Frederick Jackson Turner's
Debt to Henry George
Ian Barron
[Reprinted from Land & Liberty,
January-February, 1991]
Frederick Jackson Turner continues to receive the credit for
developing "the frontier thesis" -- namely, that the
availability of land was what Bob Clancy summarised as "the
cutting edge of American civilization and determined its democracy,
its individualism, its culture."[1]
In fact, the elements of that thesis were laid out by Henry George 10
years before the young historian presented his address to the
American Historical Society in 1893.
In 1883, George wrote Social Problems[2]. In this, he
spotlighted issues which were not only of relevance in his day, but
which would repay study today for the insights they offer into modern
social problems.
As a journalist who had roamed the western frontier in search of
stories, George acquired a deep appreciation of the interaction
between man, his culture and the natural environment. He was to
distill some of those insights in Social Problems, including
this proposition:
"'All that we are proud of in national life and
national character comes primarily from our background of unused
land." It was, he said, "the virtue of new
soil, the freedom of opportunity given by the possibility of
expansion, that has here transmuted into wholesome human growth
material that, had it remained in Europe, might have been degraded and
dangerous...".
Turner is credited with chronicling the closing of the frontier. Yet
George, in 1893, was already sending out the signals that the frontier
was about to be closed: "There is no farther West. Our advance
has reached the Pacific, and beyond the Pacific is the East, with its
teeming millions."
But it was the genius of George that he was not deceived by
appearances. He pointed out that this "closure" was nothing
more than legal formality: it did not mean that there was no more land
for others to occupy.
All that it meant was that the last tracts were about to be fenced
off, with the speculators even then moving north-westward into Canada
and southward to Mexico, to seek out the soil on which others would
later need to live. He drew the parallels with Europe:
"The social pressure which forces on our shores this
swelling tide of immigration arises not from the fact that land of
Europe is all in use, but that it is all appropriated. That will
soon be our case as well. Our land will not all be used; but it will
all be 'fenced in' ".
George understood the social significance of that closure: "And,
correlatively, one of the most momentous events that could happen to
the modern world would be the ending of this possibility of westward
expansion".
He concluded his analysis with this statement: "What I want to
point out is that we are very soon to lose one of the most important
conditions under which our civilization has been developing -- that
possibility of expansion over virgin soil that has given scope and
freedom to American life…".
This, then, was the framework waiting for embellishment. And along
came Mr. Turner, 22 when George's thesis was published.
Ten years later, the two men were present at the Columbian Exposition
in Chicago. Turner delivered his address entitled "The
Significance of the Frontier in American History". George was
attending one of the first conferences on the Single Tax.
Turner received the credit for this thesis: but Henry George had
planted the intellectual seeds.
[1] "Now to Make an Endless
Frontier", Land and Liberty, July-Aug, 1990, p.62.
[2] Soclal Problems (1883): New York; Robert Schakenbach
Foundation, 1981, Ch.3.
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