Henry George and his Contemporaries

Ethel H. Van Buskirk

[Reprinted from the Henry George News, October, 1957]

WHILE the economists in Henry George's day may have derided or ignored his thesis, many reformers received an impetus which gave them fresh enthusiasm to tackle the social problems of those years.

Some of these "re-makers" fought for George's cure for poverty, others accepted only parts of his message, some rejected it entirely. Those who accepted George were impressed by his presentation of Reform Darwinism: men are influenced in their development by the cultural and economic standards of their time more than by heredity; furthermore "the injustice of society ... is the cause of . . . want and misery."

Midwest Influence

Jerry Simpson, the Great Lakes sailor, later the Kansas farmer politician, read Progress and Poverty and saw that land monopoly was pushing men all over the globe in an attempt to build their lives, only to find themselves in time homeless and starving in the shadow of palaces and storehouses of food. He said the necessities of existence were in the ground and the first obligation of government was to secure to all people free access to the land. As a farmer, he suffered from the growth of the railroads and the tariff-protected industries. A congressman and a progenitor of the Populist party, he, with the aid of Tom Johnson of Cleveland, and other single taxers in Congress, in 1890 succeeded in reading the entire text of Progress and Poverty into the Congressional Record.

Tom Johnson, a steel magnate and street railway operator in Ohio, was so deeply affected by George's book that he fought tariffs and monopolies and advocated municipal ownership of street car systems and other public utilities, even though he was benefiting from high tariffs and exclusive franchises. As Mayor of the City of Cleveland, he instituted more equitable tax laws.

Another contemporary of Henry George, the German-born lawyer, John P. Altgeld, became a millionaire through land speculation in the growing city of Chicago. In 1886, when he was Judge of Cook County Superior Court, he became convinced that crime was caused by poverty, and demonstrated this in his book Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims. In 1892, as reform governor of the State of Illinois, he pardoned the imprisoned Haymarket anarchists, and two years later he fought Federal intervention in the Pullman strike. Altgeld was a frank and ardent admirer of George, although he never committed himself on the single tax doctrine.

Clarence Darrow, when he was a young law partner of Altgeld, proved quite annoying to politicians in Ashtabula, Ohio "talking about strange books ... by a man named Henry George." (Goldman's Rendezvous with Destiny, publ. Knopf, 1952, p. 124.) Darrow, who was jolted out of his conservatism when he read Progress and Poverty, critically assailed the solution for the cure of poverty contained therein, although he accepted without reservation the Reform Darwin theory. He spent the rest of his life propagandizing about poverty as the cause of crime, and the effect of the economic and cultural environment upon crime and racism.

Lincoln Steffens, the muck-raking journalist, devoted much of his life to exposing municipal corruption. City after city came under his attack, with an aroused citizenry throwing the rascals out and temporarily effecting needed reforms. As corruption crept back, Steffens learned inductively that what mattered was the condition that made corruption possible - and that the answer lay in special privilege. Later, when he served on the committee to manage the Fels funds, he regarded funds given to promote the single tax doctrine as "another experience in philanthropy."

One sensitive spirit upon whom George had a lasting effect was the literary radical, Randolph Bourne, who, while not a contemporary, came soon after. This timorous, crippled man read Progress and Poverty in the early 1920's. The book provided him with philosophical material to explain why men were miserable and overworked, and where to fix the blame. He commuted from his impoverished New Jersey home to New York to talk about Henry George and to study under Franz Boas, John Dewey and Charles Beard at Columbia University. Bourne investigated the model progressive schools in Indiana, under Dewey's inspiration, and he wrote of them in The Gary Schools. He also wrote articles on "trans-nationality in the United States," encouraging immigrants to develop their established ways in order to make a more creative America rather than a melting pot of mediocrity.

It would be impossible to list all the notable men and women who were influenced by Henry George during and after his lifetime, but a final reference might be made to one whose name is seldom heard today. William Marion Reedy, editor and publisher of Reedy's Mirror in St. Louis, one of the most talked-of literary journals America has produced, was a convinced and provocative supporter. George's daughter, Anna de Mille, recalled many intellectually stimulating visits with Mr. Reedy in her California home after her father's death. There were giants in those days, and oratory and the written word were powerful molders of opinion.