A Plea for Endowments
Henry Ware Allen
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June
1937]
THE battle of the ages is that which has been waged by prophets and
other well wishers for humanity and is at the present time most
commonly manifested by endowments and benefactions and current
contributions for charity. If it is your purpose, or within your
power, to provide such an endowment in your will or during your life
time, you are earnestly asked to consider carefully the demands of
justice rather than charity. More specifically, the good work that is
now being effectively carried on by the Schalkenbach Foundation and
the Henry George School of Social Science in New York City. Better
than to augment the huge donations already made to charity, a social
disease, are endowments or contributions to the cause of justice.
At best, charity is a necessary evil. It always follows poverty, and
poverty is a disease of modern civilization. According to Confucius, "Where
there is justice, there is no poverty"; and, it may be added,
where there is no poverty, there is no institutional charity. A
million dollars is but a trifle in the daily activities of American
charities, but a million dollars may be used in the cause of justice
so effectually that it will mark a forward step in the progress of
civilization from poverty to genuine prosperity. It may be safely
stated that a thousand dollars intelligently applied to the promotion
of justice will do more lasting good than a million dollars given to
charity.
The extirpation of poverty is not the gigantic task that it may seem
to be. Poverty is an unnatural phenomenon. There is no poverty in
primitive communities. The requirements of the savage are few and
easily satisfied. He suffers no poverty. There are no slums in the
jungle. There was no poverty in England until the present system of
private ownership of ground rents became effective. According to Henry
George:
"When all the productive arts were in the most
primitive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegetables had
not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle were small and poor,
when there were hardly any roads and transportation was exceedingly
difficult, when all manufacturing was done by hand in that rude time
the condition of the labourers of England was far better than it is
today."
And there is no logical excuse for the existence of poverty in our
civilization today. On the contrary, the improvements made during the
past few hundred years and especially during the past hundred years in
labor-saving machinery and modern methods of transportation have
multiplied many times the efficiency of human labor in its application
to the creation of wealth. This should have made poverty impossible.
It was this enigma in social conditions which challenged the head and
the heart of Henry George, and acting with true chivalry for the
disinherited, he took upon himself a solemn vow that he would not rest
until he had discovered the cause and the cure for poverty. His search
was richly rewarded. His conclusions were recorded in his masterpiece,
"Progress and Poverty," and these have never been
successfully challenged. Just as Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law
of gravitation, so Henry George discovered an even more important
natural law, that which controls community needs for revenue and the
satisfaction of those needs and consequent prosperity. Wherever this
philosophy has been put into practice, even in a limited way, it has
fully justified the claims made for it.
For poverty is the greatest curse that afflicts mankind. It is the
greatest hindrance to that heaven on earth which Christian people pray
for and which we have every reason to believe was intended by the
Creator for His children. Poverty is the parent of crime. Human nature
is good and there is a divine spark in every human being. But, obeying
the first law of nature, a man will rob others before allowing himself
or his family to starve. Poverty is responsible for destitution,
disease, and premature death, for illiteracy, child labor, and
delinquency, for preventing the marriage of young people, for family
separations, and for suicide; in short, for most of the misery which
afflicts modern society. The abolition of poverty, therefore, will
constitute the greatest social improvement ever experienced. To
perpetuate the huge operations of organized charity while tolerating
the existence of poverty is like fertilizing a garden full of weeds,
instead of first removing the weeds, where a splendid crop might
otherwise be harvested. The intelligent farmer would, of course,
extirpate the weeds; and that is just what should be done with the
economic causes of poverty, thereby liberating the beneficent forces
of nature. Charity simply perpetuates poverty. Is it not worse than
futile, therefore, to favor charity at the expense of justice?
It is urged, therefore, that you conclude to assist in the promotion
of justice by arranging an endowment or contribution for the work now
being successfully carried on by the Schalkenbach Foundation and the
Henry George School of Social Science in New York City.
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