Review of the Book:

The Life of Joseph Fels
by Mary Fels

Benjamin W. Burger

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June 1940]

This well written book is a new account of the life of Joseph Fels, somewhat different from the version that appeared in 1916. It deals more with his career and ideas than with his personal life.

Joseph Fels, a Semite, was born and reared below the Mason and Dixon line, at a time when a Jew was indeed rara avis in that "Bible Belt." All his life he was singularly free from creed and dogma. He had little formal schooling, but wide business activity, travel and study made him a well-rounded personality. At a very early age he entered the soap business with his father, and by 1893 he had established the highly successful Fels-Naptha business.

Affluent though he was, his sympathies were ever with the poor and oppressed, the underprivileged. However, he was opposed to charity, and his very liberal financial contributions were to causes devoted to establishing justice. He ever held aloft the flaming banner of some noble cause, and particularly keen was his devotion to the Georgeist movement. He once related to Lincoln Steffens how he came to embrace this philosophy:

"I've been a Singletaxer ever since I read George's books. I've seen the cat for years. But I didn't do much till I was converted. And strange to say, I was converted by a Socialist. Singletaxers and Socialists don't agree; too often they fight. But it was Keir Hardie who converted me to the Singletax, or as I prefer to call it, Christianity. I came home on a ship with him once and noticed that he never thought of himself. We were together all the time, all those long days at sea, and we talked about England, America, politics, business everything; and I talked and I thought of myself. But Hardie didn't talk of himself and I could see that he never thought of Keir Hardie. He was for men. ...Well, that did for me. I saw that I was nothing and that I was doing nothing compared with a man like that. He saw and I saw, but he worked. He did things, and I saw that that made him a man, a happy man and a servant of mankind. So I decided to go to work, forget myself and get things done."

And Fels thence devoted himself to unselfish causes with such spirit that Herbert Bigelow, in a memorial address, said of him: "I speak of Joseph Fels the Christian, because I believe that if the nominal disciples of Jesus, particularly the rich ones, were to follow the example of Joseph Pels, they would all of them be better Christians."

"The Life of Joseph Fels" is the story of a noble man, utterly devoid of affectation, and determined to leave this world a better place for his having lived in it.