if it is not yet here, the time will come, when our children will look back with mournful pride, not only to the devotion which maintained the Union, but to the fortitude with which the Southern cause was sustained when in the glories of a common blood will be included the splendid courage of the South, as well as the heroic determination of the North, as we include in our heritage of pride the fiery charge of Rupert’s Cavaliers with the immovable steadfastness of Roundhead pikes — as we recognize in the dogged bravery with which in the face of the hail of death that line of scarlet and steel moved up the slope of Bunker Hill the same high spirit that from the slender earthworks on the crest hurled it back!

Many things the war may teach us, but not to distrust the manly qualities of our people. Many are the lessons which we may read in its million graves, but not the lesson that the virtues of our blood have run out. The high qualities which the blending of Celt and Saxon, Norman and Dane, gave to a breed of men that have yet to know defeat except from their own blood; the high qualities which have made our race the standard bearer of human liberty; the high qualities which are making the language of one little island the universal tongue of the modern world, are as strong, as steadfast, as ever!

The object of telling you that these things are due to the war is to induce you to quietly rest in the belief that they will remedy themselves in time. But if this were the case these evils would be growing less and less apparent. On the contrary, during the eleven years that have elapsed since the war, has not corruption been growing more and more flagrant; the complaints of labor louder and louder?

No; it is not the war that is responsible for all this. It is the policy upon which the Government has been administered. Our public service is corrupt because the natural result of our laws has been to engender corruption; our industry is oppressed because our laws have prevented its natural development; the masses are becoming poorer and the few richer, because the whole tendency of our system of finance and taxation is to make $100,000 more profitable in the hands of one man than in the hands of a hundred. These results are not accidents; they are not surprises. They are the legitimate workings of natural laws — of laws as fixed and far-reaching as that which drives this earth in its orbit round the sun.

If we were to take particular by particular the manifestations of corruption and industrial depression, and trace them up from effect to cause, we would find ultimately the source of all of which we complain in the policy upon which our government has been administered; but inasmuch as we shall get a quicker and more comprehensive view, let me substitute the deductive for the inductive form of inquiry, and trace that policy downward, from generals to particulars from cause to effect.

If we analyze this policy we will find it the same as that which I ascribed to the Hamiltonian party. A strong and centralized government, the use of the power of taxation to foster special interests and forms of industry, the engaging by the General Government in a system of internal improvements, and the creation and providing for of great corporations.

How Centralization Fosters Corruption.

Now, a strong government means an expensive government. It means a large army and navy; heavier taxes, more officers, more contractors, more stipendiaries of various kinds — that is to say, an increase in the class interested in heavy expenditures; an increase in the trading capital which can be used to effect nominations and carry elections, and by thus giving to those who will use such agencies an advantage over those who will not, a constant tendency to supplant statesmen by corrupt manipulators, and to make our representatives the representatives of special interests and not of the people.

Now, what does centralization mean? It means the removal of power further from the people, the weakening of the responsibility which the representative feels towards his constituents, the distraction of public attention, the lessening of the power of public opinion. Centralization is the great enemy of republican government; where it passes a certain point republicanism becomes impossible. The reason why our fathers were able so easily to establish a republican form of government is, that they were used to local self-government; the reason why a republic, except in name, is impossible in France, is, that her people are used to a centralized administration. See how centralization ties our hands in this Chinese matter, compelling us like the people of a subject province, to sue a power three thousand miles away, to protect us from an evil, from which we ought to be able to protect ourselves.

But there is an obvious instance of how centralization can debauch and corrupt. The carpet-baggers in the Southern States, maintained in power against the will of the people of those States by the central authority at Washington, and feeling no responsibility, except to that power, to which they refer their quarrels as a Roman Proconsul in a distant province would have referred to the Emperor, have not only made the local governments in those States the most profligate ever known on this continent, but have sent to Congress characterless adventurers, owing no responsibility, to make laws for the North as well as the South — to vote taxes on you and me at the bidding of any one who would bribe them. Better far, for our own sakes, at least, had we denied to the South all representation, than to have introduced into Congress this utterly irresponsible, this corrupt and corrupting element.

How “Protective” Taxes Foster Corruption.

So much for what we may call the political side of this policy. Let us now look at the economic side. Under this policy the raising of revenue is considered as only one, and that the least important, of the ends of taxation. The other and most important end is the enhancement of the profits of certain sets of capitalists, or, as the system is called by its advocates, with a most sublime reliance upon the stupidity of the American working classes, the “protection of American industry.” This profligate, impoverishing and destructive system was exploded by Adam Smith one hundred years ago, and has been condemned by the American people whenever the question was fairly submitted to them, and except to point out its results as pertinent to the question we are considering, I shall have nothing to say of it further than, if it be correct, then every new invention which facilitates communication or diminishes its cost, is a public calamity, and that instead of a line of custom houses on our seaboard we should be infinitely richer and more prosperous were each State an independent nation with a line of Custom Houses around its own border.

But how this policy has wished to corrupt the Government it is easy to see:

Of the thousands of articles upon which we levy import duties, there is hardly a single one upon which the tax has not been imposed with more or less reference to the enhancement of private interests. All the manufacturers, importers and dealers in these articles have thus had a constant direct moneyed interest in influencing the action of Congress; for there has not been a session since 1860, when the Morrill tariff was adopted, in which there has not been more or less tinkering or attempted tinkering with the tariff; and there will not be, so long as this Protective system shall last. The agents of these interests have filled, and still fill, the lobbies of Congress, where their money has gone by the million to bribe and debauch, to say nothing of the contributions they have made to pack Conventions and carry elections. But this is only one side of it. While the enactment and maintenance of these taxes has engendered corruption, once imposed they have become a constant incentive to corruption of another set of officials. The high taxes thus imposed by corruption have offered such enormous premiums for evasion that all the horde of revenue officers, all the spies and informers, and seizures and moities, have not been able to prevent it. While on the one hand officers of the Government have been habitually corrupted to impose taxes, on the other hand officers of the Government have been habitually corrupted to wink at their evasion. While the Iron and Steel Association, and the Eastern wool and cotton manufacturers, and the Ohio salt men and all the countless combinations for the imposition and maintenance of taxes upon the American people keep their agents at Washington to sustain the tariff, the largest firms in the country are engaged in smuggling, by the bribery of the Custom House officers and the making of false oaths. All this not only corrupts the Government through all its branches (for corruption spreads like contagious disease), but it directly corrupts the people themselves. The honest is driven out of business, while the unscrupulous waxes rich.

So with internal taxes. It is not only a matter of reason, but experience, that such a tax as we levy upon whisky cannot be collected, and that a smaller tax would yield a greater revenue; yet this tax is kept up at the instigation of the whisky rings, who find in it a prohibition to every honest distiller. The tax is levied on the people, but, instead of passing into the treasury, millions are diverted into the hands of corrupt combinations to enrich law-breakers, to suborn witnesses, to corrupt public officers, to maintain venal newspapers, to pack conventions, and buy votes at the polls. The people are taxed to pay the expenses of corrupting those who are intrusted with making the laws and those who are intrusted with enforcing them.

How Favored Corporations Foster Corruption.

It is hardly necessary for me to more than allude to the part, in producing the present reign of corruption, which the policy towards corporations, upon which the Government, as now administered by the Republican party, has had. Look at the National Banks. Used as we have been to banks which confined themselves to legitimate banking functions, it is unnecessary to tell any Californian that for the existence of these institutions, as banks of issue, there is not the slightest use or excuse. Yet, see them lending the Government three hundred millions at a high rate of interest and borrowing back two hundred and seventy millions without interest at all. Is it strange that they should have money to spend in politics, and that, with their enormous capital and power over business, they should be largely represented in Congress?

Look at the railroad companies, for whom the Government has been made a special Providence, and the lands of the people and the taxes gathered from the people an endowment fund. See these companies sending their attorneys to sit in Congress in the name of the people. See them using the spoil of Credit Mobilier and Contract and Finance Company to corrupt whoever is capable of corruption and to keep out of office whoever is not. See them in your State politics: buying legislators like sheep, debauching parties, and even interfering in county elections. Look at the Pacific Mail Steamship Company spending a million to buy from Congress a grant of half a million dollars a year of the people’s money, and contributing $25,000 as its quota towards carrying the single State of California for the Republican ticket. These things are not accidents; they are the natural, the inevitable results of admitting the principle that Government may, for any purpose, or on any pretense, enrich corporations at the public expense. The corruption which we have seen follows the admission of this principle, as thunder follows lightning or heat results from fire.

And, now, putting all these things together, and remembering how corruption engenders corruption, how the vast extension of the sphere and objects of government which this policy implies gives temptation and opportunity to corruption, and how the constant tendency of the introduction of moneyed influences into politics is, to keep the best talent and the highest character out of the public service and to put in the mediocre and the dishonest, have I not sufficiently accounted for the reign of corruption of which you all see the indications?

The Causes of Business Stagnation and Industrial Depression

And as corruption springs directly and necessarily from the policy upon which the government has been administered, so does the business stagnation and the industrial depression of which complaints have become chronic. Governments have no purse of Fortunatus in which to dip. There is but one source from which all the expenses of this costly and elaborate government can be defrayed; there is but one fund from which can be drawn the spoils of corruption, the plunder of rings, the gains which make corporations more powerful than the State. Every cent that is spent, every cent that is wasted, every cent that is stolen, comes from the earnings of the people. To provide for this extravagance, to supply for this waste, to build up these great fortunes, the farmer rises early and works late; the miner delves thousands of feet underground; young girls and tender children stand all day in the whirr and clash of the factory looms; the mechanic denies himself a holiday; the laborer’s family are pent up in the squalor of a tenement house. Yes; and prostitutes walk the streets, and children grow up ignorant and debased, and brain and muscle that ought to go to the enrichment of society are turned to prey upon it!

The Federal tax-gatherer is everywhere. In each exchange by which labor is converted into commodities, there he is standing between buyer and seller to take his toll. Whether it be a match or a locomotive, a dishcloth or a dress, a new book or a glass of beer, the tax-gatherer steps in. He says to Labor as the day’s toil begins: “Ah! you want to do a little work for yourself and family. Well, first work an hour to pay the interest on the national debt and defray the necessary expenses of government; and then another hour for the national banks and subsidized corporations, and the expenses of governing the Southern States! Then an hour for the army and the navy and the contractors thereof; then an hour for the manufacturers of New England, and an hour for the iron millionaires of Pennsylvania; half an hour for the Marine Corps and the various comfortable little bureaus, and then after you have done a little work for your State government and a little work for your county and municipal government, and a little work for your landlord then you can have the rest of the day to work for yourself and family.

Do I exaggerate? Well, gentlemen, go home; consult with your wives; figure up as closely as you can your average daily purchases of all sorts: ascertain as nearly as you can how much the cost of each article is enhanced by the tax upon it, and by the profit which each dealer through whose hands it passes must make on the tax, and then you will be able to see how much I exaggerate!

How the Policy of our Government Shackles Labor

This policy upon which our government is administered, this protective and fostering policy which uses the taxes levied upon the people as a means to enrich favored capitalists and build up monopolies, is like a great ravening beast let loose into a grain field. It is not so much what it eats as what it tramples down and destroys. The ligatures which it has wound around every limb of the industrial body have impeded the circulation that is essential to health. Instead of the constant action and reaction which maintain the healthy equilibrium and harmonious working of all the parts, we have fever here and atrophy there. Why is is that hundreds of thousands of men stand idle in all the great centres of industry; that all branches of business complain; that mills run on half time or are closed for months in the year; that every great city on the other side of the mountains has to set up its soup-houses in winter, to deal out in degrading and demoralizing charity the means of sustenance for which the recipients would gladly work?

The favored interests for whose ostensible benefit this restrictive system is maintained and the short-sighted fools who are their dupes, talk about over-production. How can there be over-production when everybody wants something which some one else would be glad to make? These hundreds of thousands of unemployed men include all trades and avocations. They all suffer for the things which the labor of the others could give them; they are all anxious in return for those things to exchange their own labor. Over-production! Why, gentlemen, is there too much coal when people shiver in winter? too much clothing when people go threadbare? too many shoes when people go barefoot? too many houses when people are crowded together like pigs in a sty? too much food when people starve? It is not overproduction; it is, that the oppressive burdens laid on industry by government have so shackled and enervated it that it cannot make the exchanges which, under the modern system, of a minute division of labor, are necessary to keep labor employed.

Thanks to the fact that we are engaged in skimming the cream off of what is probably the richest country, all things considered, the world ever saw, and to the further fact that we are so situated as to have escaped the protective effect of the tariff, we of California have not felt the effects of this Government policy so much as our brothers of the older States; but there is one way in which we may see how American industry has been crushed by bad laws. Cross to Oakland on Sunday when the vessels in port have their ensigns set, and see from every three out of four of the deepwater vessels in our bay the British flag flying. Here in this bay, which used to be crowded with the graceful forms of American ships, an American ship is almost a rarity. Sixteen years ago American ships were more common in Melbourne and Calcutta, in Shanghae and Rio, ay, even in the Liverpool docks, than they are today in this American Bay. Talk about the Alabama and Shenandoah having produced this result! Why, you might as well talk about the Gaspee and Shannon, the Orders in Council or the French Spoliation. Ever since the war, our ship-builders and shipowners have been begging for a release from Protective taxation, that they might once more build ships and sail them, not alone for our own carrying trade, but for that of the world. But Congress has persistently refused. The “Protective” policy must be carried out if it sweeps, as it surely will, the American flag off the high seas, except when carried by a subsidized vessel.

It is not worth while to talk about the currency question. Some time or other I would like to show you how through this juggle of currency the people have been fleeced. But for us to be now quarreling over the currency would be like starving men consuming their time in quarreling over the kind of dishes in which they would eat their food when they got it, without taking any means to get food. One homely illustration will suffice. The other day the Government advertised that it would resume specie payment in San Francisco to the extent of exchanging $50.000 in silver for $50,000 in greenbacks. Our richest money lender hired a lot of fellows to stand before the door of the Sub-Treasury all night. The net result was that he made the difference — that he, this man, who without chick or child is rich enough to buy out a good sized town, is so much the richer, and that we are so much the poorer. For when a man gets richer without creating wealth, somebody must be getting poorer. Now, fellow-citizens, this is but a sample of the whole financial policy which has been pursued since the war — its whole aim and end has been to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and so long as the Government is run in the interest of the money power, this will be the case. The first step to financial reform is to wrest control from that power.

The Fault One of Policy not of Men.

Now, fellow-citizens, this is the policy upon which our government has been and is being conducted. Is it any wonder that it has produced corruption and impoverishment? What could it produce, what can it produce, but corruption and impoverishment? So long as smoke ascends, as water runs down hill; so long as it remains true that the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts, such a policy must produce such results. Do men expect grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Why, then, under a governmental policy which offers every temptation to dishonesty, and holds out every reward to corruption, should we hear this prating about men, as though the accident of who held the offices was the cause of the disease. Fellow-citizens, I have not time to defend President Grant, but he needs defense from his own professed friends, who, after endorsing him in their platform, are now, like the high priests of old, laying their hands upon him and sending him out into the wilderness, a scapegoat for all the sins of the party.

Grant has enough sins to answer for; but to hold him responsible for all this corruption would be about as sensible as to hold him responsible for the war. It is the system, not the man. It is the policy upon which the Government has been administered, not the individuals in whose hands the administration has been carried on.

And the question presented to you in this election is simply this: Shall this policy be continued or shall it be reversed? That is the issue. Whatever else is talked about is merely the prating of people too blind to see what is really involved in this election, or the clap-trap of demagogues to draw your attention from the main point. On the one side stands the Republican party representing the policy that has corrupted politics and fettered industry; on the other side stands the Democratic party, representing a policy that would tend to reduce temptations to corruption and make industry free.

Now, fellow-citizens, your vote at this election must be a choice between these two policies of government. As one of the great jury on whose verdict hangs the future of the country, this question is put to each one of you. You cannot evade it; you cannot qualify it; your answer must be either this or that.

The Appeal to Prejudice.

But you will be told that in voting the Democratic ticket you will be voting with ex-Rebels! Well, what of it? Would you hesitate to trade with ex-Rebels? Would you hesitate to profess a religious creed to which your conscience impelled you because ex-Rebels also professed it? If our common country were invaded by hostile armies and our coasts menaced with hostile fleets, would you hesitate to take up arms in her defence because ex-Rebels would also be found in the ranks? Why, then, when you find being rivetted on the country a policy which is debauching government and people, throttling industry and pauperizing labor, should you hesitate to vote against it because ex-Rebels will also vote against it? Must you submit to be taxed as you are taxed, from the fear that if you vote to abolish these taxes you will vote with ex-Rebels?

You are told that the Democratic party cannot be trusted. Fellow citizens, pause a moment and see what this involves. If it be true, it is a confession of the absolute failure of republican government, and the organs of the aristocratic party in England are right when they point to us and say that we must be content to see our government sink from low to lower depths of corruption, absolutely powerless to prevent it. What effect would it have upon a dishonest cashier to know that, no matter how much he stole, his employer was afraid to discharge him? And what effect would such an avowal have upon the employer’s fortunes?

Fellow-citizens, unlike the men who address such arguments to you, I give you credit for ordinary intelligence. It is not necessary, then, for to me tell you that party lines are not drawn on moral character, and that it as ridiculous to say that all the honesty is in one party and all the dishonesty in the other, as to say that all Presbyterians shave their chins or that all Methodists wear red flannel underclothes. Nor is it, I think, necessary for me to tell you that while all parties contain honorable men and unscrupulous men, the constant tendency of the working of party machinery is to give to the unscrupulous the party management; a tendency only restrained by the necessity of getting popular support at the polls. As competition between sellers keeps down prices to a fair profit, so does the competition between parties keep out of office flagrant dishonesty. To say that the Democratic party, if it got power, would assume the Rebel debt, permit the negroes to be abused or cut off the pensions of Union soldiers, is to say that the Democrats, the moment they got power, would be so disgusted with it that they would take the surest means to put their opponents in at the next election. To say that the Republican party, no matter what it does must be continued in power from fear of the Democrats, is to give notice to the rogues in the Republican party that they may steal as much as they can and put in office who they please.

But, fellow-citizens, I almost feel as if I were degrading myself and insulting your intelligence, by stopping to reply to such arguments. They are on a par with the stories which the Chinese literati tell the common people about the missionaries being anxious to get children into the Mission schools in order to get their eyes and livers to make charms; on a par with the stories which the slave owners at the beginning of the war used to tell the negroes, that the Federals wanted to get possession of them to sell them in Cuba. The Chinamen sometimes believed these stories, but the darkies did not, and I think it only fair that the average voter should be credited with as much intelligence as that veracious gentleman the Intelligent Contraband of the war. The best reply I have heard to such cant is that made by a brave Union soldier to one who was urging him to help elect the Republican ticket on the ground that the Democrats could not be trusted. Said he: “I feel about it a good deal like John Randolph, who once at a hotel called a waiter, and, pointing to his cup, said, ‘If that is tea, bring me coffee; if that is coffee, bring me tea.’ For my part, if it is loyalty that we have been having under this Administration, I want a little something else!”

A Question for Republicans.

Fellow-citizens who still call yourselves Republicans, as one who contributed all he could to the first successes of that party and steadily voted with it until the slavery question and the war was finally settled, let me ask you to put the inquiry to yourselves, “What are you voting for, now?” Are you so attached to a name, are you such slaves of a magic word, that when the whisky ring and the fattened corporations and the protected manufacturers, the thieving contractors; the cormorants who rob your living soldiers of their paltry pay; the ghouls who traffic in the headstones of your dead heroes, seize the old banner and shout the old war-cry, you must rally to their defense? Was it your object in joining the Republican party to rivit a policy on the country by means of which the classes who grew rich during the sacrifices and slaughter of the war should grow richer after the peace?

Did you bargain for such work as this when you joined the Republican party? I think not. If you became Republicans, as I was a Republican, it was from the hatred of human slavery. Fellow-citizens, negro slavery is dead; but cast your eyes over the North today and see a worse than negro slavery taking root under the pressure of the policy you are asked as Republicans to support by your votes. See seventy thousand men out of work in the Pennsylvania coal fields; fifty thousand laborers asking for bread in the city of New York; the alms-houses of Massachusetts crowded to repletion in the Summer time; unemployed men roving over the West in great bands, stealing what they cannot earn. See in the sultry Eastern Summer little children gasping for breath in the squalor of the tenement houses; see in the bitter Eastern Winter, barefooted girls and boys dodging the liveried equipages of wealth on the frozen pavement in the effort to earn a penny. See when the lamps are lighted, and before the millionaire’s door the costly carpet is spread, that dainty satin slippers may not touch the pave as they alight from silk-lined carriages — see the long procession of prostitutes that steal out to walk the streets many of them — girls of education and refinement, many of them girls whose fathers lie in forgotten graves on Southern battle fields, a sacrifice for the perpetuity of this Union! Read the cold matter-of-fact reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics and see how a generation is growing up there condemned to the hopeless slavery of the mill; how in New England New England of the free school, the meeting-house, the printing press New England that wept, and gave and voted and fought for her brother of the black skin — all the horrors of child factory labor are being enacted. Ah, gentlemen, sadder than any cry that ever came from the cotton-field or cane-brake is the low moan of the children:

They are weary ere they run;

They have never seen the sunshine nor the glory,

Which is brighter than the sun.

They know the grief of man. without his wisdom,

They sink in man’s despair without its calm;

Are slaves without the liberties of Christdom,

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm!

* * * * *

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,

For they mind you of their angels in high places,

With eyes turned on Deity!

“How long,” they say, “how long, O, cruel nation,

Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart

Stifle down with mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?”

Their blood splashes upward, O, gold-heaper,

And your purple shows your path!

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath!

Ah, gentlemen, that I had the sympathetic eloquence of Sheridan, the logic red-hot with passion that flowed from the lips of Burke! If I could paint these things so that you would see and feel them for your country’s sake, for your children’s sake, for your own soul’s sake, you would not dare vote to perpetuate a policy from which flow such evils!

Men and Reform.

Fellow-citizens, whatever your previous affiliations may have been, if you would vote for reform, you must vote with the party whose policy is calculated to work reform. I care not what Mr. Hayes’ wishes or intentions may be. The moment he takes office he will be surrounded by every corrupt element already intrenched in power. Personally, he may be as pure as the snow; but will that avail? Can he turn his back on the men and the influences that took him from comparative obscurity and set him on the dazzling heights of the chieftainship of forty-five millions of people? Can he disregard all the claims of service, all the obligations of gratitude, and cut and carve and slash among his own political and personal friends? Fellow-citizens, if you think so, you have but the faintest appreciation of the real difficulties of reform, or you must imagine that the Republican wire-pullers have, under the name of Rutherford B. Hayes, nominated the Archangel Gabriel, and not a man born of woman. But even admitting that Mr. Hayes is possessed of all the genius of Caesar, and all the self-sacrificing virtues of the elder Cato, what of real reform can any man or set of men effect so long as the source of corruption is untouched so long as the policy which produces corruption is maintained?

I do not wish to say much about men, but there is one point I want to make, for it involves a principle.

That the Republican candidate is a fair representative of the intelligence and patriotism of his party I do not doubt; but neither will it be denied that the sole reason why he and not any one of five hundred other gentlemen is today the candidate of the party is due to his negative rather than his positive qualities. The only lesson which can be derived from the elevation of this particular man to the Presidency is that the lightning of Nominating Conventions sometimes strikes where it seems least likely to.

On the other hand, the nomination of Tilden was forced on the Democratic Convention by the fact that he had identified his name with reform. His election will be a declaration to every aspiring man that the road to the highest honor is to battle with corruption and destroy abuses.

Fellow-citizens, if you really want reform you must pay the price for it. And that price is that you honor and reward reformers. Against the gold of the public plunderers, against their power of making combinations, you must set the certainty that, by your votes, you will support and reward whoever, resisting their wiles, sets himself against them.

Now, fellow-citizens, by the candidacy of these two men the question is fairly presented to you, “Do you really want reformers in office?” The Republican party managers thought you did not, and, ignoring gentlemen who, in the Republican party, represented that idea, they nominated Hayes. The Democratic party managers thought you did, and they have nominated the man, of all they had to choose from, who had, as a reformer, achieved most distinction. It is for you to say who was right.

The election of Tilden will say to all future political conventions that the strongest man they can put up is the man most identified with reform.

The election of Hayes will say that a record as a reformer is no element of strength. And when the corrupt element in the Republican party or the corrupt element in the Democratic party again make a fight against a man who has shown himself disposed to stop their stealing, they will point to this election to prove that reform gets no votes, and that the reformer may be safely shoved out of the way, since any one of whom the people never heard in the character of a reformer, is as available as he.

Fellow-citizens who want reform, are you so ignorant of the workings of politics, so ignorant of human nature, as to suppose that, under such circumstances, you will be likely in future to get any reformers to vote for?

What may be Hoped from a Democratic Success.

Now, I do not mean to tell you that the mere success of the Democratic party at this election will at once sweep away all corruption and re-establish prosperity. It would be childish to expect that. When we find that we have been traveling the wrong road, the resolve to retrace our steps is only the beginning of a slow and painful return, the more slow and painful if our road has been down hill. But this a Democratic success will mean — a stoppage of the nation in its career towards demoralization, the beginning of reform. To expect absolute wisdom, perfect purity from the Democratic party, would be as hopeless as to expect it from any other party. Corruption is a moral disease, just as small-pox or the cholera are physical diseases; and when it becomes generally disseminated in a community, to expect it to show itself in one party and spare another, would be as rational as to expect the cholera to seize only Unitarians, or the small-pox to attack none but Catholics.

This much we may, in the event of a Democratic success, certainly expect: The abandonment of that source of corruption, demoralization and impoverishment, the Protective system, a large reduction of taxation and expenditures, a considerable simplification of government, and the divorce, to a very great extent, of private special interests from public affairs.

Only a beginning, perhaps; but still a beginning which leads to further steps. For just in proportion as you take out of politics the money influence, do you make it possible for the best brain and conscience to step to the front, instead of the purchasing and purchasable element. Just as you reduce the number of officials do you bring them under the eye of the people; just as you simplify the functions of government do you enable the popular judgment to make itself felt in public affairs.

And although I consider men as of infinitely less concern than principles, the character of the man whom the Democratic party present at this election cannot but be regarded as the best earnest and happiest augury of what it will do, if intrusted with power.

Samuel J. Tilden is a Democrat worthy to be presented for the suffrages of all who hold to the ideas of Jefferson. Growing up in the last generation; when our polity its scope and its limitations, its strength and its weaknesses, were far more profoundly and generally studied than they have been amid the distractions of sectional strife which have beset this generation, he was nurtured in the Democracy of Jackson, and even in his youth was a man of mark in that school of patriotic and thoughtful politicians who safely steered our republicanism through so many of its earlier dangers.

That he has the brains to apply Democratic principles to the government of the Republic, more in need of them than ever before, we know. That he has the will, his fighting of corruption in his own State and own party shows.

Should he be elected, I believe that posterity will not blush to recognize his name in the line with our earlier Presidents, and that his inauguration will mark an other political epoch like that marked by what was long known as the Civil Revolution of 1800, when, under the lead of Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic spirit of the American people overthrew in its first insiduous advances the same policy which is now making the corruption of our Government a by-word among the nations and impoverishing the many to place colossal fortunes in the hands of a few.

The Premonitions of Decay.

Surely there are enough indications to him who will heed them that this work of reform cannot be long delayed. Stand still we cannot, for nothing in the universe stands still. Either we must begin to retrace our steps or we must go from bad to worse. Every step downward will lessen the power and increase the difficulty of return. Toleration of corruption means not merely the intrenchment of corruption, but the enervation of public conscience; the obliteration in the public mind of the distinction between right and wrong. The impoverishment of labor means the destruction of that personal independence of the people in which alone the foundations of popular government can rest with safety. The aggregation of capital means the creation of an aristocracy all the more dangerous because untitled, and all the more unscrupulous because not hereditary. It is an ominous thing that we have begun to look without surprise upon notoriously corrupt men clothed with the honors and wielding the power of high office. It is an ominous thing that upon the very buildings designed to commemorate the first Centennial of a nation whose chiefest glory it was that every boot-black could have a turkey in his pot, thousands of men should be anxious to get work at seventy-five cents a day, and that in a depreciated currency. It is an ominous thing that in this Centennial year, States that a century ago were covered by the primeval forest should be holding Conventions to consider the “tramp nuisance,” — the sure sympton of that leprosy of nations, chronic pauperism.

Men who have yet to pass the summer solstice of life will remember, when they were boys with what contemptuous pity they were taught to regard the effete monarchies of the Old World. Dare they teach to their own boys in this Centennial year the lessons which they learned with every returning national anniversary? Can we scoff at royalty when the bribe-taker has been tracked to the very door of the White House? Can we ridicule hereditary legislators when our own Senators sit in purchased seats? Can we deride coats-of-arms when the shield of the nation is used by the nation’s representative to advertise a common swindle, and the eagle of the republic cut into bait with which to gull the people to whom he is accredited? Does the law lord of England look so ridiculous in his wig and gown when our highest law officer stands accused of stealing the funds with which he is entrusted? Dare we prate of the luxuries of courts when our soldiers on the frontier are robbed of their paltry pay to robe in shimmering satin the wife of an American Secretary of War? Can we brag of the blessings of making our own laws when a single corporation pays a million dollars to get a bill passed by Congress, and a member of a State Legislature moves that if a railroad magnate has no further business with it, this house do now adjourn? or boast of the virtues of the ballot when great cities are notoriously ruled by the scum of their populace, and government employees are marched up to the polls in line and given a pasteboard ticket to vote? Can we look with mingled horror and contempt upon the French 18th Brumaire and 2d of December, when we have heard the hall of an American Legislature echo to the tramp of armed men? Can we talk so flippantly of the pauper labor of Europe when our roads are crowded with men looking vainly for work, and public soup-houses are opened every winter in our great cities?

All this means the gradual approach of a state of things in which Republican government is no longer possible; in which, though its forms may be preserved, as forms are always preserved, republican government will have to be abandoned, and the best interests of society may be anxious to exchange the empty privilege of poking pieces of paper in a box, for the security of property and the guarantee of order. Democratic Republicanism is like some of the gases, innoxious when pure, but an agent of terrible destruction when adulterated.

The Remedy yet in our Hands.

But these things indicate evils as yet entirely within our own power. It is in no fools’ paradise where all things are provided that the Creator has placed us; but a world in which, if we will but use the reason he has given, we may make all things bend to our service. There is no law that necessarily associates deep poverty with great wealth, political corruption with material prosperity, and internal weakenness [sic] with external greatness. But there is a law by virtue of which things good in themselves tend to be become evil if not properly restrained and directed. There is a law by virtue of which we can never safely abandon present effort in the belief that a past generation has done all things needful — a law to which Washington directed our attention, in the maxim, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It is my firm and profound conviction a conviction supported by every axiom of political science and reinforced by every page of our history, that the Democratic principle, carried out in its integrity and expanded as it is capable of expansion, will not only solve all the evils of which we now complain, but the new difficulties that time is sure to bring. But of this each of you have the same right; each of you the same opportunities of judging as I.

Judge for yourselves. Ask not what this man says or that man says; consider not who is on this side or who on that. Vote as though your vote was the casting one. How you vote no one has a right to ask. That is a matter between you and your own conscience. But what the nation has a right to ask of you; what is the first duty of citizenship, is that you give the question presented in this election your best thought. Commonplace as such an election as this may seem, yet viewed as the struggle of two great policies of government, it is impossible to overestimate its importance. The question presented to you is not an abstract one; it is not a sentimental one. It relates directly and immediately to the daily life of the individual. It stretches far out into the future. It appeals to every business man as a question of profits, to every working man as a question of wages. It involves the molding of the character and the shaping of the destinies of a nation which is to be the grandest power of the world, and must be the great example or the great warning of the Twentieth century.

The influence of government upon national character is as far-reaching as it is unobtrusive. It resembles the action of those silent processes of nature which do not force themselves upon our attention, but in which long-continued observation recognizes the world-builders yet at their work. It may seem to make small difference in the every-day life of the individual, even when the most pernicious policy is adopted as the rule of the State, but what we know of the history of the world is little else than the record of how this cause has transmuted races of conquerors into races of slaves, wealth into poverty, learning into ignorance, art into barbarism, the divine spirit of progress into brutish apathy.

Here we stand, a new nation on a fresh continent, endowed as never a new nation was endowed before — with all that has been slowly gained by the best of the race through thousands of years of effort and mistake, and struggle and sacrifice; free sharers in all that is valuable in the heritage of our elder brothers, exempt from all the conditions that cripple and bind them. What will we do with the talent that has been intrusted to us? Wrap it in a napkin and bury it in the earth, or put it out to increase. Merely make a new Europe; or carry forward the promise of progressive humanity to full bud and glorious bloom? Great we must be. In the coming century whose shadows are even now beginning to steal over us, this nation must occupy to the rest of the world a position such as has not been held by any nation since imperial Rome perished of the concentration of capital and political corruption. The centre of power, art, refinement, literature and wealth must pass to this continent. But shall there also pass over here the centre of that volcanic force which shot up a premonitory admonition in the flames of burning Paris; of the barbarism which made Macaulay point to the shadow of palaces, and museums, and colleges and libraries of great cities as the new wilds from which might some day emerge for the overthrow of modern civilization. Vandals more destructive than marched under Genseric and Huns more fierce than followed Attilla? Shall our power be exercised by a few for selfish ends, or be wielded by the people for the people? Shall our culture be confined to a class, or be the common heritage of all? Shall wealth be dammed up, here making pestilential marshes and there a desert, or flow in its natural courses giving to each his fair, full earnings? These are the questions which we must settle in these elections of ours.

A Recapitulation.

Let me recapitulate:

The question involved in this election is not as between two men; it is not as between two parties. It is between two great policies of government, and your vote, or even your refusal to vote, must be its answer. Between the policy of Alexander Hamilton and the policy of Thomas Jefferson you are called upon to decide. You have tried the one. You see its results in ruined commerce, prostrated industry, and an epidemic of corruption that has disgraced the highest places and is fast eating downward to poison the daily life of the masses. You see it in the differentiation of the people into the very rich and the hopelessly poor. Will you continue it, or will you try the other?

Be not deceived! You might as well charge the bullet or the knife with being the cause of the death of a murdered man, as to think that all the things of which you complain result from the accident of having had bad men in office. What can any change of men avail so long as the policy, which is the primary cause of these evils, is unchanged?

The great problem of Republican Government is yet to be solved! Its crucial trial is not on fields of battle, but in peaceful struggles such as this. If you elect to continue a governmental policy which has for its end and aim the building up of that aristocracy of capital on which De Tocqueville, forty years ago, warned us to keep our eyes anxiously fixed, then the bounds of our destiny may be seen in the past. Do not fear that any monarchy in name will ever be established here. We were done with monarchs in George III. After the expulsion of the Tarquins no one ever arose in Rome to call himself King. But as in Rome, under the simple name of Imperator, which at first had no more significance that the title of General now, a master came to rule as the King’s never dared to rule so with us. Concentrated wealth, if present tendencies continue, will in some insidious way bind us with bonds we cannot break, and so enervate the people that, in the dread of anarchy, they will be content with the loss of liberty.

The genius of Democracy points to the future. She sees in it possibilities greater than any yet realized — possibilities only shadowed forth to dreamer or martyr as gleams of a Golden Age, or visions of the City of God. A nation too great to need armies; too proud to do injustice; to powerful to fear it. A nation whose simple government shall merely prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and hold the equal scales of justice. A nation where trade shall be free from barrier or restraint, and industry unhampered by law; where the ox that treadeth out the corn shall not be muzzled; nor the producers of wealth want amid abundance. A nation that can spare the toil of women and children; that needs no alms-houses or soup societies; where even the day laborer may have leisure and refinement and independence; when something better than wealth, shall be looked on as the chief good and highest honor. A nation that has come fully out the night of barbarism, and shines in the full light of Christian civilization; a nation where liberty means the perfect freedom of each to develop all that is best in his character without interfering with the equal rights of others.

Is it only a dream? Perhaps it is. But things which we now enjoy as freely as the air around us, were but dreams when men died for them. It is only by looking at the ideal that we can appreciate the spirit of the hero; the devotion of the martyr; the enthusiasm of poet; the preciousness of the heirloom we have received from the past; of the legacy we may leave to the future.

After the burst of applause which followed the conclusion of Mr. George’s remarks had subsided, he was, on motion, unanimously requested to furnish the Club his speech for publication in pamphlet form.

https://archive.org/details/questionbeforepe00georrich

The Sacramento Bee ran this editorial 9 days later:

THE OPENING SPEECH ON THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE

We have read the speech made by Henry George before the Tilden and Hendricks Club at San Francisco, and cannot but commend the style for taste and temper. There is no harsh language used, no low-flung insinuations against the opposing candidates, but on the contrary they are treated as good men and most excellent citizens. We have considered George’s the most philosophic, searching, fairest and ablest political mind attached to that party on this coast. His big head is full of political brains, which he often puts to admirable use.

Of course he could not help in this opening speech to mount his hobbyhorse, Free Trade, and, booted and spurred, ride him around the ring so that the gaping crowd might behold the quadruped and become familiar with his presence. We are surprised, however, that he should have passed the real issues of the campaign, Civil Service Reform and Currency Reform, without turning his attention to either. As a whole the speech is an excellent one and will please many people, but, since it has not discussed the true and only issues of the campaign, it appears to us like the play of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet omitted; or, as Garibaldi said, like “Diplomacy, which is an old woman without a heart.”

George knew better and could have done better—indeed, he apologized for this great omission—but evidently this speech has been prepared in the interest of policy alone, as the key note of the campaign, and represents the determination of the party to ignore the real questions at issue!

George responded with this Letter to the Editor, published August 25:

LETTER FROM HENRY GEORGE.

What He Thinks of Civil Service Reform.

Editors Bee: In your kindly notice of my speech before the Tilden and Hendricks Club of this city, you say I have ignored “the real issues of the campaign, Civil Service Reform and Currency Reform.” As to the latter, I made as much reference to it as its relative importance in this campaign seemed to me to demand. As to the former (if my individual opinion is of any value) permit me to say that I do not think either party in earnest about what is called “Civil Service Reform,” and that I look upon it as a quack remedy, only advocated from a misapprehension of the nature of the disease. While I can see some advantages which would follow a substitution of the doctrine of permanence during good behavior for that of rotation in office, I can see more disadvantages, and think it wiser to take the chances of getting an incompetent official now and then, than to incur the evil of a class of permanent office holders who would infallibly develop all the vices of bureaucracy, red tape and barnacle-ism. “To the victors belong the spoils,” is only a rough way of saying that responsibility must be linked with power, and to give up this union of responsibility with power would, it seems to me, be giving up the control the people have over their officials. Under the system of party responsibility every office holder feels in some degree that the people with whom he comes in contact are really his employers, and every official is in some sort interested in the good behavior of every other official of the same party. That this is not idle theory is, I think, proved by the fact that the courtesy and attention generally shown by our officials will compare most favorably with that shown by the employees of large private corporations, or, as I am told, with the official conduct in countries where permanence in office is the rule. At any rate let us remember that the experiment we are trying is not merely that of Government for the people, but of Government of the people. When we clearly make up our minds that that is a failure, we can begin to apply the principles of civil service reform at the foundation by adopting the English plan of an Executive during good behavior. Each form of Government has its peculiar advantages; each its peculiar evils. If we would combine aristocracy (theoretically, Government by the best fitted) with Democracy (theoretically, Government by the most interested) I doubt if we can invent anything better than the English Combination. But for my part, I would like to see Democratic principles applied to the Government before pronouncing Democracy a failure. And so far as the tenure of office has had anything to do with the evils that are apparent, I am inclined to think it is because there has been too little rotation in office, not too much. Yours, HENRY GEORGE. San Francisco, August 28.

and in that same page, there was this editorial:

Henry George, who is looked upon as the leading thinker of the Democratic party in California, declares in a corrective note published in this issue that he does not believe either party in earnest when it declares for Civil Service Reform, and as for himself he opposes it in toto. Mr. George knows, and so do we, that the Democrats are not in favor of it; and we also know that the Republicans who are out and want to be in are not in favor of it; and that only those Republicans who are in, together with some of their friends, and those who never seek office, and those who fear that no other reform can be accompanied until this one is consumated, befriend the policy. It is not popular with the office seekers, save those who are in place, and it never can be, but if tried for a few years we are of opinion that it would be popular with the people. But whether the Republican party favor it or not, we cannot doubt the sincerity of their candidate for President on this issue. If elected he will assuredly make a strong attempt to fulfill his promise.

In George’s speech, you’ll note hints of the final book of Progress and Poverty. At July 4, 1877, the 100th celebration of Independence Day, George gave a much-regarded speech in San Francisco which echoed some of this speech.

Congressman Maguire's speech on Chinese Exclusion - October 13 & 14, 1893 — and the remedy

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 23:16:00 +0000

This is a very long speech; it stretched over 2 days. It was occasioned by discussion of legislation on Chinese exclusion. James G. Maguire (1853-1920) represented San Francisco in Congress from 1893 to 1899. Georgists are acquainted with him in part because of his writings in The Standard, Henry George’s weekly newspaper, including the 1887 speech to the Anti-Poverty Society in NYC in which Judge Maguire spoke of seeing the cat, which soon became a shorthand for that AHA! moment when one starts to see the full beauty of Henry George’s ideas.

I’ve seen parts of this speech in various places, but don’t always see what I think is the most important and remarkable part of it.

The situation Congressman Maguire describes in San Francisco is dramatic, and one can see why explaining the situation to his mostly East Coast colleagues in Congress was a challenge.

In the district which I represent there is a vastly greater number of adult Chinese male population than of adult males of the Caucasian race, citizens and aliens combined. That is the situation there. That was true of the whole city of San Francisco, according to the statistics, until quite recently. I believe it to be the condition in San Francisco now. I believe the census returns of Chinese population in San Francisco to be wholly and grossly inaccurate.

At the end of the first section, we get a hint of where the speech is going.

You see the hardships imposed by our Federal laws upon the Chinese, and your sympathies go out to them because you do not see the other side of the picture. We see the oppression, misery, degradation, and slavery to which our own laborers are reduced as a direct result of Chinese immigration. We see that the imported Chinese coolies are mere agencies in the hands of monopolists—domestic and foreign—by which our own people are gradually reduced to a condition of wretchedness approximating to the social condition of the Chinese slaves, and without the slightest feeling of malice against the unfortunate Chinamen we demand their exclusion and their deportation as necessary measures of defense to our own people.

The headings are not of my making, but they do provide a convenient way to navigate through the speech. The first four sections describe the situation in San Francisco. But starting with the fifth section, headed Privilege Robs Labor, Maguire moves into describing the larger problem.

In the section headed Building Trades Petitions he quotes from a petition of the Bricklayers’ Union:

The importation of Chinese coolie labor into the State of California, and sister States of this Union, and the simultaneous closing of natural opportunities against our own people, have during the past twenty-five years been gradually but steadily reducing American labor to a condition of slavery. . . .

The oppression of monopoly on the one hand, and the competition of Chinese slave labor on the other, threaten to speedily degrade our American laborers below the standard of family life, by reducing wages to the bare cost of maintaining unmarried coolies.

It is tempting to recall that part of why Abraham Lincoln was so anxious to end chattel slavery was that enslaved labor competed with “free” labor, driving wages downward. Similarly, prisoners leased out by counties to private employers at ridiculously low wages compete with laborers who seek to support themselves and their families via their labor. (Today, prisoners fight some of our worst forest fires, and are paid a pittance for their labor in dangerous and hot conditions – and most are currently ineligible to seek employment as firefighters upon their release from prison. There are beginning to be serious efforts to change this.)

Until American labor shall be made free we demand that it be protected from the competition of slavery. The emancipation of our own labor is the only just alternative for the exclusion and deportation of the Chinese.

THE QUESTION OF PHILANTHROPY. GEARY ACT MILD AND HUMANE. SIMPLY A PASSPORT SYSTEM THE CHINESE HIGHBINDERS. PRIVILEGE ROBS LABOR. LAND MONOPOLY AND THE LABOR QUESTION. HOW LABOR IS DEGRADED. DECLINE AND FADE OF ROME. HOW TO MAKE LABOR FREE. PUBLIC ENTITLED TO ALL GROUND RENT. EFFECTS OF THE SINGLE TAX. PHILOSOPHY OF HENRY GEORGE. NATURAL RIGHTS OF CHINESE. BUILDING TRADES PETITIONS. THE VALUE OF LABOR. ATTACKS ON CALIFORNIA. MORAL AND SANITARY OBJECTIONS. RELIGIOUS PETITIONS. DEFECTS IN M’CREARY BILL.

The sections which follow the two linked above make the case for how Henry George’s ideas could largely disarm the potential harm of immigrant or imported slave labor. In Effects of the Single Tax, he says,

The effect of such a system of taxation upon the monopoly of land in this country must be instantly apparent.

- - It would at once make such monopoly unprofitable and wasteful to the monopolist. It would at once take away the only incentive that now exists for the monopoly of land. It would compel all land-owners to use their land productively, or at once let it go to those who would so use it.
  - Every user of land could afford to pay the margin of production or economic rental value of his land in taxes; but no man, above the mental level of a fool, would pay taxes amounting to the economic rental value of his land for the mere purpose of monopolizing it.
  - It would put an end to land speculation and the train of evils that follow ever in its wake. It would put an end to the collection of speculative rent, to booms, and to industrial depressions.
  - It would encourage the productive use and improvement of lands by relieving them of all public burdens, while insuring permanency of tenure, security of improvements, and security in the fruits of all productive effort.
  - It would forever settle the conflict between capital and labor and, by improving the condition of labor, put an end to strikes and boycotts and lockouts.
  - It would make land freer to labor than it was in California forty years ago; freer than it was on the Atlantic seaboard two hundred years ago.
  - It would restore the once cherished dignity of American labor, and the grand individuality which was once the distinguishing characteristic of American citizenship.

As a relief to our overcrowded labor markets, it would be equal to the discovery of a new and free and fertile continent in the Pacific Ocean, and its advantages would be more permanent.

Will our New England humanitarians accept the alternative; rise with me to this higher level of philanthropy, and assist in securing and building up our own civilization, as the best means of extending its advantages to the people of China?

With this emancipation of American labor accomplished, we could safely receive and absorb and civilize twice as many Chinese as have ever been within our borders, and, at the same time, furnish an object lesson to the other myriad millions of China that would set her civilization a thousand years forward, within the span of a single decade.

Which then, I ask, is the truer philanthropy? Is it that which you advocate, by which the powers and unjust privileges of American landlordism would be increased, and our own Civilization degraded, in order to secure to a few thousand Chinese the doubtful advantage of living in slavery in this country instead of living in the same slavery in their own country? Is it not, rather, that which we advocate, by which our own civilization will be preserved and lifted up from the influences that are degrading it, and a new impulse given to the civilization of the whole world, such as no other single act in the world’s history has ever given.

Your charge of cruelty and inhumanity against us in our treatment of the Chinese is unfounded and unjust. Never have any people been more patient, more law abiding, or more considerate under the pressure of similar evils than have the people of California in their treatment of the Chinese people.

Chinese exclusion and deportation are merely measures of necessary self-defense, and are in no sense race persecutions. Our warfare is not against the individual Chinamen, but against the deplorable conditions which their immigration and residence bring to us.As well might we charge the people of the East with cruelty and inhumanity to the unfortunate passengers of plague-stricken ships, when, in protecting yourselves from the ravages of cholera, you enforce your quarantine laws.SPEECHOFHON. JAMES G. MAGUIRE. __________

The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. 3687) to amend an act entitled “An act to prohibit the coming of Chinese persons into the United States,” approved May 5,1892—

Mr. MAGUIRE said:

Mr. Speaker: The measure now before this House is of tremendous importance to the Pacific coast, especially to the State of California. More than one-third of all the Chinese inhabitants of the United States are located in the city of San Francisco, most of them in the district which I have the honor to represent. I shall not attempt to go over in detail all of the grounds upon which the people of California object to Chinese immigration and upon which they object to restoring the privilege of residing in this country to the Chinese, who by their own defiance of our laws have forfeited that privilege.

This task has been most fully and ably performed by my distinguished colleague from California [Mr. Geary]. To him more than to any other man has the great West looked for the defense of its interests in this contest; and it gives me pleasure to testify that in his effort their expectations have been fully and splendidly realized. If anything was wanting to complete his defense of our position it was furnished in the masterly and thorough argument of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Bartlett]. But there are some phases of the Chinese question which have not yet been discussed as I think they should be, and to them I will devote my time.

THE QUESTION OF PHILANTHROPY.

I am opposed to the extension of the period of registration for the Chinese, and I base my opposition upon a love of humanity as broad and as deep and as strong as that which animates the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Morse] in his mistaken zeal for the improvement of Chinese civilization and the salvation of Chinese souls. I have no prejudice against the Chinese people, no desire to injure them nor to see them injured or oppressed. It is in no spirit of harshness or unkindness to the Chinese that I oppose their immigration to, and their residence in, our country. I base my opposition upon my love for our Caucasian civilization, upon my love for the glorious institutions of liberty, equality, and justice which constitute the crowning glory of my country, and to the defense, support, and promotion of which the life and property and sacred honor of every true American are constantly pledged and dedicated.

I stand upon the universal, God-given right of self-defense, which belongs to communities and to nations, as well as to individuals, and I insist upon the right and the duty of self-defense for our civilization, which is the soul of our national life, as fully as the right and duty of self-defense against armed assailants of our physical autonomy is recognized.

From the dark ages of universal tyranny and slavery, through centuries scarred by the agonies and stained with the blood and tears of God’s noblest children, our civilization has been evolved, and eternal vigilance is the price of its preservation.

Those scarred and blood-stained centuries represent the gulf between our civilization and the semibarbarism of China. Can these civilizations be mingled, with advantage to the lower and no harm to the higher? That is the theory of the Eastern philanthropists, but it is directly contrary to the knowledge which the evidence of actual experience has given to the West. That experience has demonstrated that, in meeting and mingling, the higher civilization loses a hundred fold more than the inferior gains.

On the abstract question of philanthropy we are not far separated from our Eastern brethren, but, as they see the Chinese problem only in the abstract, they are in no such position as that which we occupy, to balance and compare the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese immigration to the cause of humanity and civilization. The wide difference of sentiment between the East and the West on the Chinese question is not due to any fundamental difference in our principles; it is due to the difference between our tolerably complete knowledge of the question and your imperfect knowledge of it. You see the hardships imposed by our Federal laws upon the Chinese, and your sympathies go out to them because you do not see the other side of the picture. We see the oppression, misery, degradation, and slavery to which our own laborers are reduced as a direct result of Chinese immigration. We see that the imported Chinese coolies are mere agencies in the hands of monopolists—domestic and foreign—by which our own people are gradually reduced to a condition of wretchedness approximating to the social condition of the Chinese slaves, and without the slightest feeling of malice against the unfortunate Chinamen we demand their exclusion and their deportation as necessary measures of defense to our own people.

GEARY ACT MILD AND HUMANE.

The bitter attacks which have been made upon the Geary law in the press and in the pulpit, and upon the floor of this House, are without foundation and unjustifiable. That law was not, in any sense, harsh. It was mild and humane. It was not a deportation law, but a registration law. Under its terms no Chinaman lawfully in this country at the time of its passage was to be deported, provided that he should, at any time within one year after its passage, make up his mind to abide and obey its simple, easy, and convenient requirements. Every Chinaman was permitted to determine for himself whether he would comply with the law or submit to deportation as an alternative, and he was given a whole year within which to make up his mind on that question.

Why did the Chinese refuse to register? Why did they refuse to submit to a reasonable regulation, such as all of the great nations of the earth impose upon aliens sojourning within their borders?

That regulation can scarcely be distinguished from the passport system established and enforced by nearly all of the great civilized nations. The wisdom of such laws among highly civilized nations has been questioned: but the obligation of a citizen of one country, going into the territory of another, to respect the passport laws of that country has never been questioned before.

The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. McCreary] explains their failure to register by saying that they were advised by their employers and friends and by the lawyers whom they consulted that the regulations thus made by Congress were unconstitutional, and, relying upon that advice, they refused to comply with the law.

The McCreary bill, now under consideration, is practically an act to relieve them from the consequences of their violation of the Geary law on the ground that they were misled in the matter by the advice of their lawyers. Now, sir, it is a matter of general knowledge, wherever the Chinese live in any numbers, that no Chinaman who refused to register was animated by any motive or judgment arising within himself, but was absolutely controlled and directed in his violation of our law by an edict issued by a combination of Chinese slave-owners known as the “Six Companies.”

It is a matter of common knowledge, sir, that nearly all of the Chinese laborers in this country have been imported practically as slaves, and are owned, at least for the time of their residence here, by these six importing Chinese companies. It is also a matter of common knowledge on the Pacific coast, and it can be easily proved to the satisfaction of any man upon this floor, that these companies have been constantly engaged in the fraudulent importation of Chinamen into this country during the whole period of our legal restriction and exclusion, in defiance of our laws. Sufficient evidence of this is to be found in the report of the select committee on immigration and naturalization, sent by this House to the Pacific coast in March, 1891, to investigate questions arising under the Scott exclusion act.

The testimony accompanying this report shows that, in spite of the exclusion acts that had been passed prior to that time, Chinese were being smuggled in over the British Columbian and the Mexican borders of the Pacific coast States and Territories constantly.

What was the motive of the Six Companies in opposing registration? It was, plainly and clearly, their purpose to prevent the authorities of this country from providing any satisfactory means of identifying the fraudulently imported coolies whom they were bringing in. A great and lucrative part of the business of the Six Companies will be destroyed the very moment that a means of absolute identification of those who have a right to be here is established. It is impossible, owing to the absolute disregard of truth among the Chinese, and the cunning and skill displayed by them in all their evasions of our laws, to make proof by parol to the satisfaction of any court, of the fraudulency of any substantial part of the, illegal importations thus effected.

As long as the Six Companies can prevent us from making satisfactory rules for the identification of those who have a right to reside here, and consequently a means of identifying those who come in fraudulently, their trade will flourish, their importations will continue, and they will grow rich by persistent violations of our laws. They issued their edicts forbidding the Chinese to register, and those who dared to defy our laws dared not defy the laws and the judicial institutions existing in this country among the Chinese, and to which they submit with absolute and unquestioning obedience. They did not refuse to register because of any personal objection that the individual Chinaman had to registering. They refused to register because they feared the iron bars and the pistols of the “highbinders,” who threatened to mete out Chinese justice to those who would comply with our law, far more than they feared any law or institution of this country.

In the city of San Francisco where I reside, and within the district which I represent, there are, and have been for twenty years, secret Chinese tribunals, dealing with offenses against the regulations of the Six Companies, dealing with offenses and obligations arising between Chinamen, and executing their Chinese edicts with a rigor and a harshness unknown to the execution of any law ever made by the regular lawmakers of this country; aye, often executing the death penalty with a certainty and a ferociousness which makes the individual Chinaman fear and obey them, and which drives him back into his contractual slavery in spite of our constitutional and statutory guaranties of individual liberty. They know no liberty. Though they are in a land where personal liberty is guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws, they dare not demand the legal rights given them by our institutions.

Compliance with the Geary law was easy. Compliance with it would have secured to those lawfully within our borders the right to reside here just as long as they might desire. But the willful refusal to comply with its provisions imposed certain clearly defined consequences which they have chosen to take rather than to register. In obedience to the decrees of an alien institution in this country, and of alien laws—an Asiatic form of government within our Government—more rigorous and more effective than our laws, they have chosen deportation as a consequence of their refusal to register. That consequence does not flow from our action. It flows from their choice, deliberately made, upon a full year’s consideration.

The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. McCreary] in attempting to show that the enforcement of this law against the Chinese would be a disgrace to our civilization, said that no other nation had done anything that would compare in infamy with our purpose of deporting eighty-five thousand Chinese residents of this country and sending them to the home from which they came, to the country to which they still owe allegiance, to the country to which they look for protection, and through whose ministers they now appeal for every claim of right which they assert under our treaties or our laws.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. I think my friend has unintentionally misrepresented me.

Mr. MAGUIRE. I do not think I did.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. I want to state wherein I think the gentleman misrepresented me—not intentionally, of course. I voted for the Geary act; I was in favor of its enforcement. One year having elapsed, I think under the circumstances, as the Chinese were misled by the opinions of their attorneys, they ought to have six months more in which to register. If that is what the gentleman represented me as saying (for I was not in the Hall when he made the remark) then he represented me correctly.

Mr. MAGUIRE. Let me state substantially what I said; and I think the gentleman will find no reason to object.

The gentleman from Kentucky in speaking of our enforcing the Geary law at this time, according to the conditions which that law and the subsequent action of the Chinese people have created, and deporting 85,000 Chinamen now domiciled here, remarked that such a course would disgrace our civilization, and would involve a violation of the rights of humanity, such as no other nation has ever committed. That I understand to be his statement.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. I said in substance (my speech is printed) that if we should now undertake to deport 85,000 Chinese who were misled by their attorneys, and who in my opinion desire now to register, it would be an act the like of which we could not find in modern times.

Mr. MAGUIRE. Now I say there is no self-respecting nation in the world that does not, when its passport laws have been wilfully and persistently violated, expel the alien who refuses to comply with those laws. I say that citizens of foreign countries who visit the most highly civilized nations of Europe must show their passports, must show their right to be in the country, or they must get out, if the laws require a passport. And this is an answer to the much-heralded claim that in the enforcement of the Geary act we require a Chinaman to prove his innocence, and put the burden of proof upon him for that purpose.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him one question?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Yes, sir.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Do we impose the same restrictions upon any other class of people within the United States that we do upon the Chinese?

Mr. MAGUIRE. No, sir; because we have no other class of people who so persistently defy our laws and trample upon our institutions.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Does any other nation on earth impose such restrictions upon foreigners visiting the particular nation as we do upon the Chinese?

Mr. MAGUIRE. You mean in exact provisions?

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Yes, sir.

Mr. MAGUIRE. I do not know of any provisions in precisely the same terms. The Australian colonies have adopted a system very like ours for their protection. My colleague [Mr. Geary] informs me that France has such a registration law applying to all aliens.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Does the gentleman say that France has any such law operating on any class of people going to France as we have today in operation against the Chinese— the law known as the Geary law? I believe no man can say that such is the fact.

Mr. MAGUIRE. My information is furnished by my colleague [Mr. Geary], who will answer the gentleman’s question.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Is there in France any law compelling any man going there to register and prove his residence and providing that he shall be presumed to be guilty of not having a residence in the country unless he shows the contrary?

Mr. GEARY. My colleague [Mr. Maguire] yields for a moment that I may answer the gentleman. France has a law requiring that all aliens coming within her borders for the purpose of engaging in trade shall register and take out a certificate; and penalties are attached to the violation of that law, just as we attach penalties to the violation of our laws. There is nothing new about such a provision. Mexico had such a law, up to 1867, requiring all aliens within her borders to register: and when this Government made demand upon Mexico for redress of injuries inflicted on Americans in that country the answer made by the Mexican minister was that the persons claimed to have been injured were not registered, and, therefore the Mexican Government was not responsible for any injury inflicted upon them.

A law exactly similar to this was passed by England under George III on three different occasions, and I can not find any record of its ever having been repealed.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Did they have to prove residence?

Mr. GEARY. No; but the absence of the certificate is a sufficient proof to the contrary. We do not make a man who takes out a license to sell liquor prove his residence; but we say his business shall not be continued unless he exhibits the certificate to the proper authorities.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. Would it be presumed if you were arrested in France that you were guilty until you proved yourself innocent?

Mr. GEARY. My friend can find an answer to that in the practice of our courts.

Mr. McCREARY of Kentucky. I am not talking of the practice of the courts, but of France.

Mr. GEARY. Well, I did not have an opportunity of visiting France in the capacity of my friend. I presume he was allowed to go without it and not required to make proof either. [Laughter.]

Mr. MAGUIRE. The gentleman from Kentucky is exercised perhaps because he was not asked to register over there.

SIMPLY A PASSPORT SYSTEM

Now, Mr. Speaker, there is an apparent harshness in the statement that a man charged with an offense must prove his innocence—that there is a presumption of guilt if a man is charged with refusing or failing to comply with the law. If a Chinaman is unjustly charged with violating the registry provision of the Geary law, he is himself necessarily possessed, not only of the knowledge, but of the exclusive evidence of his right to reside in this country. Why should he not be required to produce it just as I would be compelled to produce my passport if I should visit France or Germany.

A demand for the passport of an alien is not a trial for crime.

While a violation of the registry provision of the Geary act involves a forfeiture of the violator’s privilege of residing in this country, it is not a crime in itself.

The Geary law simply provides, substantially, that no Chinese person is presumed to have a right to be in this country unless he has the certificate which the law requires him to take out. That is made the sole evidence of his right to be in this country. It is made at once the exclusive and the conclusive evidence of that right. When he is charged with being here unlawfully and says: I am here lawfully, the court says, produce your certificate: That is the affirmative proof of innocence about which these gentlemen have been talking—simply that and nothing more. He carries in his pocket, under the law, the exclusive evidence of his right to be here, if he has a right to be here, and the law simply requires that he shall put his hand in his pocket and produce that exclusive evidence of his right when it is demanded.

Mr. BOWERS of California. Just the same as you would have to do when you went to Europe.

Mr. MAGUIRE. It is as my friend suggests, as if I went to France, not as a commissioner of finance but as a common citizen of this country, I would be required to exhibit my passport whenever requested to do so by a proper officer. I would be asked to prove my right to be there and would have to produce my passport, just as the Geary law requires the Chinaman to produce his passport—certificate of registration—which is the exclusive evidence of his right to be and to remain in this country.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the immigration of Chinese to this country and the residence of Chinese amongst us has been to us a curse and a blight. The Pacific coast has felt this, of course, more deeply than any other part of the country. The Pacific coast receives them. Nine-tenths of the Chinamen coming to this country have been sifted through San Francisco. They have been, to some extent, filtered through the rest of the country, but the great burden of all the incubus and of all the hardships resulting from Chinese immigration have fallen on the Pacific coast States and Territories.

Mr. MORSE. Will the gentleman answer me what the relative proportion is between the Chinese and the white population in the Pacific States?

Mr. MAGUIRE. In the district which I represent there is a vastly greater number of adult Chinese male population than of adult males of the Caucasian race, citizens and aliens combined. That is the situation there. That was true of the whole city of San Francisco, according to the statistics, until quite recently. I believe it to be the condition in San Francisco now. I believe the census returns of Chinese population in San Francisco to be wholly and grossly inaccurate.

I do not impute any fault to the census bureau in the matter. It is simply impossible to get an accurate return of Chinese population without their active cooperation. Ever since 1880 they have had a strong motive for concealing their numbers, and I believe they have done so.

Mr. WEADOCK. Let me ask the gentleman when it was that you had a vote on the question of Chinese immigration on the coast?

Mr. MAGUIRE. In 1879.

Mr. WEADOCK. Was not the result of that vote 150,000 against admitting the Chinese to 600 in favor of it?

Mr. MAGUIRE. One hundred and fifty-four thousand in opposition to their immigration and 883 in favor of it, if my memory serves me right.

Mr. WEADOCK. One hundred and fifty-four thousand against Chinese immigration?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Yes, sir.

Now, Mr. Speaker, from the social standpoint, from the moral standpoint, from the sanitary standpoint, from the industrial standpoint, Chinese immigration has been a curse and a blight upon the fairest portion of this great land of ours for thirty years. California is the garden spot of the American Union and she has been well nigh reduced to the level of a Chinese colony. The exclusion acts have happily preserved her from that fate, but the exclusion accomplished by those laws has not been by any means complete or perfect.

Such laws are extremely difficult of enforcement directly because of the vast lengths of our unprotected coast and border lines, across which they come almost at will.

The Geary law has vastly simplified the enforcement of exclusion, and although little has been done to carry out its purpose, our people look with dread upon the threatened surrender of any of its advantages.

Now, I do not intend to discuss the course of the present Administration in the enforcement of the Geary act since the 5th of May, 1893, but I am bound to admit that it needs defense.

I believe that the Treasury Department has, from the beginning, done its duty fairly; that it has recognized a law regularly enacted by this Congress as a sacred thing, which it is the duty of the executive department of this Government to enforce until it is repealed.

But there has been great complaint, and just cause for complaint, on account of the course pursued by the Department of Justice of the present Administration. That, perhaps, has been sufficiently discussed by my colleague [Mr. Geary], and in the letter read by my colleague [Mr. Bowers of California], addressed by Judge Ross of that State to the Attorney-General of the United States. Why did not the Department of Justice proceed with deportations to the extent of the means at its disposal? Why did it not deport the two Chinamen who were remanded by the United States Supreme Court for deportation in the test case? If the reason has been communicated to any member of this House I would like to hear it.

THE CHINESE HIGHBINDERS.

There are thousands of professional Chinese criminals, known as highbinders, in this country, hundreds of whom were pirates in China. Banished from that country they came to our shores, to burglarize our houses and to swell the ranks of the overstocked highbinder societies here.

A large proportion of these wretches are now subject to deportation for failing to register under the Geary act, and one of the worst features of the McCreary bill is that it will restore to them the privilege of remaining in this country.

Mr. BRETZ. What is a highbinder?

Mr. MAGUIRE. A highbinder is just what the gentleman from New York [Mr. Bartlett] described him to be. A highbinder is a professional blackmailer and murderer, a man whose business it is to levy tribute upon the industrious people of his race, and upon the fallen women of his race, and who in case of denial to himself or to his society, will enforce the payment of that tribute by violence and murder in the most brutal and revolting forms.

Mr. BRETZ. Chinamen or white people?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Chinamen entirely. Do you mean to ask if the highbinders assault white people?

Mr. BRETZ. Yes.

Mr. MAGUIRE. Not in San Francisco, just yet.

In this behalf, it is probable that they are more strongly influenced by the fear of what the white people would do than by moral considerations. A Chinaman who will murder another Chinaman for money would probably not be restrained from murdering white men by conscientious scruples alone.

Now, sir, immediately after the decision rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States, affirming the validity of the Geary act, and establishing its constitutionality, the chief of police of the city of San Francisco offered, through his officers, who are thoroughly familiar with Chinatown and with the Chinese population, to point out one thousand highbinders—professional criminals—who had been satisfactorily shown to be such, in the course of his dealings with them, and asked that, as they had not registered, the deportation laws should be put into force against them first, and that they should be driven out.

In that way it was hoped to get rid of that element, with an element which it controls, the Chinese female slaves who have been imported to San Francisco and scattered around the surrounding towns for immoral purposes. It was proposed that they should be driven out, and a part of the moral cancer which they brought with them thus cut away and removed from the State.

If that had been done, if to the extent of the means available the suggestion of the chief of police had been accepted, and one thousand—a small proportion of the Chinese criminal element there—had been deported, the people would have felt much more kindly toward the proposition now made of giving to the Chinese another chance for registration. These highbinders have prevented their fellow-countrymen from registering, at the behest and command of the Chinese Six Companies, and the people felt that, when this great class of criminals and moral lepers had placed themselves within the reach of our laws tor deportation, they should be promptly dealt with. It seemed as if the time long and patiently awaited had come, when, under the laws of our country, their privilege of remaining here would be canceled, and California relieved of that portion of its moral scourge.

But the people’s hopes were not realized, and now the proposition is to restore to all those people, as fully as to all other Chinese, the right to register, the right to remain, the right (or opportunity) to carry on their infamous traffic, and execute the Asiatic laws now prevailing in that portion of San Francisco occupied by the Chinese. If the law had been enforced to that extent, or if the law remaining unrepealed and unamended shall be enforced to that extent, until the highbinder element shall be banished, there would be far less objection to extending the period of registration, under proper safeguards, to those then remaining. I do not mean that we should now give any direction that any particular class of the Chinese who have forfeited their rights to live here should be selected by law for deportation; but if the Government, exercising the powers and the means given to it by this Congress, should go on for the next two years try ing and deporting that class of Chinamen, as we would have the right to do, one great object would be achieved.

Only a certain number, as the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. McCreary] showed the other day, can be tried and deported within a given time. It would take two years to get rid of the classes that bear the brand of at least one term of penal servitude for violations of the laws of California.

Why not let the Geary law stand as it is for two years, provide a reasonable fund for the deportation of those with whom the courts can deal in that time, and let the worst element of our Chinese population be disposed of before we further discuss the propriety of giving the less objectionable another chance to register?

If that should go on for two years under the provisions, as to means, made by this Congress, the Chinese population would be very largely scattered from San Francisco; the vilest of its criminal elements would have been sent from our shores entirely; a better feeling would prevail everywhere concerning the treatment of the Chinese question; and we might then, with a safety which we can not count on now, reopen to such Chinese as might then remain in the country the opportunity for registering, if we should deem it wise, under the conditions then existing, so to do. But until the most offensive, the most degrading, the most destructive influence of the residence of the present body of Chinese in this country shall be removed, under the right which they themselves have unquestionably given us, any provision for extending the period of registration will be a severe blow to the interests of the Pacific States.

PRIVILEGE ROBS LABOR.

The people of California are unanimous—no, not quite unanimous—–

Mr. MORSE. Right there will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. MAGUIRE. No; not yet. Let me finish what I am about to say and then I will answer your question.

I was going to say that the people of California are unanimous in their desire to be rid of this element; but unfortunately there are some Californians who are in a position to enjoy the benefits, the substantial benefits, flowing from a system of civilization such as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Sickles] presented here as one agreeable to his mind—the lowest wages at which servile labor can possibly be secured, and an aristocracy of employers growing rich by their privilege of appropriating the fruits of others’ toil.

The gentleman favors a higher standard for American labor, but it is manifestly impossible to maintain one standard of wages for American labor and another for alien labor, competing in the same market, with natural opportunities equally closed against them.

The principles of democracy, in accordance with, the laws of God, recognize but one rule of right among men. That rule of right awards to labor all that it produces. It is utterly incompatible with the asserted right of any class to live, by privilege, upon the labor of others.

Cheap labor is labor that is worth more than its wages—labor that produces more than it receives—and any industrial system which compels labor to give up to a privileged class any portion of the wealth which it produces is a system of robbery, abhorrent to the laws of God and destructive of the primary principle of human association—justice.

There are a few hundred monopolists in California who favor Chinese immigration, because it furnishes them with cheap labor and enables them to live more luxuriously at the expense of the laboring classes. Now, I will answer the gentleman’s question.

Mr. MORSE. My question, Mr. Speaker, is this. The gentleman speaks about no difference of opinion, and substantial unanimity in regard to the matter of restricting immigration of Chinese. I do not think there is any difference of opinion here about that. I think the House is a unit on the subject of restriction. The gentleman spoke about a vote that was had in California. That was several years since, of course.

Mr. MAGUIRE. It was in 1879.

Mr. MORSE. Of course that antedates the Geary law, which was passed by the Fifty-second Congress. I want to ask my friend from California if he understood that vote to which he has referred to be an indorsement of the Geary act? That is my question.

Mr. MAGUIRE. I understood that vote to be a declaration that in the experience of the people of California Chinese immigration was a curse; and that, for the benefit of the State of California and of our common Union, it ought to be stopped. It went no further than that, because there were no further questions presented to the voters at that time. It was an indorsement of the principle of the Geary act, although the act itself was not in existence.

Mr. REILLY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlemen allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. MAGUIRE. Certainly.

Mr. REILLY. It is this. If there had been no question about the validity of the act of 1892, the Geary act, and it was thoroughly understood by the Chinese people themselves that it was to be enforced, what effect do you think that would have had in taking out of the country those who felt or knew they were unlawfully here? Would any great number of the Chinese have gone, voluntarily?

Mr. MAGUIRE. If on the 5th of May of this year, immediate steps had been taken to enforce the deportation clause of the Geary act they would have gone from our country in thousands, and they would have gone at once.

Mr. REILLY. Well, now, if the bill reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, extending the privilege of registering for a period of six months only is passed, and it is understood that it is to be enforced, would it have the same effect?

Mr. MAGUIRE. It would not be understood that it would be enforced. The attorneys for these six companies are already telling their people that, as the vote in the Supreme Court of the United States (I use the word vote most respectfully) stood 5 to 3 on the constitutionality of the Geary act, with one justice absent, who is supposed by them to be opposed to the decision of the majority of the court; with a new judge, supposed to be in sympathy with the Eastern sentiment on that subject they will be able, if a new law be passed and anew test case presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, to have the registration and deportation act declared unconstitutional by that court. They are counting upon it. They are advising their clients in that way today. They will make the contest. This will be a battle to the death on the part of the Six Companies, and as long as the “highbinder” influence can coerce the individual Chinese, any law which will destroy the importing business of those companies will be resisted.

Mr. MORSE. Let me call the attention of the gentleman from California to a statement made by the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He is a gentleman who does not speak at random, and I believe he spoke advisedly when he said as I remember, that he had information that the Chinese would register if the time was extended six months.

Mr. MAGUIRE. Did he say that he had received that information from individual Chinamen, or from anybody authorized to speak for them?

Mr. MORSE. From somebody authorized to speak for them, I understood.

Mr. BRETZ. Who was that?

Mr. MORSE. He did not say, but we may infer that it was the Chinese minister.

Mr. MAGUIRE. He was asked who it was, because it was suspected that he referred to the Chinese minister, and because, on the Pacific coast, it has been supposed that the Chinese minister and the Chinese consul have been “standing in” with the Six Companies in their defiance of our laws.

Mr. PIGOTT. Let me ask the gentleman why it is that no amendment has been proposed excluding from the advantages of this extension act those persons who are known as highbinders and criminals?

Mr. MORSE. That is right. I would vote for that.

Mr. GEARY. Well, we will take your vote, and offer that amendment.

Mr. MORSE. All right.

Mr. MAGUIRE. We will present an amendment providing that the extension shall not operate to include any person who has ever been convicted of crime in this country.

LAND MONOPOLY AND THE LABOR QUESTION.

The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Morse] scouted the idea that 90,000 or 100,000 Chinese in this great country could be a source of any real hardship to the country, or any menace to our institutions, social, political, or industrial, and as one basis for his statement in that behalf he called attention to the magnificent, boundless, inexhaustible, natural resources of this country. Our natural resources are indeed measureless and inexhaustible, and if they were open to the people of this country on fair and equal terms—on the terms on which the great Creator gave them to mankind—the gentleman’s argument on that phase of the question would be sound.

But these natural resources, without access to which labor can produce no wealth at all, are not open to the people. They are monopolized. Monopolized—in that word see, ye ages, comprised “the cause of the curses all annals contain.” Chinese labor would not and could not oppress American labor if our lands were free, but, as it is, land monopoly and cheap imported labor are the upper and the nether millstones, between which American labor is being ground into serfdom and pauperism, as I will presently explain. The natural resources of the Pacific coast, the natural resources of our entire country, are the private property of a few individuals.

This great country, which we are pleased to call ours, belongs, by legal title, to a few landlords whose number and proportion to the whole people are annually growing less.

Every cheapening of labor, by any means, increases the market value of the land and the rent rolls of its owners; thus, by a double process, widening the gulf between the landless poor and our growing landed aristocracy. American labor, driven from the natural sources of independent self-employment, is forced to enter the labor markets of cities and towns and compete for employment with the cheapest labor that is there offered for sale.

Mr. MORSE. Who is responsible for that condition?

Mr. MAGUIRE. The people are responsible, because they have the power to correct the evil and do not exercise that power; but it is to be hoped that the people will ere long relieve themselves of that responsibility.

The monopoly of the natural earth and its God-given resources is the colossal crime of modern civilization, beside which all other oppressions of the poor are insignificant. Land is the exclusive source of human subsistence. All wealth, all means of physical subsistence, are extracted by labor from the natural earth. Indeed, man is a land animal in every sense. His food, his clothing, his shelter, his very body, all come from the land and all to the land return again. He must live upon the land and from the land, if he live at all. Even the sailor and the aeronaut are not exempt from these conditions of human existence, for the decks trodden by the one and the bars and ropes which support the other are of land.

The right to life, which we all regard as sacred and inalienable, can not be more sacred than the right of access to the exclusive means by which life can be supported. “You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.”

Yet, in this land of unexampled and unparalleled political liberty, a few men own and control the only source from which the masses of the people can draw their subsistence.

Those few have, therefore, the unnatural power to dictate the terms upon which the masses of the people of this country can live—to fix the terms upon which they may have access to the natural resources that the Creator made necessary to the support of their lives. The Creator not only made and freely gave those resources as a common heritage to all his children for their support and sustenance, but he is constantly from day to day replenishing and improving them by the operation of his natural laws.

The creative power, by its changing seasons, by its sunlight and its rains, and its drifting winds, by its processes of growth and decay in the vegetable and in the animal world, is ever building up and replenishing the elements of the land that yield subsistence for mankind.

The unquestioned legal right of our landed class to entirely exclude their fellow-citizens from the lands of our country involves the power to inflict all oppressions less than such exclusion.

We have, therefore, under the forms of the greatest political freedom, a land system which creates an absolute despotism, under which the land-owning classes are lords of the industries, the liberties, and even the lives of their landless fellow-citizens.

It is in connection with this institution and this condition that we must consider the question of Chinese immigration. To consider the question abstractly is not to consider it at all. Upon the abstract question of human rights we are practically agreed.

You plead for justice and humanity to 85,000 Chinese. I plead for justice and humanity to 60,000,000 of Americans, whose hard conditions of life are being made harder by competition with Chinese slavery.

You do not see that you are really pleading for an increase of the oppressive power of American landlordism, with very little if any good to the individual Chinamen in whose names you speak.

True, they will be slaves if they are returned to China, but they will be slaves if they remain in this country, and their presence here will tend to degrade our laborers to the level of slavery.

HOW LABOR IS DEGRADED.

The condition of land monopoly prevailing in this country tends to fix the wages of all labor according to the standard of living of the lowest class of laborers seeking employment in the country.

American labor is no longer free, because its natural opportunities for self-employment, although they are measureless and inexhaustible, as the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Morse] has said, are closed against it by monopoly. It can no longer escape from an unsatisfactory labor market, but, in spite of the fact that wages bear no relation whatever to the value of labor, it must bid for employment against the cheapest labor that is offered there.

The tendency and the end of such competition in an overcrowded labor market where there is still an army of unemployed laborers, after all demands for labor have been supplied, is to reduce all wages to the line at which the unemployed surplus, facing the alternative of beggary and starvation, are willing to work.

I have seen the whole problem of labor’s degradation worked out in practical life before my own eyes. Thirty years ago, sir, labor in California was comparatively free, because land was comparatively free there. Labor was then paid according to its production and not according to the lowest standard of living prevailing among the laborers as now. It was then worth what it produced and it was paid accordingly.

Laborers being then free to go upon the virgin soil and build their homes and establish their own industries, and being able there to comfortably feed and clothe their families and to educate their children in the standard branches of useful learning, were not obliged to remain in the labor market when it offered less favorable conditions. Then California was labor’s “Promised Land.” Then California was the last rampart from which the boasted and really glorious “standard of American labor” has been permitted to float.

Then there were in our land no tramps, few paupers, and no surplus labor in enforced idleness.

Then sparseness of population and the consequent lack of social advantages, imposed the only hardships that were known. What wonder that those who knew the freedom and the happiness of those conditions yearn for their return.

I saw the change of social conditions come. I saw the shadow of land monopoly steal over and encompass our Golden State. I saw a few hundred men become the absolute owners and masters of her great material resources, that were manifestly intended by their Creator to furnish homes and subsistence to 40,000,000 people. I saw an empire of her best and richest land pass by act of Congress under the dominion of a single, soulless corporation. I saw the gates of natural independence in home and industry closed against American labor.

I saw labor driven from its lucrative and independent retreats in the mountains and valleys into the markets of the cities and towns, there to be sold as a commodity at prices fixed by the laws of trade.

I saw the wages of American labor changed from the value of its product down to the price fixed by the alternative of pauperism, while the wealth-producing power of labor was increased, on the average, in all departments of industry elevenfold.

I saw the beneficiaries of monopoly manipulating the labor market to keep the price of labor down. I saw them importing, in tens of thousands, the coolies of China, not for the benefit of the Chinamen, as Eastern philanthropists persist in believing, but for the double purpose of bearing the labor market, by maintaining a surplus and of teaching American laborers to live on the rations of Asiatic slavery. These beneficiaries, let me say to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. McCreary], are the Californians whose brass bands and streaming banners heralded the dawn of Asiatic slavery on the Pacific coast in the ratification of the Burlingame treaty; and they, sir, would again furnish bands and banners to celebrate the resumption of their slave traffic if the Geary act were repealed.

In the great State of California, whose natural resources are confessedly capable of supporting 40,000,000 people, I saw the horrors that are supposed to result only from overpopulation, prevailing with a population of only 1,000,000.

I saw the millionaire and the tramp, contemporaneous menaces to our civilization, arise out of these conditions.

I saw the millionaire, without productive effort on his part, become a multi-millionaire, upon the tribute commanded by his purchased and granted privileges; and I saw the army of pauperism growing as he grew, and growing because of the conditions that made him grow—recruited by thousands from the ranks of unemployed labor—a ghastly procession of vice and crime, and rags and filth, and torment and despair, drifting listlessly, as “flotsam and jetsam” on the tide of our civilization, to whatever goal a just God may deem suitable at the close of their earthly hell.

These are the results as I have seen them on the Pacific coast, of land monopoly, supplemented by the importation of Chinese slaves. These are the conditions which we seek to mitigate by the enforcement of the Geary Act.

The picture that I have drawn is no “distorted vision,” no “distempered dream,” but a stern tragedy in real life enacted in the open light of day. An awful tragedy on which the curtain rose within my memory, and upon the last act of which— the final triumph of humanity over monopoly—I hope to see the curtain fall within my lifetime.

DECLINE AND FADE OF ROME.

These results of land monopoly are not (excepting the Chinese slavery phase) peculiar to California or the West.

They prevail throughout the civilized world, wherever our land system prevails; but in the older sections of our country the change from free conditions antedates the earliest recollections of the generation now upon the stage of public life, and the Chinese phase of our Western problem has no parallel east of the Rocky Mountains.

But it has a striking parallel in the history of the decline and fall of the civilization and power of ancient Rome.

Macaulay tells us that “in the brave days of old,” when Rome was mistress of the world; when to be a citizen of Rome was esteemed the proudest privilege of manhood, her “lands were fairly portioned” among her citizens. In the period of her decline and fall the lands had become the property of a few great landlords who employed slaves to work them. The landless citizens, thus excluded from the poor privilege of working as laborers upon the lands which once their fathers owned, drifted helplessly to the cities and towns, and there, in the helplessness of enforced idleness, they sank into pauperism and vice. Their debased suffrage became mere merchandise in the market, thus extending instead of controlling the powers of the monopolists. The soldiers of Rome became supplicants for alms, and their children hereditary paupers. The outer form of her official life alone preserved the semblance of Rome’s departed glory. Then Rome fell, and, over the sepulchre of her once splendid civilization, her epitaph was written: “Latifundia perdidere Italiam” (“Great estates ruined Italy”).

Shall history be permitted to repeat itself? Shall the lords of our land be permitted to work it with slave labor? Shall they be permitted to exclude our brethren, and our fellow-citizens from the poor privilege of earning their living as hired laborers upon the land in which. by natural right, they have an equal interest with the landlords themselves?

Shall they be permitted for their private gain to bring upon our country “the curse that shattered the Empire of Rome?” Shall they be permitted to turn our civilization backward, and make the ages of its development droop again?

No; this is our country, this is our civilization. Their preservation is our first, and our highest duty, and is the truest friendship to mankind.

We of the West do not yield to the people of New England in love of humanity. As a native son of New England I glory in her devotion to the cause of liberty, and civilization. Oar warfare is not against the unfortunate Chinamen. We would rather help them than hurt them.

We are struggling to preserve our own people from the hell of slavery that yawns beneath them. That accomplished, we will, in proportion to our numbers and our means, match every dollar and every effort that New England will contribute for the enlightenment and civilization of the Chinese, and for the betterment of their moral and social condition. Until American labor shall be made free we demand that it be protected from the competition of slavery. The emancipation of our own labor is the only just alternative for the exclusion and deportation of the Chinese. This brings me to the discussion of that alternative— the emancipation of labor.

HOW TO MAKE LABOR FREE.

The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Morse]asked: “Who is responsible’’ for the condition of land monopoly prevailing in this country, and I answered that the people are responsible, because they have the power to correct the evil and do not exercise that power.

The question is pertinent and important, because if the greatest evil of Chinese immigration results from faults in our land system, it may well be asked why we do not cure those faults and let the Chinese remain.

The gentleman’s question, touching as it does the very heart of the great social conflict now agitating the civilized world, deserves a more complete and a more detailed answer.

The remedy which I propose for the evil of land monopoly is simple, just, practical, and unquestionably sufficient. It is this: To appropriate to public use, by taxation, for the support of our Federal, State, and municipal governments, the entire rental value of all land, irrespective of improvements, and to abolish all other taxes.

Would that be just? If it would not be just it would not be expedient. I hold that no permanent good ever resulted from an act of injustice. “Never yet did men or nations prosper finally in wrong.’’ Entertaining these views and believing with Daniel Webster that “Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth.” I am fully convinced, after mature deliberation, that the remedy is not only just in itself, but that it embodies the only means by which justice can be permanently and universally established among men.

Land is the common heritage of all mankind. It was freely given by the Creator, with all of its elements and all of its powers, for the equal use and sustenance of all mankind. It was not given to any one generation, nor to any class or classes in any generation, but equally to all mankind, from the first child of nature to the last human creature who shall inhabit the earth.

Land is the common heritage of every child of God—not as the heir of his natural father, not according to the possessions or the will of his natural father, whose right to land perishes with his own life—but as the direct heir of the Universal Father, from whom the right to life, to liberty, to air, to sunlight, are likewise directly inherited.

The true province of government is to regulate the use of this heritage by its citizens while preserving to each his equal right therein.

Why do men monopolize land?

To cure the evil of land monopoly the motive for it must be clearly understood in order that the incentive may be intelligently removed. Is the motive self-aggrandizement, or is it malicious, or is it mercenary? Our common experience is alone necessary to determine the question.

The motive is almost wholly mercenary. The desire for power over other men has its influence, but it is purely incidental.

Profit, either present or prospective, is practically the sole inducement to land monopoly. That profit is yielded either in present ground rent or future enhancement of the land value.

What is ground rent, and why does land, the natural elements and qualities of which remain unchanged, continue to advance in value in all growing communities?

Who produces the rental value of land? What influence has Chinese slave labor upon ground rent?

Ground rent is the landlord’s share of production. It is the tribute charged by the owner of the natural earth for allowing others to use it. Its measure is stated by Ricardo to be, referring to any given piece of land: “the excess of its produce over that which the same application can secure from the least productive land in use.”

In practice it may be generally stated that the rental value of any given piece of land is the difference between the average value of its product and the average cost (labor and capital) of production, for the period of the lease.

It is therefore manifest that whatever increases the value of the product, without increasing the cost of production, increases ground rent, as: an increased demand for the product, resulting from increase of population, or other cause, or an improvement in the quality of the product.

It is also manifest that whatever reduces the cost of production tends to increase ground rent, as: a reduction of the wages of labor, inventions of labor-saving machinery, and improvements in the methods of combining and subdividing labor.

Thus it is that, under our land system, every contribution to material progress, as well as every reduction in the wages of labor, attaches itself to the land and inures to the benefit of the landlords in increased ground rent.

For example, let us suppose that a given farm, or a shop or store site, which can be operated by one man, will yield a ground rent of $150 per year, when the standard wages of the required labor are $2 per day; if the wages of such labor be generally reduced to $1.75 per day, the cost of productively using that land will be reduced about $75 per year, and the amount of that reduction of cost can be added to the rent, unless, as another result of the reduction of wages the price of the product also goes down in the market.

Making an allowance of $40 on account of the reduction in the price of the product (a very liberal allowance), we have a net saving of $35 per year, which the landlord can add to his rent.

This is the primary effect, only, of the reduction of wages upon the value of land. There is another effect equally important. A piece of land which will yield a certain amount of rent annually as a net income, is worth as an investment twenty times the amount of its annual net rent.

Therefore, an addition of $35 per annum to the rental value of the land in question would increase its market price $700.

Thus, the reduction of 25 cents per day in the poor man’s wages not only lessens his purchasing power to that extent, but actually adds $700 to the price of the home which it is his life’s ambition to secure.

This is the result which every reduction of wages brought about by Chinese competition has produced in California.

This is the result which, with greater or less intensity, is being produced by land monopoly everywhere.

The displacement of labor by labor-saving inventions drives the displaced laborers into the market to swell the army of the unemployed. The natural opportunities for the redistribution of the labor thus displaced being closed by monopoly, competition among laborers is intensified, wages reduced, and rent correspondingly increased.

This is the process which is enslaving labor and exalting landlordism everywhere.

PUBLIC ENTITLED TO ALL GROUND RENT.

We have now seen, in brief outline at least, what ground rent is and how it arises. We have seen that it is an increment of value produced and imposed upon the natural earth by the presence, industry, enterprise, inventiveness, and virtues of the whole people of each community in which it arises.

We have seen that it absorbs all of the general advantages of the material progress of the whole people; that to the landlord it is in every sense an unearned increment to which as landlord he does not in anyway contribute.

Merely permitting labor to use land productively is not a contribution to production, because the land, with all of its useful elements, was given to mankind by God, and would have been accessible to labor if the shadow of landlordism had never darkened the horizon of our civilization.

The landlord is not entitled to the rental value of his location, because he does not produce it.

The community is entitled to the rental value, because the community does produce it. Every value belongs of natural right to him whose labor or service produces it, and without whose labor or service it would not have existed. It is immaterial whether the value be produced by one person, or by ten persons, or by a million persons. It belongs to those who produce it— individually, if it be individually produced, collectively, if it be collectively produced.

The argument in favor of leaving the accrued rental value of land, that is, the unearned increment which has already attached to land, to the present owners, is based upon a mistake of fact.

There is no such thing as an accrued rental value attaching to any land. All future rental values of land depend upon what the people will do in the future, and not at all upon what they have done in the past.

It is, therefore, just for the people who produce the rental value of land to take that value by taxation for their public uses.

This rule applies to all land whether it be owned by landlords or by speculators or by its immediate occupants.

The value which the public gives to the location should be paid to the public by the person who is in a position to control or appropriate that value.

As the landlords have confessedly no moral or legal right to compel the people to put forth the enterprise and industry necessary to produce and to maintain the rental value of their lands, they certainly can have no moral right to privately appropriate any of the direct or indirect results of such enterprise and industry as the people may voluntarily put forth.

As to improvements, the man who plants an orchard, or digs a ditch, or builds a house or a fence should pay no more taxes upon his orchard or his field or his lot than he would be required to pay if he had made no improvements whatever.

The value of the improvements belongs to the man who makes the improvements, by the same rule of right which awards the value of the location to the people who produce it; and a wise concern for the public interest dictates the encouragement of improvements by exempting them from taxation, rather than the discouragement of improvements by placing any kind of burden upon them.

The man who builds a house or plants an orchard increases the means of satisfying human wants, and is a benefactor of mankind in spite of the fact that his motive may be purely selfish; while the man who keeps a foot of useful land out of use works a corresponding injury to mankind.

The expediency of raising all public revenues by a single tax on land values, as a substitute for all other forms of taxation, further appears in the fact that it would save nine-tenths of the expense and waste now involved in levying and collecting taxes upon personal property, upon imports, and upon business privileges, all of which taxes are regularly shifted from the primary payers to the ultimate consumers—falling principally upon the overburdened farmers and laborers of our country.

Besides it would require men to pay taxes according to the advantages which they receive from the community, and not according to their necessities, as now.

As such a tax would tear upon land according to its value, and not according to area, and as the value of farming land is very small, by comparison with the value of land used for commercial and other industrial purposes, the small farmers—the most heavily burdened class under our present system—would find the single tax less in volume and far less oppressive in method than the complex and accumulated burdens of the direct and indirect taxes which now fall upon them with notorious inequality.

A tax on land values is the only property tax that always falls with proportionate equality upon all owners and that can not be shifted from the person paying it to the ultimate consumer or user. The reason that it can not be shifted is that while a tax on any other kind of property tends to check its production, and thus, by the law of supply and demand, to increase its price sufficiently to cover the tax, a tax on land values forces idle land into the market, increasing the supply of land offered for sale or lease, and thus, by the same law of supply and demand, reducing, instead of increasing, the rent. Heavy taxation of houses increases the rent of houses by the amount of the tax, but heavy taxation of land values decreases the rent of land. All political economists are agreed on that proposition, and it needs no argument.

Such a change in our taxation laws would not be an impairment of any vested right of landowners, because the power and right of taxation, to the extent of taking the entire rental value, whenever the public good may seem to require it, has been absolutely reserved to our governments, national and State, against every foot of land that has ever passed into private ownership in this country.

EFFECTS OF THE SINGLE TAX.

The effect of such a system of taxation upon the monopoly of land in this country must be instantly apparent. It would at once make such monopoly unprofitable and wasteful to the monopolist. It would at once take away the only incentive that now exists for the monopoly of land. It would compel all land-owners to use their land productively, or at once let it go to those who would so use it.

Every user of land could afford to pay the margin of production or economic rental value of his land in taxes; but no man, above the mental level of a fool, would pay taxes amounting to the economic rental value of his land for the mere purpose of monopolizing it.

It would put an end to land speculation and the train of evils that follow ever in its wake. It would put an end to the collection of speculative rent, to booms, and to industrial depressions.

It would encourage the productive use and improvement of lands by relieving them of all public burdens, while insuring permanency of tenure, security of improvements, and security in the fruits of all productive effort.

It would forever settle the conflict between capital and labor and, by improving the condition of labor, put an end to strikes and boycotts and lockouts.

It would make land freer to labor than it was in California forty years ago; freer than it was on the Atlantic seaboard two hundred years ago.

It would restore the once cherished dignity of American labor, and the grand individuality which was once the distinguishing characteristic of American citizenship.

As a relief to our overcrowded labor markets, it would be equal to the discovery of a new and free and fertile continent in the Pacific Ocean, and its advantages would be more permanent.

As well might we charge the people of the East with cruelty and inhumanity to the unfortunate passengers of plague-stricken ships, when, in protecting yourselves from the ravages of cholera, you enforce your quarantine laws.

PHILOSOPHY OF HENRY GEORGE.

We can not permit the evils of slave competition to afflict our people while we await the emancipation of American labor. The process of emancipation is too slow. The people are yet too greatly divided in opinion concerning the best method of emancipation, They have not yet sufficiently learned that labor never can be free except where land is free.

Knowledge must ever precede right credence, and right credence must ever precede correct political action.

The people are reading and studying the philosophy of Henry George. Progress and Poverty, which a distinguished English writer has happily denominated “a glorious gospel of justice,” is steadily and rapidly changing the credence of the world on the subject of land tenure.

It is the herald of the next great step in the order of social evolution.

It is a practical development of the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy. It is a justification of our Declaration of Independence. It is a vindication of “the ways of God to man.”

The manifest truths of its philosophy will speedily unify the world’s credence, “Never yet share of truth was vainly set in the world’s wide fallow.”

The education of a nation on an economic question is not to be accomplished in a day, though “the stars in their courses” should work with the educators.

In the meantime, self defense becomes more than a right; it becomes a most sacred duty.

NATURAL RIGHTS OF CHINESE.

You ask if I do not recognize the Chinaman in this scheme of creative beneficence? I answer yes. I recognize most fully the natural rights of the Chinese. I do not question their equal right to the elements which the Creator has given for the sustenance of human life; but I recognize the fact that the same Creator has established the family, and by his law of human gregariousness has established the community and has decreed that through the family and the community civilization shall be evolved and defended.

He has the same right to an independent home that I have, but he has no right to invade my home, nor I his; and, as I have but followed the Creator’s law of evolution in building up the institutions which constitute my civilization, I have a right to defend them, as well against the unarmed invader from China as against the armed soldier from Great Britain.

BUILDING TRADES PETITIONS.

In connection with the industrial phase of this question, Mr. Speaker, I desire to present several petitions from various trades unions of California, praying for the enforcement of the Geary act.

I also desire to read, as presenting labor’s view of this question, the following extracts from the petition of the Bricklayers’ Union, which I will file here, and which has been indorsed by resolution in every union belonging to the Building Trades Council of San Francisco.

The extracts to which I desire to call special attention are as follows:

The importation of Chinese coolie labor into the State of California, and sister States of this Union, and the simultaneous closing of natural opportunities against our own people, have during the past twenty-five years been gradually but steadily reducing American labor to a condition of slavery. . . .

The oppression of monopoly on the one hand, and the competition of Chinese slave labor on the other, threaten to speedily degrade our American laborers below the standard of family life, by reducing wages to the bare cost of maintaining unmarried coolies.

I commend this vivid but not overdrawn picture of the ordeal of American labor to the Eastern sentimentalists who profess such an undying devotion to the abstract rights of man. I commend it also to the ministers of religion who are deploring the decadence of church influence among the laboring classes, while as representatives of religion they are promoting the humiliation and the degradation of labor by their advocacy of Chinese immigration.

[Mr. Maguire here gave way to a motion to adjourn, reserving the right to conclude his remarks to-morrow.]

October 14.

Mr. MAGUIRE (resuming). Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned last evening I was discussing the industrial features of Chinese immigration and residence on the Pacific coast. I endeavored to show that in California certain social forces, supplemented by the competition of Chinese coolies, had reduced the wages of labor to a point that bears no relation whatever to the value of labor, but is regulated solely by the standard of living of the lowest class of labor in the country; and that, as slavery is the lowest form of labor competing there, our laborers are being reduced to its standard of living.

THE VALUE OF LABOR.

The gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Baker] asked my colleague [Mr. Geary] if the Chinese did not give full value in labor for the $300,000,000 which as surplus earnings they have carried from the Pacific coast to China during the last twenty-five years.

I answer yes. They gave much more than value for it to the people who were in a position to take advantage of the cheapness of their labor, but they compelled the laborers of our own race to surrender an equal proportion of the value of their earnings to the same monopolists.

Let me say further to the gentleman, that, before the coming of the Chinese, American laborers received more than double the wages now prevailing in California, and they gave full value in labor for every dollar that they received in wages then. The wealth-producing power of labor has since that time increased many fold. Yet, in spite of increased wealth production, their wages have fallen 50 percent. Will gentlemen, professing a desire for justice to labor, applaud that result?

When the lands of California were free and the American laborers there had the option to leave the labor market when its conditions were unsatisfactory, and go out upon the land and establish independent industries and means of subsistence for themselves, no competition of servile labor could injuriously affect them, but would tend perhaps to drive them to higher pursuits, and to callings better suited to their intelligence and capacity than the kind of labor for which they are now obliged to compete with the Chinese.

But we have no such conditions existing there now. American labor is not free there. It has no alternative there, any more than it has here, to leave the labor market when the conditions become unsatisfactory. It must find its employment in the labor market; and with the constant presence of a large body of unemployed laborers in that market, the tendency of the law of supply and demand—the supply exceeding the demand—is to reduce wages, regardless of the value of labor, to the lowest standard of living which will be adopted by the most hardly pressed class of laborers looking for employment. With thousands of surplus laborers of our own race in the labor markets of California wages would, in any case, be reduced to the lowest standard according to which Caucasian laborers would consent to live; but, with that army of unemployed Caucasian laborers supplemented by nearly a hundred thousand Chinese, whose standard of living is so low that no American laborer can submit to it and live, you can imagine the condition to which Chinese immigration has brought our laboring people.

ATTACKS ON CALIFORNIA.

As I stated yesterday, there is a class of men in California that favors Chinese immigration. A representative of that class, Mr. W. W. Hollister, was a prominent witness before the committee of investigation sent by Congress to California in 1876. He testified that Chinese labor, or labor as cheap as Chinese labor, was absolutely necessary to the great productive industries of the State, and lie cited his own case. He testified that he was conducting a farm and that it was impossible for him to pay $30 a month for European or American laborers to cultivate his farm and make any money upon it; he testified that he could get Chinese labor for $15 a month, and that his farm was thereby made profitable.

Being questioned by a member of the committee, he stated that his farm, usually cultivated, consisted of 75,000 acres of land, that in addition to that he owned other lands, of the best in California, to the aggregate amount of 318,000 acres. To men who are thus monopolizing all that section of our country the cheapest form of labor available is most desirable, and with the power of wealth these men have everywhere and at every opportunity, through the powerful channels always accessible to wealth, sought to ridicule, to slur, to denounce, to berate the masses of the people of California for opposing Chinese immigration, and have denounced them as “sand-lotters” and “hoodlums” and people opposed to peace, to honesty, and to good order.

Those statements have been repeated on the floor of this House, and, while I do not blame gentlemen here, residing in the East, for repeating such statements when they come upon the authority of Californians, I do denounce them as false and unjust, as the outcry of the 800 monopolists against the 154,000 people of California, who in 1879 stood against the demands of the promoters of Chinese immigration, who sought to increase that immigration solely for their own personal advantage, regardless of the distress and the oppression and the ruin that their mercenary purposes brought upon the State. I say further that no country in the world, no section of this great country, animated as it is in all its sections by a love of fairness, justice, and law, can present a better showing than California makes with respect to her treatment of an alien, an objectionable, and an obnoxious race.

There is no section of this Union in which the Chinese people under similar circumstances, would be treated as well as they have been treated in California. There never has been, save in very exceptional cases, any danger to the lives or the property of the Chinese people in California. They have generally been protected from injury and insult, and even where, in a few isolated communities, the laboring classes, seeing their families in suffering and want and the monopolists of the only resources from which they could produce a living by their labor employing Chinese serfs to work the natural opportunities that they controlled, leaving their white fellow-citizens out as a body of surplus human beings to die—even there, when those people, moved and maddened by tne impulse of despair, drove the Chinese out of the isolated towns of which I have spoken, they treated them with no violence, they even helped them to carry their baggage from the places from which they were deporting them down to the places of railroad or water transportation.

I do not justify the acts of the men who did attempt to take the law in their own hands and to remove the Chinese; but I do say that acts of violence and hoodlumism against the Chinese have been remarkably rare in California’s treatment of this race under the circumstances.

MORAL AND SANITARY OBJECTIONS.

The moral phases of this question have perhaps been amply discussed, and I shall therefore deal with them very briefly. The Chinese people, at least those who come to this country, constitute an inferior civilization. They have brought with them and planted in our midst the vices, the crimes, and the immoralities of an inferior civilization. They have made them cheap and alluring to the young of our race. They have driven great numbers of the boys and girls of our country, first from the schools and then from the workshops—from the schools by disabling their parents from maintaining them during their proper period of education—driven them untimely to seek employment in the workshops in competition and in contact with the Chinese, and they have again driven them out of the workshops by competition.

The contact has blunted their moral faculties; and the alluring cheap vices of this race, opening to them and beckoning them from every Chinese washhouse and nearly every Chinese institution in that city—opium smoking, Chinese gambling, lewdness, and worse vices constantly open on such terms as make them accessible—have blasted the lives of thousands of California’s fairest and brightest sons and daughters.

A class of white children, some of them grown to a sort of distorted manhood and womanhood, lives now in San Francisco, degraded by contact with the Chinese, known as “opium fiends,” numbering hundreds. They do not, perhaps, run up into thousands because they do not live long enough to constitute a very great class after they have contracted the vicious habits of the Chinese.

I have seen in reformatory and penal institutions in California scenes and evidences of the moral and physical degradation of white children by these Chinese vices that should appall the civilization of the East. Scenes and evidences that do appall every Eastern man or woman who, dealing practically with the Chinese question, undertakes, even for a few hours, to investigate it on our coast.

The men who speak in the name of humanity, in favor of the importation of Chinese, or of restoring to those who are here the right to remain, are men who have never seen the other side of this question—men who have never studied it from a practical standpoint. But East and West, the men who understand this race, who understand its destructive influence upon our people, are like the gentleman from New York [Mr. Bartlett], like the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Sibley], like every other man who has given thorough study to the subject, in perfect accord with the demands and prayers of the people of the Pacific coast.

The sanitary condition produced by the establishment of this Asiatic city in the heart of San Francisco is, beyond description, dangerous and loathsome and fetid. There has not been a time within the last ten years, according to the testimony of leading physicians of San Francisco who have examined the matter, and the statements of the Board of Health of San Francisco, when that quarter of our city has been free from loathsome, contagious diseases—from diseases that breed in the dirt and filth and offensiveness with which the Chinese habitually surround themselves, in spite of our laws.

They know nothing and care nothing about hygienic laws, and they resent our sanitary regulations as persecutions.

Mr. RAY. Let me ask the gentleman this question: Are the municipal authorities of San Francisco powerless to remedy that state of things? Why can not the police power of the city take hold of it and correct it?

Mr. MAGUIRE. The police power and the power of boards of health—the best boards of health in the world are maintained there because it is absolutely necessary that they should be the best—are battling with these conditions and have battled with them constantly. They have so modified them as to make it possible for the city to escape epidemics. Fortunately the favorable climatic conditions, as stated in two of the Congressional committee reports here, make San Francisco a place unfavorable to the growth of the diseases that are carried there and bred there by these people. It has been declared by both of your committees that such conditions existing in any city in the East, or in any city in Europe, would spread desolation and death among the people beyond all human power of prevention.

Our police authorities and our boards of health have battled against these evils and these dangers constantly, and fortunately with great success so far as the body of the white people are concerned.

Mr. BAKER of New Hampshire. Will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. MAGUIRE. I have only five minutes, but I will hear the gentleman’s question, because I have been answering one of his points.

Mr. BAKER of New Hampshire. I would like to ask whether the Chinese in San Francisco own the property that they occupy?

Mr. MAGUIRE. No, sir; as a rule they do not.

Mr. BAKER of New Hampshire. Then, why do you not compel the white men who own the property to keep it in proper sanitary condition? That is my question.

Mr. MAGUIRE. Well, that opens up a field of discussion too extensive for the very limited time that remains to me. The courts of California have been dealing with that question for years. A California State law requiring that 500 cubic feet of air should be provided to each occupant of a Chinese bedroom was resisted with the same desperation with which this law has been resisted, and by the same authority—the Six Companies. They resist every sanitary law that is enacted; they carry their resistance through all the courts, and they yield only under absolute compulsion of the final judgment of the highest court to which the law gives them a right of appeal or application.

RELIGIOUS PETITIONS.

Petitions have been presented here from a number of highly respected and highly respectable religious organizations for the repeal of the Geary act. These organizations have no thought of working injury or injustice to our laboring people. They move upon the impulse of their religious zeal for the salvation of Chinese souls, and are oblivious to the other side of the question. They do not see the moral ruin, the degradation, and the suffering which that immigration has brought to our own people, and naturally enough, in the name of that humanity which they see represented in the Chinese, knowing nothing of the considerations of humanity due to our own race, they plead and pray for increased facilities to Christianize the Chinese.

But, Mr. Speaker, I venture to assert that for every one of the disciples of Confucius that all the missionaries and ministers of the gospel have ever really converted to Christianity, I can point to fifty white children, children of our own race, who have gone from Christianity and from all the influences of civilization down to degradation, ruin, and infamy through competition and contact with the Chinese residing in this country. I claim, sir, that the moral and physical ruin wrought among our people by this invasion will outweigh a hundred fold, aye, a thousand fold, all the good that all the missionaries and all the ministers have ever done in the matter of improving the moral condition of the Chinese.

Now, there has been some criticism and some complaint indulged concerning a remark made by my colleague, Mr. Geary, in relation to the petitions presented by conferences and associations of ministers of religion throughout the country to this body. I make the same objection to the attempts of these religious bodies to re-enforce their perfectly proper personal petitions by appeals to the power and membership of their respective churches. I deny that any religious conference in this country, or any religious association in the United States, represents or is authorized to speak for the political sentiments or political opinions of those who constitute the membership of their churches. I deny that any annual conference of two hundred ministers has a right to control, or does control, or does represent, the political sentiments of the sixty-four thousand members of its faith.

The same proposition was presented, the same stereotyped resolutions that have been here filed were submitted to the annual conference of the Congregational Church in California the other day and their adoption was urged. They were finally adopted, but the proposition to declare that the conference represented the sentiments of the members of the church on this question was rejected. It was rejected because two or three ministers rose and strenuously protested that the conference had no right to speak on this question for the members of the church, and declared that three-fourths of the church members were opposed to the position which a majority of the conference was ready to assume.

Mr. MORSE. Has the gentleman from California the resolutions of the Congregational conference to which he referred? If so, I hope he will print them with his remarks.

Mr. MAGUIRE. I have only the newspaper clipping to which I have referred and there is substantially nothing in it except what I have stated. The resolution adopted was for the repeal of the Geary act.

DEFECTS IN M’CREARY BILL.

Now, Mr. Speaker, my colleague [Mr. Geary] has clearly pointed out some very serious defects in the bill now pending, and has submitted amendments calculated to correct them.

If this House is determined, against the protests of the Pacific coast, to extend the time for Chinese registration, every consideration of good faith and national dignity require that these amendments be adopted, so that the act shall be as effective as possible for the purposes for which it is intended. Without the provision for photographing the Chinese who register the act will be practically a nullity. I thank the House for its attention.

Monkeys and Men

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MONKEYS AND MEN.

Go to the monkey, thou voter! Consider his ways and be wise.

Do the monkeys pay ground rent to the descendants of the first old ape who discovered the valley where the monkeys live?

Do they hire the trees from the chimpanzee who first found the forest?

Do they buy the coconuts from the great-great-grandchildren of the gorilla who invented a way to crack them?

Do they allow two or three monkeys to form a corporation and obtain control of all the paths that lead through the woods?

Do they permit some smart young monkey, with superior business ability, to claim all the springs of water in the forest as his own, because of some alleged bargain made by his ancestors 500 years ago?

Do they allow a small gang of monkey lawyers to so tangle up the conceptions of ownership that a few will obtain possession of everything?

Do they appoint a few monkeys to govern them and then allow those appointed monkeys to rob the tribe and mismanage all its affairs?

Do they build up a monkey city and then hand over the land, and the paths, and the trees, and the spring, and the fruits of a few monkeys who sat on a log and chattered while all the work was going on?

No, my friend, monkeys have a wiser system of municipal government than that.

Although Kipling speaks of them in his jungle book as “the people who have no law,” yet they have laws enough to prevent the private ownership of public franchises.

If Professor Garner, who claims to have learned 40 words of the monkey language, were to escort some reflective chimpanzees around one of our cities, the professor would find it rather difficult to explain some of the manners of a civilized nation.

The chimpanzee would be amazed to see a $500,000 house, with 40 rooms, contain only a millionaire and his wife and ten servants, while a $10,000 tenement, with twenty rooms, contained forty people and no servants.

He would be still further astonished to see the warehouse district, where an abundance of everything was stored, close to the slum district, where the people lacked the barest necessities of life.

He would be shocked to see an entire street railroad system, with hundreds of miles of tracks, thousands of cars and employees, and carrying millions of passengers every year, absolutely owned and controlled by three or four men who never built a car or drove a spike.

But when the professor would explain to him that nine-tenths of the people in the city were quite content to endure such evils, and, in fact, grew angry with anyone who proposed to remove them, the chimpanzee would say: “Take me back to the forest, and may the Good Spirit deliver us from civilization.”

—The Coming Nation.

quoted in 1898-12-10 Oakland Tribune, Edgar Pomeroy’s column. Shorter versions, ending with “Do they build up a monkey city and then hand over the land, and the paths, and the trees, and the spring, and the fruits of a few monkeys who sat on a log and chattered while all the work was going on?” have appeared in various places.

Henry George’s book The Land Question has a chapter entitled “The Great-Great-Grandson of Captain Kidd,” (page 37) which made some similar points about vested interests and privilege. See also Uncivilized, and a few entries down from this one, Squirrel Island. In the same spirit, look for Bolton Hall’s parables.

A "Fighting Leaflet" from another time and place, relevant today

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From an 1899 newspaper:

FIGHTING LEAFLET OF THE SCOTTISH ASSOCIATION.

The Scottish Liberal Association has just issued the following as a fighting leaflet, written by Mr. Edwin Adam. M. A., vice-president of the Scottish Land Restoration Union:

The Taxation of Land Values and Social Problems. Lower Rent. Higher Wages:

Why are house rents so high, and the accommodation so bad? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain told us that a good three-roomed house could be built for £150, but that, unfortunately, did not include the cost of the site. It remains a “castle in the air.” The Edinburgh Town Council can borrow money at 2½ percent, and yet it makes a loss in giving one-roomed houses at £6 10s a year.

Because the cost of the land is so enormous. This is the opinion of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. Building and land in and around Edinburgh is feued from £40 to £200 an acre, and sells at from £1,200 to £6,000 an acre. Eight thousand pounds has just been refused for seventy yards of ground which the city of Glasgow wished to acquire for widening the corner of Buchanan street.

The remedy is to put a tax on the land value, whether the owner allows that land to be used or not.

Taxation of land values means putting a tax on the value of the land apart from the value of any improvement placed upon the land by the occupier’s industry. It would put the tax on the site, and not on the house built upon it.

The present system of local rating puts the tax upon the improvement— the better a man uses the land the more tax he has to pay. The less he uses the land, the lower the use he makes, or allows other to make of the land, the less he contributes to the public expenditure. This enables him to hold it idle, and wait for the rise in its value, which will result from the continued growth and expenditure of the community, to which he has contributed nothing.

We wish better houses and more houses. The present system permits the man who refuses to allow building on his ground to go free: puts the rates on the man who builds. This is unjust.

When Jenner’s shop in Princes street, Edinburgh, was burnt down, the site was worth £100,000. Had the owner resolved not to rebuild, he would have paid no rates, but the value of the site would have continued to rise, because of the continued increase of population and public expenditure. He, however, not only rebuilt, but spent some £95,000 in making the building an ornament to the town. He is therefore rated on £7,000, which represents the annual value both of the site and of the £95,000 spent on the building. The new system would rate him on the value of the site, say on £4,000 a year, whether he rebuilt or not, and would leave him to enjoy all the value of the building.

Let owners of land pay their rates on what they say their land is worth. This would compel them either to use it, or let others use it, at its present market value.

Would a slum proprietor be able to demand a fancy price for his houses which have been closed by the sanitary authority, if he had to pay rates on that fancy price?

Would the Duke of Buccleuch have been able to hold out for £120,000 for 100 acres of almost barren foreshore and a flooded-out quarry, which Edinburgh required for gas works, if he had to pay rates for that, and all the similar land he holds on a value like that?

Would sites for the Usher Hall in Edinburgh be quoted at fancy figures if the owners had to pay rates on what they say is the selling value of their property? Why should they be allowed to name one value for rating, and an enormously greater for selling? The North British Railway Company refused £65,000 for the Canal Basin. That stands in the valuation roll at a rental, which represents a capital value of only £30,000.

Taxation of land values is a just system of taxation. It puts the burden of public expenditure on those who ultimately benefit by that expenditure.

It merely takes for the municipality a portion of that value which is created by the work of the municipality.

It would discourage idleness among land owners, and force them to use the land or let others use it, at its present market value.

It would not, like the present system, only rate a man according as he used and improved the land, but would leave to every man the full value of his own improvement.

It would encourage building. More houses and better houses would be built. It would therefore lower rents.

We should have land owners asking builders to come and build; they would be advertising for laborers, and not the laborers be begging for employment. It would therefore raise wages, and the conditions of labor would be improved. Monopoly would be taxed and industry would be free.

reprinted in the Oakland Tribune, 1899-03-25, in Pomeroy’s single tax column

Single Tax Challenge

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 17:14:00 +0000

This appeared in the San Francisco Call 1898-10-12. The claims he makes for the Single Tax start with one to which many 21st century folks would at first hearing, think “non-starter.” But I urge you to think further, and think about what expensive land means to most Americans, and how it makes the lives of some – many! – very difficult, while greatly enriching a “lucky” few. A reform which “cheapens” land will go a long way to putting millions of people to work and self-sufficient.

SINGLE TAX CHALLENGE.

Editor Call: So repeated have been the attacks and misrepresentations of the single tax theory in The Call and other papers of late that, as a member of the Alameda County Single Tax Society, I feel bound to request the liberality of your paper to make a few pertinent propositions.

As single taxers many of us regret the action of the Republican party in their State convention in inserting an anti-single tax plank In the State platform. Such action will force many single tax Republicans in this election to vote against their own party.

It is not, however, of such vital interest to single taxers as to which political party is for or against the single tax as it is that the theory of Henry George should be understood and intelligently discussed. Up to the present editorials have been woefully at sea in the presentation of the single tax proposition, and naturally the deductions have been equally erroneous, and platform speakers also seem wretchedly ignorant of what the single tax: is and what the results of its adoption would be. General Barnes contents himself with calling it names; Mr. Gage says it is a proposition to tax realty and improvements only.

Now, in order to test the knowledge and encourage the exercise of thought on the part of random writers and ravers, and to put the subject squarely before the people—in other words, in order to give the single tax a fair, square hearing—I make the following claims for the single tax and challenge denial or adverse argument. The single tax would:

First — Cheapen land. Second — Would encourage industry. Third — Discourage speculation. Fourth — Raise the wages of labor. Fifth — Increase the earnings of capital invested in industry. Sixth — Reduce the California farmers’ taxes to a quarter of the present tax they pay. Seventh — Prevent one man living off another’s labor, except by charity. Eighth — Destroy monopoly. Ninth — Abolish the “lobby.” Tenth — Raise the wages to the full product of labor. Eleventh— And could not be shifted.

It seems to me that the above is a fair target for anti-single taxers. The only difficulty the antis will have will be to keep the thought out of their answers. When an anti-single taxer begins to think he is in danger, and if he keeps on thinking, he is lost to the antis and becomes as rabid as any of us.

Trusting that you will give your anti-single tax editor, orators and readers an opportunity to confute the above statements, and also permit reply. I am, sir.

EDGAR POMEROY Oakland, October 10.

The Study of Economics

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 16:29:00 +0000

The Study of Economics.

The important study of economics cannot be prosecuted correctly without an understanding of economic terms. Most persons who attempt to discuss economic questions fail of reaching correct conclusions because they do not understand the true meaning of the terms which they and others use.

Teachers of political economy who understand the science thoroughly recognize the following words as meaning what is here given as their true signification:

Political economy is the science of the production and distribution of wealth.

The term wealth includes all desired and appropriated labor products.

Labor is simply human exertion, whether of the muscles or the brain of man. Hence, all persons who apply their efforts to the production of such things as are needed to enable themselves to sustain life, or others to exist and enjoy life, are laborers.

Capital is simply wealth used in the production of more wealth.

Land means material things other than man and wealth.

Wages are either wealth or services received in return for labor.

Interest is wealth received in return for the use of capital. Rent is the wealth or services received in return for the use of land.

Rent line means the line that bounds land that can yield rent. Land so poor as to be in no demand does not yield rent, and therefore is not a proper object of taxation.

Utility is the quality of satisfying desire. It is an absolute and not a relative quality. It is inherent in the thing possessing it.

Value is a relative term expressing the difference between one thing and some other or all other things. In other words, it is utility in exchange.

Price is exchangeable value represented by dollars and cents.

Barter is the exchange of things without the use of money.

Monopoly is exclusive power. It implies a special privilege held by some person or persons over what others possess. Monopoly in its various forms is the giant curse of the age. The greatest and most oppressive monopoly is the monopoly of natural resources, commonly called land monopoly. It is the parent, the foundation, the bulwark and feeder of all other monopolies. Were land monopoly entirely abolished, all other monopolies would either go to pieces or become comparatively harmless. Land monopoly has been fittingly termed the robber that taken all that is left. This is because when society is temporarily benefited by the abolition of some minor monopolies, land monopoly steps in and absorbs the benefits, thus leaving the people no better off than before. Land monopoly flourishes most and is productive of the greatest evils in large cities, where ground is valued at thousands and even millions of dollars per acre.

Farmers and all other classes of producers should unite their efforts in abolishing land monopoly, and thereby lift a heavy load from the shoulders of labor.

—Ralph Hoyt.

This appeared in the Sacramento Bee, 1899-04-01

Profit Sharing worthy of the name

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 12:18:00 +0000

“Profit sharing,” proclaims the Rev. Golightly.

“Yes, profit sharing,” says William the Conqueror.

“Yea, profit sharing,” says the lion to the lamb. And thus we share so that while one feasts at a banquet another gnaws at the fag-end of a bare bone.

The only profit sharing worthy of the name is that which secures to the public the value caused by the public and leaves to the individual the products of his industry.

—quoted by Edgar Pomeroy, in the Oakland Tribune, July 15, 1899, in a column headed “What the Single Taxers Have to Say”

In 1898-1899, and perhaps beyond, Pomeroy had a regular column in that newspaper, under the heading “News and Notes of Single Tax”

Squirrel Island

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 11:05:00 +0000

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/freeland-a_squirrel-island-191x.pdf

SQUIRREL ISLAND

By A. FREELAND.

One hundred squirrels lived on a certain island which contained a thousand nut trees. Each tree yielded sufficient nuts to support one hundred squirrels. But all of the trees were owned by ten of the squirrels. The ninety treeless squirrels rented portions of trees from the ten treelords, paying part of the nuts they gathered. The treelords did no work, but kept fat and sleek, while the treeless squirrels were very poor, both physically and financially.

One of the working squirrels invented a machine for gathering nuts. The ten treelords formed a company and paid the inventor a peck of nuts for his patent, and promised him steady employment at higher wages.

Thirty squirrels, aided by the machines, could gather as many nuts as were formerly gathered by all the working squirrels. Sixty squirrels were thus thrown out of employment. Thirty of these eventually secured employment as menials in the households of the treelords. They became cooks, flunkys, coachmen, footmen, etc., at a very low wage. The remaining thirty unemployed squirrels subsisted on charity or by theft, some actually dying of starvation.

Owing to the diminished demand for nuts, because so many were unable to buy what they needed, there was soon an “overproduction" of nuts, and the treelords were obliged to “shut down" a part of the time, thus throwing many more of the treeless squirrels out of work.

Competition among treeless squirrels for employment became exceedingly fierce and wages steadily fell. Some of the squirrels organized a union and struck for higher wages, but there were plenty of unemployed squirrels who were willing to work for the low rate. These “scab" workers were hired in place of the strikers. The latter did not relinquish their jobs without a struggle. Riots ensued, in which several of the “scabs’’ and strikers were killed.

A charitable society was organized which doled out every day a nutshell full of nut-soup to the unfortunates. The government also established a rock-pile and a public wood-yard, where unemployed squirrels could secure half of an inferior nut in return for breaking a basketful of rocks or gnawing off six double-armfuls of wood. In this way, although the majority of the squirrels were always on the verge of starvation, very few getting enough to eat, it was seldom that one actually starved. Of course their lives were shortened, but that was due, it was said, to inexorable and unavoidable conditions over which squirrels has no control.

The unemployed squirrels and those receiving meager pay began to murmur. Even some of those who operated machines were touched by the sufferings of their fellows and suggested that something must be wrong on an island which yielded sufficient nuts to feed 100,000 squirrels and yet did not support 100.

Some attributed their woes to the single nut standard; others asserted that their condition was due to the importation of pauper cracked nuts from foreign islands; still others that it was because some of the squirrels drank rain-water.

Some suggested that the hours of labor of working squirrels should be shortened, thus making work for more squirrels; others that pauper squirrel immigration should be prohibited, while a pious squirrel declared that times always would be hard so long as some of the wicked squirrels persisted in working on the Sabbath.

Many demanded an income tax of two nuts annually from each of the treelords, the revenue from such source to be given in bounties to nut-tree owners to encourage the production of nuts.

Some contended for the free and unlimited coinage of nut-shells at the ratio of sixteen nut-shells to one nut, while others asserted with considerable unction that green nut-tree leaves were the only safe, sound and flexible currency. They demanded national greenleaf money sufficient in volume to transact the business of the island on a cash basis—not less than fifty greenleaves per capita—declaring that to be the only means of restoring prosperity to the island.

To elevate the standard of citizenship, as a prerequisite to the right of franchise, a poll tax was proposed, the argument being adduced that any squirrel who would not pay for the privilege of wearing a head on his shoulders could not possibly be a good citizen.

There was a popular demand for legislation against the basket and wood trusts, which, it was claimed, were ruining the island by lowering wages and raising prices.

The treelords and the pious squirrels declared that there always were poor squirrels and always would be; that it was an inscrutable decree of Providence that some (the idlers) should be rich and the others (the workers) poor, some masters and others servants.

Many clamored for common ownership of the machines, maintaining that all the ills that were befalling treeless squirrels were the result of machinery displacing labor.

A single-tax squirrel mildly suggested that there were sufficient nut trees on the island to support in comfort 100,000 squirrels; that the treelords did not create the nut trees; that if nut-tree monopoly were abolished there would be plenty of nuts, not only for the squirrels then on the island, but for all the other squirrels on all the other islands; that then any thrifty squirrel or association of squirrels could make machines or hire them made, and the hours of labor would be reduced without legislative enactment.

Immediately there were cries from all quarters: “Anarchist! Socialist! Communist! Thief! Robber! Traitor! Revolutionist! Confiscator! Agitator! Hang him! Throw him to the sharks!" etc. So he wrote this letter.

THE JOSEPH FELS FUND OF AMERICA Cincinnati, Ohio Price 10 Cents Per Hundred.

We don’t know who A. Freeland is, but there is reason to think that Louis Freeland Post could have been the author. In The Standard, there were a couple of articles signed by “Lewis Freeland.” See “A Mysterious Disappearance,” in Issue #013, 1887-04-02 and “Lavender’s Yarn,” in Issue #025, 1887-06-25.

See also Edward Vance Cooke’s poem, “Uncivilized” and J. W. Bengough’s “A Poem of Political Economy”

An American Trinity: Thomas Jefferson, Henry George, Abraham Lincoln

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 16:40:00 +0000

https://books.google.com/books?pg=PA26&id=5VKP3aty_U4C#v=onepage&q&f=false From The Conservator, April, 1895

from the masthead: “The Conservator is an exponent of the world movement in Ethics. It is not published in the interest of any sect or party, but of Ethical principle and practice as reflected in all societies and churches and outside of all.” Horace L. Traubel was the publisher, and its offices were with those of architect Will Price, who was a founder of Arden.

For more about The Conservator, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Traubel

An American Trinity*

*From a speech delivered at the Single Tax banquet in Philadelphia, on Jefferson’s birthday, April 2.

Within the century and a little more that we have passed as a nation there have been but two supremely eminent men who have risen to the highest altitude, as to whose exact stature it remains for future generations to decide.

Of these one was a man of aristocratic lineage, inheriting in his blood those traits of caste and class which for centuries underlaid the great distinctions among men, and gave to the recipient a recognition of superiority, with all its allied privileges, prerogatives and immunities; yet a man in whose constitution there glowed a fierce hatred of all shams and enforced supremacies; whose faith in the dignity and uprightness of the common people, and whose trust in their rugged honesty and capabilities, were so great that he brushed aside all the influences of tradition and custom and greeted all men upon a common level; a man who well has been called the high priest of freedom and who swore upon the altar of liberty eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the souls of men; philosopher, patriot and sage— Thomas Jefferson.

The other, a man of humble parentage, born of the common stock, bread-winner on land and sea, hater of wrong, lover of right, seeker for truth, defender of the oppressed, comrade of the common people, of whom he is not ashamed; also philosopher, patriot and Sage— Henry George.

These men achieved merited pre-eminence, not by reliance upon credulity and the baser passions, but purely by reason of intellectual force and the appeal to the rigid sense of justice and right; not amid the glamour of war and conquest, but in the peaceful arena of everyday life; not by the instrumentality of carnage, but by the happy and gladsome medium of the understanding.

Jefferson’s conception or central thought was that no man had a right to rule over or control another. The domination or censorship of one man over another was abhorrent to his sense of justice, and his whole life’s work was to instill into the minds of men the doctrine of equal rights.

George, starting from the same premises as Jefferson, has also given to the world a philosophy from which there is no appeal. But its domain is different. It not only recognizes the equality of men before the statute law, but carries and establishes the principle of equality within the domain of natural law, showing conclusively that what we call political freedom rests upon a greater natural freedom.

So, alongside of Jefferson’s conception of equal rights among men in relation to the social state we place George’s equal rights among men in relation to the natural media.

But between the period of Jefferson and that of George there arose another who, because of the momentous and awful panorama in which he was unseekingly made the dominating and controlling factor, and not by reason of any especial distinguishing individuality, must be linked with them; a man also of the common people, whom he loved with all the intensity of his great warm heart— Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln gave the world no new philosophy. For decades the enunciation of Jefferson that “all men are born free and equal” had been silently eating its way into the hearts and minds of men. In Lincoln and his compatriots it reached its culmination, as freedom and equality were then conceived. None of them saw the inner meaning of that great truth as it is seen today.

They accepted Jefferson’s dictum of “equal rights.” The ownership of one man by another became so abhorrent that they could not rest until such ownership was overthrown and abolished, at no matter what cost. They did not see, as George saw and as we see, that the real ownership of men rests upon the ownership of the earth, and that to abolish one and not the other is merely to change the form of ownership.

It has been contended, and it may be essentially true, that to others, like Garrison, Phillips and Curtis, belongs greater honor for the overthrow of negro slavery than to Lincoln. Undoubtedly the labors of these men were great and sacred to the memory of man. Their enthusiasm and sacrifices were great. But, like those who, preceding Jefferson, preached the doctrine of political rights, these men were simply forerunners in the wilderness.

In Lincoln all the forces for freedom became focused. He became the great vehicle or instrumentality through which their labors should find expression. He became the crucible in which their identities were merged and lost and from which should come the enactment of their hopes and desires. He became, as it were, their composite, living personality.

Here, then, we have the great American trinity in the cause of liberty: Jefferson, who won for his nation its political freedom; Lincoln, who gave to a race its personal freedom; and George, who has given to the world, though it yet be in transition, its industrial freedom.

William M. Callingham.

Bengough: The Declaration of Independence Vindicated

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 13:33:00 +0000

This appeared in Single Tax Review in Autumn, 1905.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE VINDICATED. (For the Review.) By J. W. BENGOUGH.

There are some people in the United States who take the position more or less openly that the Declaration of Independence is an out-worn document; that whatever its practical merits may once have been, it is now no more than a cherished relic having certain spectacular uses on Fourth-of-July occasions. There are other Americans—constituting the vast majority—who regard such sentiments as savoring of blasphemy, but who, nevertheless, are ardent supporters of the prevailing policy of Protection. The real difference between these two classes of citizens is merely this: That the one consciously repudiates the Declaration, and the other virtually does so.

The fundamental doctrine of the Declaration is that “All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, amongst which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The meaning of this is clear enough. The fathers undoubtedly intended to assert that whatever the duties of men might be in civilized society, however they might differ in mind, body or estate, all alike were entitled to the enjoyment of certain natural rights, which rights were inalienable—that is, could not be justly taken away, curtailed or invaded by any human power, so long as they were exercised by each man with due respect for the similar rights of every other. Amongst these rights three are enumerated: The right to Life, involving necessarily the right of access to food, clothing and shelter, the right to Liberty of mind and body, so that a man’s ownership of himself might be vindicated, and his powers applied to the securing of the things necessary to life; and the right to the pursuit of Happiness, the freedom to move about and to hold such relations with his fellow men as would conduce to the enjoyment of a full and harmonious life.

The writers of the Declaration had but recently experienced the tyrannical power of taxation, and it might almost seem that the weapon of unjust taxation, like Macbeth’s dagger, was floating before their mental vision when the memorable words above quoted were penned. For certainly there is no more effective way in which man’s right to life can be abridged than by levying taxes upon the results of his labor; and his right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can be abrogated in no way more surely than by means of a system which interferes with his impulse to trade.

To all this the spirit of Frenzied Finance bluntly replies that the Fathers were, after all, only a set of academic doctrinaries, whose fine talk of “Rights” was in accordance with the stilted fashion of their day. As a matter of fact, there are no such things as Natural Rights; the true and practical philosophy of national as of individual life is the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.

On the other hand, the good American optimist, who votes the ticket of his party regularly, says he has the profoundest veneration for the founders of the Republic, and subscribes most heartily to the noble declaration about Inalienable Rights; but he does not see that the tariff system has any bearing upon the subject. At all events, the country must have a revenue, and he is not aware of any method by which it can be obtained apart from imposts upon incoming goods and the taxation of houses and other forms of personal property. If, as a matter of logic, he must admit that the taxation of food, clothing and shelter is in reality as clear an infringement of the right to life as the taxation of air would be, still, how can it be helped? On full consideration he is of opinion that the sentence in the Declaration should be revised to read: “Certain inalienable rights subject to taxation for revenue.” Which he will perhaps see to be a contradiction in terms.

Had the Fathers foreseen the difficulty which here confronts the good average citizen, they might have put in another clause for the guidance of those responsible for the collection of public revenue, to this effect: “Some men are endowed by their fellows with certain alienable privileges, amongst which are the private ownership of land and franchises, which by nature belong to all.”

It is mere mockery to call a thing a Right—an “inalienable” Right— and then to impose taxation upon it. By the word we understand a something which man possesses by direct endowment of his Creator, in virtue of his being born on this earth; a something which cannot justly be taken away, in whole or in part, unless it has become forfeited by criminal act against laws made for the mutual protection of all the members of society.

A privilege is an altogether different thing. It is something bestowed by the assumed consent of all on some, and is held strictly on sufference. It is in the very nature of things alienable. The power that bestowed it can modify or resume it. The real ownership remains with the community, and all that is given, in any case, is the possession and exclusive use. Not only is a privilege a fit and proper subject for taxation, but in justice it must be taxed. Otherwise the public heritage is actually alienated and an unjust advantage is bestowed on some. An equivalent must in fairness be given for every privilege granted, and taxation based upon the value of the privilege is the most accurate, natural and convenient method of securing such equivalent.

The ownership of land and franchises by individuals obviously comes under the head of privilege. All the land of a country belongs to all the people of that country; and each man, having an inalienable right to life, has an equal right with all others to access to all land, the first essential of life. But since land can only be put to effective use when specific portions of it are held in the private possession of specific individuals, it becomes necessary to bestow upon individuals the legal right of thus holding land. Those so favored enjoy their special right by human law, by consent of their fellows, each of whom has an equal natural right; in short, as a matter of privilege. Similarly, the private “ownership” of public service franchises, of fishing rights and other valuable prerogatives belonging in reality to the public, is pure and simple privilege, as distinguished from natural right.

Here, then, is the conclusive reply to the plea that the necessity for public revenue involves an inevitable invasion of natural rights—the field of privilege is open to the public Treasurer. There he finds a domain in which his presence is not an affront to justice; which is, indeed, the God-appointed source of public revenue, from which he takes for the community only that which belongs to the community.

The American patriot who has a real respect for the venerable Declaration ought to hear with joy and relief that the inalienable rights of man are, after all, compatible with the practical working of democratic government; and he should consider it his first and most urgent duty to assist those who are laboring for the abolition of a system of revenue-getting which gives a flat denial to the principles of that grand old document. That legal rights rather than natural rights—special, man-bestowed privileges, rather than general God-bestowed birth-rights—should be the objects of taxation, is a proposition which, it seems to me, must commend itself to every reasonable man. It is, moreover, a proposition which is capable of being set forth in the form of a simple diagram:

If there are any who, upon examining this diagram, are still prepared to say that the prevailing system is one which ought to be maintained; that public franchises should remain in the hands of the few, with little or no compensation to the public for their value; that land should continue to be regarded, not as a God-given heritage to the children of men, but as a commodity of monopoly and speculation for the enrichment of some without equivalent to the disinherited many; that a portion of the earnings of labor, the product of individual industry, should be taken for public revenue, while the automatically created values of the public domain are absorbed by the holders of privileges—he is entitled to his opinion.

But let him at least be candid enough to join those who openly repudiate the teachings of the Declaration of Independence.

Toronto, Canada.

"Proputty" — A Lecturette in Rhyme, by J. W. Bengough

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 13:12:00 +0000

John Wilson Bengough was a skilled artist and cartoonist, but he was also skilled with words. This appeared in Single Tax Review, Winter 1906.

“PROPUTTY.” (For the Review.) A LECTURETTE IN RHYME.

I took up my Tennyson lately and read his dialect verse Of the sturdy old “Northern Farmer,” whose soul was in his purse; How he berated Sam, his son, who wanted to marry for “loove,” And the folly of such a notion sought earnestly to prove.

“ ’Ear my ’erse’s legs,” says he, “as they canters and canters awaay, Proputty, proputty, proputty—that’s wot I ’ears ’em saay!” “Proputty, proputty, proputty”—that was the only thing That to him was of real importance concerning a wedding ring.

Gentleness, truth and sweetness; a pretty figure and face, These, and a passionate love, are all very well in their place; But to be of any account in blushing, prospective brides, “Proputty, proputty, proputty”—that must be there, besides!

Now, to many who read the poem this Northern Farmer seems A sordid old grasping wretch, who only of riches dreams; “Proputty, proputty, proputty.”—so runs his one refrain, “Proputty, proputty, proputty”—hoarding, profit and gain.

But isn’t this rather unjust? he may have had too much greed; We get that impression, somehow, undoubtedly, as we read; But to hold it a sacred thing, to be fought for with main and might, “Proputty, proputty, proputty”—there the old man was right!

“Proputty,” what does it mean? It means what belongs to you; The things that you really own by sanctions both just and true; What you own because you own yourself and all your powers; What with those powers you have made,— that’s Property; that is yours.

You work and fashion a coat or hat, a picture, a book, or a cart, And this result of your labor you take to the public mart, Exchanging it there for what it’s worth in money or barter-trade,— That’s Property—what you fairly get for the honest thing you’ve made.

And the Northern Farmer was right when he said it o’er and o’er: “Proputty, proputty, proputty,”—it ought to be safe and sure; What belongs to a man is his, yea, every tittle and jot. That’s what Property means, that is its central thought.

And what is true of a man, is equally true of the State; There’s Property just as real that public we must rate; What belongs to me is mine; what belongs to the mass—to all, Is theirs; and betwixt these rights there is, so to speak, a wall.

The Northern Farmer spoke true—Property does exist, And that it’s a sacred thing I with him would insist; And I call it equally theft, in what form soever it’s done, For one to take from all, or for all to take from one.

If this is the rule of Justice, then we may assuredly say That Property rights are set at naught, they’re null and void today; For what the private worker makes is subject to a tax, And communities have monopolists a-riding on their backs.

Who makes the coat or table? The toiler at his trade; Then whose should be the Property but his who the same has made? And who creates the rent of land? the people as a whole; Whose Property, then, is rent? Who rightly should control?

The Government must be kept alive, and taxes are its food, And so each man must pay, we’re told— which is all very well and good; But private, personal property rights are none the less divine; Let the Government feed on what’s its own, not on what’s your’s or mine!

If a thief comes into my house, demanding some share of my wealth, He knows he is breaking the law, and he generally does it by stealth; But why is there such a law? Because ’tis a truth of God, That what I have earned is mine, and is sacred from force or fraud.

But isn’t it still my own tho’ the visitor wears no mask. And comes in the light of day, as a tax-collector, I ask? When he takes in the name of the State a portion of what I’ve made, Isn’t the net result to me like a burglar’s raid?

“Proputty, proputty, proputty,”—my wages belong to me Against either thief or State, and wages are what you see When you look at the things I own, house, books, stable and cow, I’ve earned them every one by the honest sweat of my brow.

The Government, as you say, must live, and must be fed. And taxes, truly enough, are simply Government bread; But why not feed on its own—the values itself creates? What I make belongs to me; what the State makes is the State’s.

The State, as such, doesn’t work; it doesn’t make visible things; But the Public exists as a fact, and that fact infallibly brings Into existence a fund—a value attaching to land— A natural source of supply by a wise Creator planned.

“Proputty, proputty, proputty,” that is Property, too, And it clearly belongs to the State, and neither to me nor you; So if the State must live, let it feed on its own resource, And leave our belongings to us—that’s clearly the honest course.

Ah! there’s the snag, you see! Yes, certainly that’s the rub;” This logic’s without a flaw, but ’twill raise a precious hub-bub; For our laws have given away what belongs to the Government, And allow the land-owning class to feed on its bread—the rent.

And not without a great kick will these rent-consumers quit; Do you think they would rather work for their fortunes? Not a bit! They flourish their parchment deeds and prate of “Property,” too, Tho’ Property-in-Rent belongs to All, not the few.

Now, having given away the natural revenue spring. The State turns to private rights and pounces on everything, Robbing by charges direct and charges crooked, as well, Every form of wealth you can see, taste, feel or smell!

“Proputty, proputty, proputty,” there’s no such thing today That the State does not invade, despoil or take away; And land-rent, springing up by a heaven-made, natural law, Is not true property in private monopoly’s maw.

Well, what’s to be done about it? Nothing at all, say you, ’Twas a sad mistake, no doubt, but it’s made and it must go through. No! render to Caesar what’s his, and to me what belongs to me. “Proputty, proputty, proputty—let us do righteously!

J. W. Bengough.

Single Tax Review 1905 Vol 5 p. 49, page 204-205 of 297 Winter 1906

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek

Thu, 21 May 2020 09:34:00 +0000

The final few pages of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1942 book Cross Creek, ring with the thought of Thomas Jefferson and Henry George:

I had a letter from a friend at this time, saying “I am a firm believer in property rights.”

The statement disturbed me. What is “property” and who are the legitimate owners? I looked out from my veranda, across the acres of grove from which I had only recently been able to remove the mortgage. The land was legally mine, and short of long tax delinquency, nothing and nobody could take it from me. Yet if I did not take care of the land lovingly, did not nourish and cultivate it, it would revert to the jungle. Was it mine to abuse or to neglect? I did not think so.

I thought of countless generations that had “owned” land. Of what did that ownership consist? I thought of the great earth, whirling in space. It was here ahead of men and could conceivably be here after them. How should one man say that he “owned” any piece of parcel of it? If he worked with it, labored to bring it to fruition, it seemed to me that at most he held it in fief. The individual man is transitory, but the pulse of life and of growth goes on after he is gone, buried under a wreath of magnolia leaves. No man should have proprietary rights over land who does not use that land wisely and lovingly. Steinbeck raised the same question in his Grapes of Wrath. Men who had cultivated their land for generations were dispossessed because banks and industrialists believed they could make a greater profit by turning over the soil to mass, mechanized production. But what will happen to that land when the industrialists themselves are gone? The earth will survive bankers and any system of government, capitalistic, fascist or bolshevist. The earth will even survive anarchy.

I looked across my grove, hard fought for, hard maintained, and I thought of other residents there. There are other inhabitants who stir about with the same sense of possession as my own. A covey of quail has lived for as long as I have owned the place in a bramble thicket near the hammock. A pair of blue-jays has raised its young, raucous-voiced and handsome, year after year in the hickory trees. The same pair of red-birds mates and nests in an orange tree behind my house and brings its progeny twice a year to the feed basket in the crepe myrtle in the front yard. The male sings with a joie de vivre no greater than my own, but in a voice lovelier than mine, and the female drops bits of corn into the mouths of her fledglings with as much assurance as though she paid the taxes. A black snake has lived under my bedroom as long as I have slept in it.

Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages. And after I am dead, who am childless, the human ownership of grove and field and hammock is hypothetical. But a long line of red-birds and whippoorwills and blue-jays and ground doves will descend from the present owners of nests in the orange trees, and their claim will be less subject to dispute than that of any human heirs. Houses are individual and can be owned, like nests, and fought for. But what of the land? It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

Seeing the Cat — Have You Seen the Cat?

Tue, 12 May 2020 13:43:00 +0000

If you’ve been reading about Henry George’s ideas for a while, particularly in older writings, you might have come across references to “seeing the cat.” It might be “have you seen the cat?” or “how I saw the cat” or more commonly, “do you see the cat?” It is a shorthand for “have you seen the big picture?” “do you get how all this fits together to solve what otherwise seems to be unsolvable?”

It started with a speaker at an Anti-Poverty Society meeting in Manhattan on a Sunday night in November 1887. The speaker was Judge James Maguire of California, later to be a congressman. The Anti-Poverty Society had held its first public meeting in May, 1887, on a Sunday night, and thereafter met nearly every Sunday night in one or more large halls in Manhattan, filling all the seats and the standing room. The speeches given there, week after week, were extraordinary, and should be collected. (That will happen.) These were not short speeches – some ran 2 hours, interrupted by enthusiastic audiences. But they come alive on paper and on screen, 130 years later. For now, I’ll share an excerpt from Judge Maguire’s speech as it appeared in The Standard, Issue #045, 1887-11-12.

“Judge Maguire, who followed Dr. McGlynn, was greeted by round after round of applause when he came forward. When it had ceased he said:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen — The way that people rise up to defend this cause when they fully understand it reminds me of Mr. George’s story about the cat. There are men who have listened to an address on this question or that have read something about it who declare to you that they don’t see anything in it at all, and though they look at it again and again some of them still don’t see it, and you point to different principles that are involved in it and still they fail to see it. You have seen little pictures in store windows with trees, animals, birds and some grass and some plants for a background. At first glance you don’t think there is much of anything to one of these, but when you see a fellow standing and staring at a show window, the strongest impulse in the world comes upon you to find out what he is looking at, and you go up and look too. When you inquire what he is looking at he answers: “I am looking at that picture. Don’t you see that question down at the bottom, ‘Where is the cat?’” You look, but don’t see any cat. By and by somebody comes along who has seen the picture before or who has had the cat pointed out to him. He asks: “Don’t you see that twig?” “Yes.”

“Don’t you see that white strip between the twig and the trunk of the tree?” “Yes.”

“Well, that is one leg of the cat.” Still, you don’t see any cat, and you may be ready to swear that there is no cat there. Then he shows you the little dovetailed arrangement of grass and weeds down near the bottom, and tells you that is the claws of the cat; still you don’t see any cat. He next shows you a little branch which represents the eyes of the cat; but still you can’t see the cat. Finally he points out another branch that represents the ear. Instantly you see the whole cat. If you should not see that picture again for twenty years, the very minute you glance at it the first thing you see is the cat, the most prominent thing of all.

So it is with a simple natural truth; so it is with the great truths that are involved in this proposed reform. They may look at the proposition, see nothing in it, and have parts and details explained to them, and still see nothing in it. But the very minute that they grasp and realize and take in the whole situation, then they become enthusiasts, and start out and point it out to everybody else. After awhile they forget how hard it was for them to see the cat, and they actually think that a man who can’t see it in an instant must be a fool, because it is so clear to them.

Forty years later, Louis F. Post’s 1930 book, The Prophet of San Francisco, provided the back story:

In the forenoon of the day following his speech, while Judge Maguire was conversing with Henry George, William T. Croasdale and myself, in the editorial office of Henry George’s The Standard at the corner of New York’s Nassau Street and Ann, Croasdale diverted the conversation with a complimentary remark about the “cat” picture which Maguire had described so significantly the night before. Maguire was about to make acknowledgment of the compliment when Henry George broke in with: “Yes, Maguire, that was a forceful illustration. Was it an invention or an actual experience?”

“Both,” Maguire replied. “The picture incident was an actual experience; for its application I was indebted to your Progress and Poverty.”

Manifestly astonished by the latter part of Maguire’s reply, George declared that he had never used the “cat” illustration in any form. He thought Maguire must be mistaken. But my memory came to Maguire’s support, and after a brief search through the second chapter of the fifth book of Progress and Poverty, I found what I was looking for in the last paragraph of that chapter. . . .

“So simple and clear is this truth that to fully see it once is always to recognize it. There are pictures which, though looked at again and again, present only a confused labyrinth of lines or scroll-work – a landscape, trees, or something of the kind – until once attention is called to the fact that these things make up a face or a figure. This relation once recognized is always afterward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of this truth all social facts, group themselves in an orderly relation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to spring from one great principle.” Progress and Poverty, Book V (The Problem Solved), Chapter 2 (The Persistence of Poverty Amid Advancing Wealth ) and in the Drake abridgment.

Louis F. Post was later the editor of The Standard, and then published The Public for many years, before becoming Assistant Secretary of Labor in Woodrow Wilson’s administration. He was one of the original 21 directors of Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Here’s a rendering, from the website of the Henry George Institute, henrygeorge.org. I am guessing it is of fairly recent vintage (compared to everything else on this post), perhaps Bob Clancy’s work.

Post-script to Seeing the Cat

Mon, 11 May 2020 13:01:00 +0000

“The Single Tax party had a curious electioneering badge for use in the New York Mayoralty Campaign. This consisted of a white cat with an arched back, and hair on end, while round the border is the legend “Free Trade, Free Land, Free Men.” The motto of the cat is “I scratch,” and its adoption as the emblem of the party is said to be the outcome of one of the earliest puzzles, called “Do you see the cat?” which was current some 12 or 14 years ago. . . " – The Single Tax (Glasgow, February, 1898)

(I’m not sure they had the timing right. It appears to be from Fall 1888, a few years after the 1886 mayoral campaign. And “see the cat” came out of the Anti-Poverty Society meeting in November 6, 1887. Here are reports from two different Brooklyn newspapers:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1888-09-18:

FOUND THE CATAnd Think They Know Which Way It Is Jumping.

Henry George and His Friends Want a Democrat in the Presidential Chair and a Republlcan at Albany.

The Single Tax Club of Brooklyn held a meeting last night at the Atheneum. Henry George, Louis F. Post, Everett B. Glacken and other advocates of the single tax system were present and sat upon the platform. Members of the club scattered through the audience wore bright red silk badges upon each of which appeared the picture of a ferocious looking feline with its back up. Upon the badge were also inscribed the letters “C. A. T.,” which Mr. George said stood for Cleveland and Thurman.

Despite the inclement weather a large audience was present, which evidently expected that Mr. George would explain why he supported Cleveland and Thurman and not David Bennett Hill. The apostle of Free Trade, however, was not to be caught in any such trap. He said a great deal about the Democratic national candidates, but not one word about the State contest.

The only intimation the audience had of the proposed George ticket was the following, printed upon slips of paper and scattered through the hall: “For President, Grover Cleveland; for Vice President, Allen G. Thurman; for Governor, Warner Miller.”

Mr. Everett B. Glacken, president of Typographical Union No. 6, presided at the meeting. Upon taking the chair he made a brief speech, in the course of which he said that it was a mistake to suppose that, because the Single Tax Club would support, at the coming election, the national Democratic, ticket, its members were Democrats. “We can,” he said, “expect little from the politicians of either party, but as Mr. Cleveland in his Message advocates a reduction of the Tariff we are of the opinion that he will be more apt to help our ideas than the Republican candidate. The object of this club is to make popular the method of taxation advocated by Henry George—that is, the abolition of all taxation except a single tax upon the rental value of land.”

Mr. Louis F. Post was then introduced. He said:

Before going any further I would like to explain to those who do not know the secret why we wear the picture of a cat upon our badge. Last Winter Judge McGuire, of California, told a very apt story which illustrates fully the point which I wish to bring out. “Many of you,’ he said, “have seen in shop windows a roughly drawn landscape and underneath it the words, Find the Cat.’ At first glance all that could be seen were a few trees surrounded by tangled, brushwood, but after studying it a while, and having first this and then that part of the animal pointed out, the whole animal came suddenly into view; in other words, you were able to see the cat.”

So we adopted the emblem of the cat, with the inscription, Free Trade, Free Land and Free Men.” Unless a man can see this he has never seen the cat. We intend to support Cleveland and Thurman because we have seen the cat, and all we can say is that, if Mr. Cleveland did not mean Free Trade in his Message, he made a long jump toward it.

The Democratic party has got a cat, on the tail board of its wagon which is just now going our way. When, the wagon comes to a cross road and turns in another direction we will get out of it. We are only riding for a rest, any way, and are used to walking.

The Republican party was born in liberty, but it got so far ahead toward freedom that it thought it was time to turn back again, and it is now going in the other direction.

If we win with Cleveland this year we will knock 7 percent out of the Protection system, and another time we will get rid of the other 40 percent.

Just before election the Republican party imports England over here to scare our workmen. Their speakers talk about the low wages over there, and their campaign literary bureau scatters all over the country cards bearing the imprint of the English flag upon them, accompanied with some so called Quotations from the London Times. After election the Republican party imports foreign workmen into their mines and factories.

It is not fair to compare Free Trade England with High Tariff America, but if you want to make a comparison, take the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales. In 1866 Free Trade flourished in both of them. At that time Victoria was ahead of New South Wales, and by far the more prosperous of the two. In 1866 Victoria adopted a protective Tariff, and from that day to the present New South Wales, which remained for Free Trade, has outstripped her former rival in every form of prosperity. There are today 1,000 more factories in New South Wales than in Victoria and the exports and imports of the former are several million times more than the latter. Fellow workingmen, we do not expect to obtain a relief from our present burdens in a reform of the tariff; this will only come when we have Free Trade, free land and tree country.

Mr. Henry George, the next speaker, was received with enthusiastic rounds of applause. He said:

Ladies and Gentlemen—Most of us have seen the cat and therefore there is no use in my urging you to support Cleveland and Thurman, because you recognize the fact that what they stand for is the great advance that we so much desire. The Protection superstition is just what we have to fight. We want to abolish all the taxes that injure labor, and destroy all the monopolies that hamper it.

Although the Democratic party by its measure goes but a little way, it sets its face toward Free Trade, and the man who leads in this movement for the emancipation of labor is Grover Cleveland. He has turned the whole country into a debating club. A great principle is at stake.

The Protectionists appeal to the lowest passions, the densest superstitions, but I have faith in the intelligence of our working people and I am confident that in November the death knell of Protection in the United States will be struck. Let us elect Mr. Cleveland and then you will see how high the Free Trade spirit will rise in the Democratic ranks; then you will see how proud men will be to be called Free Traders.

At this point in his address Mr. George was interrupted by a man in the lower end of the hall who shouted out: “We don’t want Free Trade!”

“He has not seen the cat.” said someone on the platform.

“He sees it through a glass darkly, if he sees it at all,” said Mr. George; and resuming the thread of his discourse he launched out into an extended exposition of his free land theories. At the close of his speech a collection was taken up and the meeting adjourned.

and the Brooklyn Times Union of the same date:

FOR FREE TRADE.A Meeting at the Athenaeum Addressed by Henry George and Others Last Night.

Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather last evening, the seating capacity of the Athenaeum, Atlantic avenue, near Clinton street, was taxed to its utmost to accommodate those who came to listen to Mr. Henry George and other disciples of the free trade and tax theories. The meeting was called to order shortly after 8 o’clock by Mr. Everett B. Glackin, who presided. He briefly reviewed the objects and aims of the United Labor party for the information of those not acquainted with their platform, and stated that nothing abort of the abolition of all the taxes except land rents would in the least degree ameliorate the condition of the wage-earner.

Mr. Louis F. Post was then introduced. He prefaced his speech by a humorous comparison of the difficulties to be experienced in thoroughly understanding the practical application of the single tax scheme and a certain cat story he heard out West, in the window of a picture dealer’s store in a Western town, he continued, was a painting of a beautiful landscape, and on the white lower margin of the painting read the legend. “Where is the Cat?” Passers by were attracted to the store window by the novelty of the picture, and each endeavored to succeed in locating the feline representative, but without success. One day there happened along an individual whose perceptive faculties were unusually developed, and after scrutinizing the painting for a few moments he discovered the cat. Not being of an esoteric nature and wishing to impart his knowledge to those who were gazing at the picture, this individual began pointing out the different portions of the animal, observing that the thorns at the base of the landscape represented the cat’s claws, two large leaves on a tree were outlines of its ears, two soaring birds its eyes, and the whole landscape was then plainly seen to represent a fully developed cat.

“So with the tax on land values,” said the speaker; “when properly propounded the theory presents no difficulty to the average comprehension.” Mr. Post was frequently applauded.

There was an intermission of ten minutes, daring which a collection was taken up, and then the discussion was resumed by Mr. John Butler, of Harrisburg, Pa., who made a very forcible address and was frequently applauded.

Tremendous applause greeted Mr. Henry George, who next took the platform. When silence had been restored the great free trader remarked that it was evident, from the disposition shown by those present when free trade was mentioned, that there was no necessity of urging them to vote for Cleveland and Thurman, who were, he said, pioneers in the movement for the removal of all duties on imports. The Mills bill, he continued, was merely an entering wedge designed to sunder the protective rock, but it was of vast importance in that it indicated the goal to which the Democracy was advancing.

“Free traders throughout the country,” Mr. George went on, “ought to thank Mr. Cleveland for his influence in converting the country into a gigantic debating club, for it is only by discussion that the evils of restricted commercial intercourse could be elucidated and made apparent. The watchwords in this campaign,” he continued, “were to be ‘free trade, free land and free men,’ and the Democracy is the party through which they are to be achieved.”

Before the meeting adjourned the Chairman announced that there would be a meeting of the Revenue Reform Club at Thayer’s Hall, corner at Bedford and Fulton avenues, on Thursday evening next.

The New York Times article didn’t mention the cat.

Poem: Mary and Her Landlord

Thu, 07 May 2020 10:08:00 +0000

From The Sacramento Bee, July 18, 1900:

Mary and Her Landlord

Mary opened a little shop To help her on life’s way: And honest toil found its reward And it began to pay.

“How’s biz?" the landlords often asked, And Mary was imprudent; Of course she never guessed he was An economic student.

But Mary’s landlord’s eagle eye Was watching how thing went, And when the 1st of May came round He doubled Mary’s rent.

The imposition staggered her, But what could Mary do? Subsistence bare is the tenant’s share. All above is the landlord’s due.

So Mary kept on as before. Improving as time went. But step by step with increased trade The landlord raised tho rent.

And thus the merry game went on, Till Mary’s life was spent. As fast as God could prosper her. The landlord raised the rent.

—W. Chapman Wright in the Westminster Review.

1897: An Eloquent Tribute to Henry George, in the Sacramento Bee

Wed, 06 May 2020 21:15:00 +0000

This tribute, by Phil Francis, appeared in the 1897-11-12 issue of the Sacramento Bee, about 2 weeks after Henry George’s death in NYC, and was reprinted from the Stockton Mail. Some of seems a bit overwrought today, perhaps, particularly to those who haven’t read George, but what caught me were these sentences:

He did for political economy what Bacon did for philosophy, what Bentham did for jurisprudence. He found it a gibberish and left it a science.

Now that Henry George is dead the bigness of the man will begin to fill the world’s eye. It is a curious eye, seeing nothing of proportion in those who move across the stage of events. While he lived, Henry George was the mark of many men’s curiosity, the target of many fools’ abuse, the object of a few men’s profound esteem. Time will prove the few to be right. Time always does that. Nine times in ten the minority is right. Nine times in ten the majority lacks nothing of the ass’s qualities, except his good looks. The world crucifies its Christs and stones its prophets while they are in the flesh. Dead, the world builds temples and monuments to them. So it was yesterday, and is today and will be forever, perhaps. So it was with Henry George. His was the most lucid mind living. That superb thinking machine of his worked so easily in the making of great ideas that its force and power were not apparent to the casual glance. He did for political economy what Bacon did for philosophy, what Bentham did for jurisprudence. He found it a gibberish and left it a science. Because little minds could not follow along the paths his far-sighted and sure-footed intellect blazed, the vacant heads in which these same little minds slosh about were wagged in derision at the profoundest thinker of modern times. He himself looked down from far hights on these gibbering mimes and chattering apes with a kingly forbearance. But to those who knew his lofty character and his superb powers, it was hard to rein in the angry contempt which these mowing and moping fools excited.

Henry George is not dead. His eye sees no longer the beauty of things. His ear is stopped with dust. The brain that wrought so greatly for human good is inert. Whither the soul of him is gone we can but guess; or that it lives and knows, or that it is not, or that it sleeps—these be questions that the generations have asked of death and never yet have heard an answer from the silence. But if so be that all which here was so strong, so admirable, so full of beauty of much use, is but as the dust blown by the winds’ breath, still, the man lives, still he works, still he lays the spell of his genius on the hearts and minds of living men. Wherever a single human soul struggles to make brighter this dark earth; wherever the heart of such an one is as water and his eyes fall with watching for the dawn and ache for the dark house and the sleep that ends not; wherever two or three are banded together to fight the good fight for justice, for liberty, for truth—there, there is the spirit of the dead man, encouraging, soothing, sustaining, cheering on to hope and struggle and the victory that some day shall surely come. This is the purpose of his life. This the message that comes back along the strait and dreadful path he has gone—let us hope into a pleasanter and more beautiful country than this.

In early October, this had appeared on the Sacramento Bee’seditorial page:

Henry George is a candidate for Mayor of New York. Henry George is one of the brainiest men of this or any other Nation. He is a deep thinker and a brilliant writer. Whether he is too much of a student and theorist to make a good executive head of a great city cannot be verified, for he has never been tried; we do not think he will be this time. He will receive a very complimentary vote, but he is not likely to be elected Mayor of Greater New York. The London Globe, however, which knows as much about New York politics as a Milpitas Justice of the Peace does about law, avers that he will. Hear that journal of the world’s metropolis:

Judging from the Times dispatch, Henry George will be the next Mayor. The Americans do not exceed a quarter of the whole population, and the European Anarchists, Socialists, Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Russians, all the very lowest of their race, will support the man whose childish economics and wild theories are detested in every capital in Europe. These being the people who sway public opinion, it is the hight of absurdity to rave about blood being thicker than water.

The Globe has been misnamed. It should call itself the Molecule, for assuredly it does not see beyond itself.

Henry George will not be supported by the worst elements of New York, but by some of the very best.

His theories and economics may be hated by the money-lenders in every capital in Europe, but we venture to say that the common people all over the world—those who toil and produce— have the heartiest admiration for one of the leading politico-economic writers of this or any other age—a man who has always written for The People and never for syndicated Capital.

Henry George may never be Mayor of the American metropolis, but he is a greater man than any one who ever has been, or than probably anyone who ever will be.

(I’ve not seen that spelling of height elsewhere.)

Terrence Powderly: On Earth Peace, Good Will Toward Men (Cosmopolitan, December, 1891)

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 18:10:00 +0000

“ON EARTH PEACE, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN.”

T. V. POWDERLY.

Terence V. Powderly was born January 22, 1849, at Carbondale, Pennsylvania. His parents were natives of Ireland and were honest hard-working people.The boy’s school days ended at the age of thirteen. At fourteen he was examiner for the Delaware and Hudson Canal company: at seventeen he was apprenticed in the Delaware, and Hudson shops to learn the trade of machinist; at twenty he was a machinist in the locomotive shops of the Lackawanna railway at Scranton, and in 1871 joined a labor organization. Two years later, in spite of the fact that he was a Conservative, he was discharged from the shops because of his activity in the labor union. He worked at his trade wherever he could find employment notwithstanding the “black list” until 1878, when he was elected Mayor of Scranton, an office he retained for six years. He has been a chief factor in organizing the Knights of Labor, whose General Master Workman he has been since 1879.

IT is easier to point out the wrong than rectify it, less difficult to find something to condemn or find fault with than praise or endorse; and in the field of industry, while the advance toward better conditions has been more rapid during the past decade than for centuries before, the results are not so apparent to the worker in the field as to the looker-on. The great danger which presented itself to the people fifteen years ago was the law. The poor were without friends: they were the recipients of denunciation from statesman, press and pulpit. It was considered rude to even hint that the man who soiled his hands in manual toil had a right to any consideration other than a patronizing kindness at the hands of his employer, and to suggest that others should take an interest in his welfare was to incur the displeasure of society. The law made it a crime to be idle and gave to employers the privilege of turning the workman away without protest. To be out of money and on “tramp” was an offense against the law: it is today, but is not punished so rigorously as it used to be.

Fifteen years ago there were millions of men out of work who could not find anything to do; they were too poor to remain at home, and to “tramp” meant imprisonment away from home. Thousands became criminals, remained a charge on the community for a time and afterwards were sent to prison for a term of years. So many men and women were sent to prison for want of work—that being the primary cause—fifteen years ago that the products of the prisons began to regulate market values and wages. The attention of the observing workman once directed to this effect of prisons work, he began to question how long it would take to turn the country into a vast prison. With prison-made articles regulating the price of those made by honest hands, reductions in wages became inevitable; reductions in wages meant more criminals: more criminals meant more prisons; and the end of all this would be a grated cell at night and a day of toil under the eye of the prison overseer for all who worked. From effect to cause the workman patiently trudged his way, and with the light he gained he saw that to effect a remedy the law must undergo a change—not only the law but the laws, for not alone did one law militate against the welfare of the worker, but many operated to his injury.

It is true that here and there workmen who studied out the question of right and privilege belonged to no organization, but the isolated searcher for truth realized that to overcome obstacles such as presented themselves to him he must have assistance. Organizations of working men were in existence at the time, but they were on the verge of dissolution; many of them went out of existence at that particular time. The trades unions of that day devoted every energy to the wage question: they proclaimed that ‘in unity there is strength,’ but their actions gave the lie to the declaration. Only the skilled workman could join a labor organization then; none but a shoemaker could become a member of a society with a membership of shoemakers; no other tradesman or workman could join or even form a passing acquaintance, isolated by division of methods they were separated on craft lines and knew absolutely nothing about the condition of labor or industry outside of their own narrow trade affiliations. When a stringency in the money market affected labor and wages in one part of the field of industry, its certain effects were dull times, lack of employment and reductions in wages elsewhere. To the trades unionist all was mystery; if the cause could not be found in his union he never sought for it elsewhere. With him the wage question was the only one with which he should deal, and in dealing with it his idea was that force alone could win. Unless an immediate strike could prove effective his cause was lost until, through some turn of the wheel, he could take advantage of his employer and strike him at a more favorable time. What appeared to the trades unionist as a favorable time was, in nine cases out of ten, a time when the employer was beset by perplexities on all sides—a time when his creditors were pushing him to the wall. At such a time he would be more likely to accede to the demands of the union than permit a strike to occur which would make known his condition to other creditors who might crowd him still farther toward bankruptcy. The conditions which affected the employer and the market in which he sold his wares never gave the trades unionist a moment’s consideration at that day, and it was useless to talk to him of such things. There were thousands of trades unionists who, in dropping away from the organizations of that time, sought for some other agency through which to lift the burden that oppressed labor.

The order of the Knights of Labor, which had then been in existence some seven years, offered inducements to such as these and around its standard they gathered. Their influence and knowledge of the errors of the older societies aided materially in shaping the destinies of the younger association, and in 1878, in a general convention, the demands of the wage earner found public expression in a declaration of principles known as the “Preamble of the Knights of Labor.” Through the local assembly, as the subordinate branch of the organization is known, it would not be possible to arrive at an understanding of the condition of the workman, and one of the demands of the Knights of Labor was for the establishment of labor bureaus, through the operation of which accurate information would be gained concerning the wages paid, hours worked, treatment received and injuries inflicted upon the workman. The sanitary surroundings of the workshop and home, the drain upon the earnings of the employee and the profits of the employer were to become subjects for investigation by these bureaus. The taxation of house and workshop and the mortgages on the same were to be made known and clear to all.

After struggles and contentions labor bureaus were established in twenty-four states and a Department of Labor at Washington. District of Columbia. The right to elect the chiefs of these bureaus was not vested in the working men in whose interests they were created, and in many cases time-serving politicians were placed in charge of institutions that by instinct, training and affiliation they could not possibly be in sympathy with. Notwithstanding all of this the most active in the ranks of organized labor were always on the alert and carefully scrutinized and criticized the work done by these officials. From the first reports made by the earlier bureaus dates the practical agitation for inspection of factories, ventilation of mines and workshops, prohibition of child labor, prohibition of alien labor under contract, the ownership of telegraphs, telephones and railways by the government and the restoration of lands that were unjustly taken from the people by act of Congress. Factory inspection is established by law in eleven states; child labor is prohibited in nearly all of the states, and wherever coal mines are operated the owners are required to conform to certain legal requirements as to sanitation and ventilation. Foreign labor under contract is prohibited by law and steps are being taken each day to enforce these laws and amend them where they are found wanting. Fifteen years ago the Knights of Labor demanded that “the public lands, the heritage of the people, be reserved for actual settlers; not another acre for railroads or speculators.” Seven years ago the necessity for taking a step forward became apparent and these words were added, “and that all lands now held for speculative purposes be taxed to their full value.” In the session of the general assembly for 1889, two years ago, the land plank underwent another and more radical change and now reads:

The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of all the people and should not be subject to speculative traffic. Occupancy and use should be the only title to the possession of land. The taxes upon land should be levied upon its full value for use, exclusive of improvements, and should be sufficient to take for the community all unearned increment."

The old government road gave way to the railroad, and the canal and open thoroughfare of the people were rendered almost useless through the operations of the newer system of transportation. These agencies of distribution are owned and monopolized by a very few, and the Knights of Labor see in this a danger to the future of the republic The railroads were chartered as public highways, but the public have no voice in their management and may be “taxed all the traffic will bear” at the will of the owners. Complaint is vain, protest is time wasted, and for the most part the shipper and consumer would rather put up with the present inconveniences than incur the wrath of the railway corporation for fear of future discriminations. Business men are made cowardly through their investments. and instead of lending hearty approval to the work of reforming the present system of transportation they publicly take sides with the railway companies while secretly urging upon working men to persevere in the agitation for government ownership. In the convention held by the Knights in 1884 the agitation on the railway problem took new strength under this demand:

“That the government shall obtain possession, by purchase, under the right of eminent domain, of all telegraphs, telephones and railroads; and that hereafter no charter or license be issued to any corporation for construction or operation of any means of transporting intelligence, passengers or freight.”

Not only do the land and transportation questions take up the attention of the wage earner, but the currency question as well, for the same session of the general assembly of the Knights adopted this declaration on the financial problem:

“XIV. The establishment of a national monetary system, in which a circulating medium in necessary quantity shall issue directly to the people, without the intervention of banks: that all the national issue shall be full legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private; and that the government shall not guarantee or recognize any private banks or create any banking corporations.”

These problems were discussed for years in the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor, and when understood, brought the workman face to face with the question of politics. The discussion of political questions was and is prohibited in the trades union; it is compulsory in the Knights of Labor, and when the questions of transportation, finance and land were undergoing the ordeal of debate in the meetings, the fact became apparent to the most bitter opponent of political discussion that until politics in their purest and noblest sense were under stood by the workman, until he cast his ballot wisely and intelligently for the welfare of his family and country, and not at the behest of the ward heeler, the man of influence or the corporation boss, he would continue to stagger under the weight of injustice heaped upon him by unjust laws on the one hand and the absence of just ones on the other. It was at this stage that the fact became glaringly apparent to the workman that elections in the various states were manipulated by machine politicians. The citizen could make up his ticket as he pleased, but it would be counted for those against whom he voted if a venal election board was given its price. The employee who voted under the eye of his employer or agent knew that his ballot was known to those around him. If he procured his ticket from one of the regulation ticket peddlers at the polls, all who saw him take it knew its contents; if he came with his ballot prepared and was offered another by his “boss,” he had to accept it or run the risk of dismissal from his place of employment. The necessity for a secret method of voting became very apparent, and with the dawning of this fact on the mind of the labor organization, steps were taken to establish what is known as the Australian system of voting. In the annual convention of the Knights of Labor in 1885 the matter was urged, the initial step to the future agitation was taken there, and after an agitation and discussion of three years, in which the masses were educated on the principle of a proper disposition of the “little piece of white paper,” the session of 1888 directed the officers of the order to prepare a draft of a law and submit it to the legislatures of the several states for adoption. The instruction of the convention was carried out. A law was drawn up and presented to every legislature that met the following winter. Many states adopted the measure then; to all others the bill has been presented and it will be persistently placed before such legislatures as have not yet adopted it until all of the states carry on elections under the secret-voting law. Sixteen states have already adopted the Australian system of voting either in whole or in a modified form, and the beneficial effects are made apparent at each election. It is contended by opponents of the system that it has not materially charged elections. That is not the intent of the law, or those who urged its adoption; the desire is for a secret-voting law, and when men vote free from intimidation from bosses and rings, the parties who nominate must exercise more care, more vigilance, and be more scrupulous in the choice of candidates to seek the suffrages of the people. If the establishment of the Australian law in so many states is not directly due to the Knights of labor, the agitation which opened up the way for the inauguration of this reform is their act and deed.

In the field of temperance no factor has been more potent than the Knights of Labor. In labor organizations of early days it was no uncommon thing to find a member who had been disabled, engaged in the selling of liquor. Several such gained admittance to the Knights of Labor, but they were required to withdraw from the order. No liquor seller can legally gain admittance, and if such a person does by any chance become a member, he is debarred from further connection with the association when his occupation becomes known. The constitution, in referring to that question, reads:

“No local or other assembly or member shall, directly or indirectly, give, sell or have any ale, beer or intoxicating liquors of any kind at any meeting, party, sociable, ball, picnic or entertainment whatever appertaining to the order. Any member found violating this law shall be suspended not less than six months, or expelled. No fine shall be imposed for this offense. Any local or other assembly so offending shall be suspended during the pleasure of the general executive board, or shall have its charter revoked by said board.”

Members are not pledged to abstain from the use of intoxicants, but the fact that the liquor seller is proscribed has a most telling effect. The demonstrations held throughout the country on Labor Day under the auspices of the Knights of Labor were of a far different character from those of ten years ago, when it was held to be an impossibility to make a picnic or excursion a success without selling beer.

Attempts were made some years ago to establish cooperative institutions, productive and distributive, but very few of them were successful. Wherever the effort was made to distribute the product of cooperative concerns it was found that the cost of distribution exceeded the value of the article produced, owing to the fact that the avenues of distribution, the railways, were in the hands of those who were not friendly to any action of the workpeople which aimed at placing them on an independent plane. It has been successfully demonstrated that until the agencies through which the product of labor is transported are brought under the control of the people, the concern that does not find favor with the managers and directors of the railway will be discriminated against. These lessons had the effect of strengthening the determination of the members of the organization to place the railways, telegraphs and telephones under the control of the government, and until government ownership is an established fact the owners of railways will stand arrayed against the interests of all save those who make money through the operation of the great trunk lines that have interlaced the cities and towns of the country.

It has been demonstrated that the strike as a weapon of defense is a failure. When hand labor was required to develop an industry the employer had more respect for and paid more deference to the wishes of the employee. Today machinery is the chief factor in production and man comes next; in fact, he is required only to direct a machine or a number of them, and is held in less esteem by the money-loving employer than the belt that propels the machinery of the factory. With one machine doing the work of from five to 100 men, with from two to ten men seeking the one position, it is an easy task for the employer to laugh at threats of a strike, and the workman realizes that to strike under such conditions is suicidal. Only when driven to it will workmen engage in a strike of any magnitude today.

The failure of the cooperative institution and the strike has turned the eyes of the workman toward other measures of relief from the thrall of the wealth-getter, and instead of striking at the topmost limb, as he formerly did when attempting to better his condition, he now strikes at the root of the tree, at the base of the evil itself. The labor bureaus have shown that the homes of the United States are fast gathering under the shadow of the mortgage holder, that the bulk of the earnings of the workman go to swell the profits of the employer. He knows that the railway is fast assuming greater power than the government, that the land is being absorbed by bonanza farmers and syndicates, who make use of it to throttle the producer he knows that with silver demonetized and gold as the single standard the nation is at the mercy of the few who have monopolized that metal. and while he is told that our system of finance is the best in the world, he doubts the truth of the statement and is seeking for the evidence himself.

Those who today own the coal fields have it in their power to impose great hardship upon those who use the coal if they feel so disposed, or if the outlook indicates that higher prices can be obtained later on. This unlimited power in the bands of the coal operators makes it possible for them to curtail production at will, and the consequence is that the mines are kept on less than halftime the year round. The miner knows that there is no divine law which authorizes the wealthy to monopolize the coal deposits of the earth, and he also realizes that the human law which sanctions such transactions is wicked and oppressive and should be repealed.

All labor organizations agree that the hours of labor should be reduced, and that places of business should close early in order that more time for rest and recreation shall be afforded the worker. An agitation looking to the shortening of the work day has been going on for years and has educated workman and employer to the necessity for reform in that direction. Not the end but the means to an end is what the workman his in view in agitating for the short-hour work day. In the Knights of Labor each assembly sets apart a time for the discussion of the topics set forth in the declaration of principles of the order. Every assembly meets once in each week, and at these meetings the education is progressing that will one day bring through evolution that which revolution could not establish. What has been privately discussed in the meetings of the year is publicly disseminated on Labor Day.

Women are admitted to membership in the Knights of Labor; such has been the effect of their admission that workmen who previously held to the opinion that they were not entitled to the same compensation as men now publicly advocate equal pay for equal work by both sexes. At the last session of the general assembly of the Knights of Labor the preamble was changed to read “equal rights for both sexes,” and though it met with slight opposition when introduced, all are now agreed upon the advisability of securing for women the same rights and privileges that men claim for themselves.

One aim of the Knights of Labor has been and is to “create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor, the creator of all values, and capital.” Those who scan the field today and then look back for fifteen years to review the tendencies of the times at that day will be astonished at the marvelous change in sentiment on the subject of labor. What many a minister of Christ denounced at that day is now known to be just and righteous. In those days only the workman clamored for justice; he was denied a hearing and was told from pulpit and rostrum that other and wiser heads were thinking for him. He awaited the result of this profound thought and saw no good results. He pushed to the front, and in his organization has so educated himself that he now takes the stand in his own defense. This independence on his part is owing to the existence of the Knights of Labor, which has been a vast educational institution in which the rights of man have been taught to all who attended. The education which has been imparted to the workman during the last fifteen years upon economic, social and political questions has opened up to his vision old fields that are new to him. The vista now spread out before his gaze would never have been pointed out to him had he not swept aside the cobwebs of ignorance and superstition in his effort to reach a higher plane than he formerly occupied, and the result is that he has arrayed alongside him many of those who formerly denounced his utterances as rank heresy or communism. Houses of the Good Shepherd and Mercy Homes flourish because of our heartless competitive system, and few disciples of Christ will dare to tell their wealthy hearers to pay fair wages to women whom they employ; few will tell them from the altar of God that the best means of keeping women from the street and eventually from the outcast home, is to pay for labor what it is worth and allow clerk or worker to go home early. It was not by heeding but by disobeying the precept “Servants, obey your masters” that the worker compelled those outside of his own class to heed his demand for justice.

In a knowledge of what he owes to society, in the education he has received in the labor organization, in his independence of party, in his desire to educate his children, in securing better homes and in his intimacy with the questions that were such mysteries to him but a few years ago. the workman of today stands on a higher plane and a surer footing than his brother of past generations. In press and from pulpit the question of labor is discussed, and to all of this the workman lends an attentive ear, capable of discerning the difference between the true, earnest advocate of right and the self-seeking demagogue or the artful apologist of monopoly. Knowledge is power, and in his knowledge the workman of 1891 is progressing toward real independence.

Natural Public Revenue — sourced to 1825

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 22:46:00 +0000

I had thought that this phrase came from J. W. Bengough, in 1914. (For quite some time, I thought I’d originated it, in the shower one morning around 2010, and was later delighted to find that Bengough, creator of The Up-to-Date Primer: A First Book of Lessons for Little Political Economists In Words of One Syllable, With Pictures (1895) and weekly cartoonist in The Public, had used it in his Chalk Talks.) But today, searching for references, I discovered one from 1825 and a 2nd edition from 1827.

“Principles of Political Economy and of Population; including an Examination of Mr. Malthus’s Essay on Those Subjects” by John M. McIniscon, a Fisherman (1825) online at https://books.google.com/books?id=wF1U5_IXlWsC. Google says that “Maciniscon” is a pseudonym for J. C. Ross.

Two years later, another edition appeared: “An Examinations of Opinions Maintained in the ‘Essay on the Principles of Population’ by Malthus; and in the ‘Elements of Political Economy’ by Ricardo; with some Remarks in reply to Sir James Graham’s ‘Address to the Land-Owners’.” (1827) Its title page at https://books.google.com/books?id=h1hJSjgJxIAC lists the author as J. C. Ross and google says “[A reissue, with additional material, of “Principles of Political Economy and of Population,” published under the pseudonym John MacIniscon.]” The additional material is the 65 page “Remarks.”

at pages 83-84 of the McIniscon (1825) edition:

It follows, from what we have observed, that the legislature should equally abstain from any attempts at the forcible creation of fictitious capital, as of offering artificial incitements to the increase of population.* The rent of the soil of the country, which is the only natural public revenue of the State, should be put in a course of resumption, and faithfully applied to the public service and benefit, in defraying the just expense of its government; in the endowment of seminaries of useful and necessary education, under regulations which should render them effective for that purpose, and hold out to ingenious persons the means of attaining the respective objects they may have in view, for the benefit of the community, whether these be travel—learning—the cultivation of knowledge or the inventing and perfecting of improvements in the arts and sciences—or the fitting men for all the higher and more difficult duties of society, and for becoming superintendants in all the more important works by which the domination of the human species is extended over the powers of nature—and to employ the surplus revenue in the cultivation and improvement of the country. These, together with the providing for the external and internal protection of the community, are the only legitimate objects of just legislation and good government.

*The employment of capital unproductively, and especially in war, is an artificial incitement of the most mischievous description; it causes their existence, and, at the same time, destroys the funds by which that existence should be maintained.

I commend these to your attention. You might consider going to the 1827 edition and skipping over the “Remarks” until you’ve read the rest.

Searching just on McIniscon, I find, among other things, https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/economic-thought/sets/malthus-and-the-population-controversy-1803-1830/volumes/an-examination-of-opinions-maintained-in-the-essay-on-the-principles-of-population-two-lectures-on-population

And I’ve collected a number of other references to Natural Public Revenue. I don’t think Thomas G. Shearman uses the phrase, but he certainly has the idea – see his Natural Taxation.

Government and Revenue

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 20:04:00 +0000

Some governments are better than others, but there is not a really good government on the face of the earth that raises its revenues by indirect taxation. It is impossible. Such a government must rob one citizen of wealth to enrich another; it must impoverish millions of consumers to favor a few hundreds or thousands of producers. It cannot be just. The wit of man cannot devise a method by which a government can make one citizen a favorite without making other citizens victims. . . .

We shall learn if we enquire: To whom does rent belong? We are speaking of economic rent solely—rent of land or other franchise or privilege. Most assuredly economic rent belongs to the general community which creates it. It cannot belong to the laborer. He has done no more to create it than any other man. And this is true of the capitalist, and it is just as true of the ground landlord. He has done no more to create rent value (site value) than has the tenant or any other man. The value, ground rent, is communal value, created solely by the community, and should be appropriated by the community for public use. It is the natural revenue which nature provides; and when men first allowed this natural public revenue to be diverted into private hands they let loose a whole train of social evils on mankind.

It is easier to point out the economic errors into which past generations of mankind have strayed than to provide a proper remedy. That must be a work of time and thought and education and statesmanship. But the first absolutely necessary step to be taken is to learn and understand and acknowledge the error. When that is done statesmen will be confronted with the most important problem of the age — the introduction of a method of raising public revenues that shall be natural, unburdensome, impartial and just.

GOVERNMENT AND REVENUE

Notwithstanding the contentions of philosophical anarchists and extreme individualists some form of organized government is an absolute necessity of human society. No condition of human society, however perfect, can be imagined in which organized government would not be necessary. If government were no longer necessary for the suppression of crime, if every individual were a sincere altruist, an established authority would still be required to decide on the thousand etceteras of streets, roads, railways, bridges, schools, inheritances and many other things which could not possibly be left to individual initiative and control.

It is equally clear and equally true that government requires public revenue. Society could not exist without government, and government could not exist without revenue. The matter of taxation is the most important question that can engage the attention of citizens; and, more vitally than any other question, it concerns their material and social conditions.

Unless the power and influence of great wealth should continue to corrupt governments, to secretly control and direct the affairs of nations, to initiate wars of plunder and aggression on the plea of humanity, and in other ways to curse the world, it is certain that the social forces which have been working and are ever working toward truer freedom and more perfect justice among men will bring about the existence of a higher and happier civilization than we have time amid the present hurry and worry of life even to contemplate. A better civilization depends entirely on better material conditions but at present the wealth which is the necessary instrument for promoting social well-being is used largely to obstruct and retard the higher civilization that would be. Probably toward the end of the present century the student of the times in which we now live may wonder at the gross and corrupt mis-government which we call government. He may wonder that we had so much wealth and knew so little what to do with it; that we permitted so much to accumulate in few hands, and were so tolerant of the poverty and miseries of the slums. He will see what we are only so slowly learning to see, that these miseries and this poverty are the inevitable results of our own economic mistakes in legislation. There need be no involuntary poverty. There need not be a poverty stricken family in all this broad America. There is

More than Enough for All.

A considerable increase in the incomes of millions of the poor need not deprive the middle classes of a single dollar. It would both increase their possessions and their security. Nature has provided abundant wealth for everybody. This earth is as rich as any corner in the wide universe. The solemn gloom of night is not cheered by a ray from any richer world than ours. Spectrum analyses confirm the truth that this earth is a concentration of all the wealth of the universe. And this country, stretching between two oceans for thousands of miles, is as rich as any on the earth’s surface. What are we doing today? We are producing more food than all the people can eat. We are making more clothing than all the people need to wear. We have provided, or could immediately provide, more comfortable dwellings than all the people require. And yet we have many thousands hungry, naked and houseless. We haven’t too many people here. We haven’t enough. We have only about twenty-eight to the square mile. Belgium has 580, Saxony has 600, Bremen has over 1000, Hamburg has 4000. Bring all the people now living on this earth to this country and we should have less than 500 to the square mile. And we can feed and clothe and maintain all mankind.

An Old Error

The old Malthusian theory that mankind increases faster than the means of subsistence is an old economic rag which it is quite time to bury. Our own experience as a nation is an absolute refutation of this theory. Compare our increase of population with our increase of wealth for fifty years. In 1850 when we had 28,191,876 people, our total wealth was computed to be $7,185,780,000, or about $308 per capita. In 1900 when our population had increased to 76,303,387 our wealth was estimated to be $94,300,000,000, or $1235.86 per head of population. While our population had increased more than three-fold our wealth had increased more than thirteen-fold. It is as clear as our national experience and reliable figures can make it that wealth increases at a greater ratio than population. It is not the fault of natural social law if increase of population does not bring an increasing quota of wealth to every individual. It is not the fault of nature that millions remain poor amid increasing wealth. It is our fault. It is the unavoidable result of our own laws. No other condition is possible while unjust and unequal laws remain. It is neither possible nor desirable that $6000 of wealth should be the portion of every family in the nation as it would be if wealth were equally divided. A millionaire may sometimes deserve his millions as much as the day laborer may deserve his weekly wages. And it would be as unjust to deprive a rich man, who has fairly earned his fortune, of his wealth as it would be to deprive the laborer of his small income. But while this must be conceded it cannot be maintained that the present grossly unequal division of wealth is just, or wise, or expedient, or safe. It is neither. And the interests of the moderately rich and of the great middle class, as well as the necessities of the poor, demand a more equitable division. But this can never be brought about while our present blundering and iniquitous system of

Indirect Taxation Remains.

Governments have long ago discovered how easy it is to plunder a nation by indirect taxation. The elder Pitt, when speaking in the House of Lords against the proposition to increase the income tax to seven pence in the pound, declared that it would produce a revolution. “But,” he added, “you can get the money by an easier method. By the method of indirect taxation you can tax the last rag off a man’s back, the last mouthful of food from his mouth, and he won’t know what is injuring him, and he will grumble about hard times.” It is this method of taxation on which governments chiefly depend for their resources, and it is this method which produces the inequalities and the injustice and the hardships which people see and feel but do not know how to remedy. It is in the interests of every manufacturer and merchant, of every capitalist and workman, to understand the natural laws which control the production and distribution of wealth. This knowledge alone can reveal to legislators the true method of raising the national revenues. For nature has provided a proper revenue for governments as surely as it has provided proper sustenance for man. A man fed on improper food cannot help developing weakness and disease. But it is not more hopeless to expect such a man to be strong and healthy than it is to expect governments fed on unjust, on indirect taxation to avoid being partial, unjust, dishonest and corrupt. Some governments are better than others, but there is not a really good government on the face of the earth that raises its revenues by indirect taxation. It is impossible. Such a government must rob one citizen of wealth to enrich another; it must impoverish millions of consumers to favor a few hundreds or thousands of producers. It cannot be just. The wit of man cannot devise a method by which a government can make one citizen a favorite without making other citizens victims.

Wealth Distribution

Consider for a moment how wealth is created and distributed. There are three agents in the production of wealth—land, labor and capital. There are none others. Governments create no wealth; political parties create no wealth; the less they interfere, the less mischief they do. All wealth — every dollar — is created by the three factors named. As an economic term, land includes all the materials and forces of nature outside of man. Labor is human exertion, mental or physical. Capital is wealth used for further production of wealth. Every dollar of wealth in the nation is the result of the co-operation of these three agents.

Each of these agents receives an appropriate share in the natural division of the product. Rent is the share which goes to land. Wages is the share which goes to labor. Interest is the share which goes to capital. There is nothing left. Every other payment whatever it may be called, the profits of a franchise, salaries, commissions, brokerage, or whatever else, finds its proper place economically either as rent, wages or interest. These three portions of the total product arrange themselves automatically; they go to their proper owners naturally till we interfere with our unwise laws. They form a complete circle of exchanges from which no man can take anything out till he has put something in; and into which no man can put anything without receiving his equivalent out under just government. It is our interference with this natural circle of exchanges which produces all poverty, injustice and inequalities of society.

A Suggestion

Consider to whom does interest belong. Undoubtedly it belongs to the man whose capital has assisted labor in production. Let him have it. To whom does wages belong? Undeniably it belongs to the man who by mental or physical effort has produced the wealth. All the product naturally belongs to him. Adam Smith says the whole of the product of labor is the natural wages of labor. Not half of it, but the whole of it. But labor must pay interest for the use of capital if he employs it, and rent for occupation or opportunity. When these payments are made the whole of the remainder belongs to labor. And if we did not interfere, labor would get it. The manufacturer would get his share, the merchant would get his share and the workman would get his share. Now neither of them gets his whole share. His share is clipped by taxes, not one dollar of which he need be called upon to pay. Whence then must public revenue be derived? We shall learn if we enquire: To whom does rent belong? We are speaking of economic rent solely—rent of land or other franchise or privilege. Most assuredly economic rent belongs to the general community which creates it. It cannot belong to the laborer. He has done no more to create it than any other man. And this is true of the capitalist, and it is just as true of the ground landlord. He has done no more to create rent value (site value) than has the tenant or any other man. The value, ground rent, is communal value, created solely by the community, and should be appropriated by the community for public use. It is the natural revenue which nature provides; and when men first allowed this natural public revenue to be diverted into private hands they let loose a whole train of social evils on mankind.

The Single Tax: An Essay on the Single Tax in 50 Words

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 17:21:00 +0000

All men have equal right to life.

Life depends absolutely upon land.

Therefore all have equal right to land.

Some must occupy more valuable land than others.

Equal right demands that landholders pay the yearly value of land Into a common fund for common purposes.

This is the single tax. SAMUEL BRAZIER.

in The Public, 1900

Meum, Tuum and Stealum

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 16:19:00 +0000

Another gem, also from the Leavenworth Labor News – a little bit of filler at the bottom of a column:

Qualified Ownership

The moral law recognizes three kinds of ownership: what belongs to me, what belongs to you, and what I can legally steal from you. “Meum,” “Tuum” and “Stealum.”

My high school Latin is long behind me, but I think the 3rd person plural would be Nostrum — “ours,” as in common property.

(And http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/stage-1-latin/resources/stage-1-latin-grammar-resource/pronouns/ didn’t refresh my memory much.)

The milk in our coconut

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 15:20:00 +0000

This is an editorial from the Leavenworth (KS) Labor News of February 10, 1893. This newspaper is available on Newspapers.com, and it, along with the Fairhope (AL) Courier, is a wonderful resource.

The Galveston News has an editorial on the “Public Landlord” in which it attempts to show that the figures used by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman as to the total annual land values of the United States are incorrect, and then it proceeds to demolish the single tax idea. That’s the trouble with figure-mongers. What difference does it make whether Mr. Shearman’s figures are correct or not? The milk in our cocoanut lies in the statement that land does not possess in itself those qualities which enable it to be owned by an individual. It is not property, any more than the air, sunlight, or winds of heaven are property and subject to individual ownership.

Mr. Shearman is one of the most valued adherents to the single tax cause. We call him a “Single Taxer Limited.” He favors the single tax because of its simplicity as a fiscal measure.

We have all kinds of people in our camp; one highly valued Single Taxer is Billy Radcliff of Ohio, who goes around with a banjo singing our doctrine. Another is Rabbi Samuel Sale, of St. Louis, an orator whose words and figures of speech remind one of the lofty imagery of the prophet Isaiah. Then there is “Uncle Tom,” the poor workman, who writes with the eloquence, which, as Webster said, “was not taught in schools, but belongs to tho cause, the time and the occasion.”

Henry George, the philosopher; Judge Maguire and Louis F. Post, the lawyers; Dr. McGlynn, the religious teacher, and a countless number of professional men, artisans and common laborers make up our following, and run the entire gamut of human thought and endeavor.

If Thomas G. Shearman, the fiscal advocate of single tax, or Dr. McGlynn, the ethical advocate, or Louis F. Post, the legal advocate, or any other special pleader for our cause raises questions which, to men uninitiated in their special branches of learning seem to be untenable, what matters it?

The men who stand firmly upon the statement that individual ownership in land is the breeder of poverty, of sin and crime, and all the brood of evils which spring from an unjust and unrighteous act, care little whether the annual land values of the United States are seven hundred millions a year, or one million a year, or seven billions a year.

The point is that the annual value of land belongs to the creators of it, namely, to society in the aggregate—to the generation of men now living. The men who are dead have no part or lot in it; neither they nor their heirs who base their claims upon the fact that their ancestors claimed to own the land. When we die our interest in the land ceases and we do not believe that we can pass our title to our children as against the children of landless men who are living in the same generation with us.

If the annual land value be more or less than enough to support the state, what matters it? The value of land, be it great or small, belongs to all men who live on the land. That’s all there is to it.

If this contention can be sustained we need have no fears about other truths not being in harmony with our position. The first thing to do is to establish the truth that land cannot be owned by an individual — is not of a nature which permits it to be owned. After this is done, then the fiscal, ethical, legal, sentimental and utilitarian phases of the situation may be profitably considered and worked out. If our contention can be sustained, then there is a way to harmonize the details. This must be true, or else truth itself is a lie.

If you have time available, consider digging into those two newspapers. They have a wealth of fascinating material and wisdom.