Georgist Doctrine Converts Every Sceptic
into Ardent Advocate

E. Yancey Cohen

[The following is a transcript of a radio talk was given in Chicago, on 13 October, 1930 by E. Yancey Cohen over WCFL. The talk was printed in The Federation News which gave it the heading, "Georgism an Industrial Doctrine that Converts every Sceptic into an Ardent Ad- vocate." Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1930]

In the present great crisis in which the world finds itself the philosophy of Henry George is again attracting attention. What, asked Henry George, does the phenomenon of Industrial Depression mean, what does it portend? Henry George's great book, Progress and Poverty, was written precisely to reply to these questions, its sub-title being, An Inquiry Into the Cause of Industrial Depression, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth. Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth does not that short phrase describe the condition which the world faces today?

What is Georgism? Georgism is a plea for the assumption of a reasonable basis for carrying forward the peaceable yet intricate development of modern society. Progress being, as we know, beset with snares and pitfalls, we are at intervals brought up against a mass of troubles, confusing and alarming to the most thoughtful of us. Such a condition confronts the world today. To this problem Georgism claims that it has found the clue, a thread that can lead us out of the labyrinth.

There are two great economic classes found under our present civilization, first the multitude who work but cannot accumulate, and second, the few who do not work but who easily find a comfortable surplus awaiting them at the end of the year, to be invested farther in income- producing property. The first class is always on the threshold of want; the second constitutes the bond-holders, coupon-cutters, money-lenders, investors, rent collectors and dividend receivers of the mighty House of Have. Now Henry George pointed out that the gulf between these two classes is constantly widening and deepening, so that without an understanding of the causes which have produced so monstrous an inequality the two classes may ultimately destroy each other in fratricidal and civil strife.

HOW GEORGE LOOKS AT WORLD

Georgism, as a philosophy, asks us to consider the world in general under three great divisions or categories. First, we must think of the earth which we inhabit and realize the stupendous Energy of the universe which sends this earth swinging and revolving through its orbit in obedience to everlasting law, which furnishes in cosmic liberality the life of all the creatures with which we are acquainted, the Energy which through transmutations and conservations extended through millions of ages has for the use of man stored the heat of the sun in forms suitable for his present needs. The great coal-measures laid down in the carboniferous ages, the oil wells, the metallic mines, the forests, the water-powers, lifted by the energy of the sun from their sources in the oceans to descend again from mountainous heights and turn turbines and dynamos for the use of man these are but some of the gifts of Nature to mankind. Georgism asks: By what sanction from the Almighty do some dare to assume to themselves the ownership of these eternal energies of nature? Whence came to be theirs the title-deeds they arrogantly claim to own, and the power to demand from the rest of us payment for the use of what God has given to the children of men?

Then secondly, Georgism posits that we must think of ourselves as members of the human family, as living men and women, each of us with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Such being the case, the first of all questions is the bread-and-butter question, for death by starvation, one may suggest, is not in the basic scheme of things. We work to make a living, but we do not work for the sake of working. We follow a natural bent of human nature, and strive to achieve the satisfaction of our desires with the least exertion. Hence all labor- saving inventions. If we could go the long, wrong way about our tasks, we are with reason regarded as inefficient dumbbells. Now, is it common sense to suppose that if our customary method of doing things were not distorted and unnatural, if a habit of accepting a bare living had not developed among us, men would work for others for less than they could earn by working for themselves? Consider. In the early days of this Republic the sturdy, hopeful pioneer went forth to open land of the West to enjoy the full products of his labor. And observe this: The average amount of his self-earned wages at the frontier became the measure and norm of wages in the older East. The Far West reacted favorably on the East an equilibrium in wages was struck between the two regions. And in those days unemployment as a national plague was a thing unknown. How could there be unemployment when men were free to employ themselves? And what is the nature of the unemployment which menaces the world today other than this that millions of workers are barred from self-employment by the reduction to private ownership of the free land of former years and by a land speculation that artificially forces the rent price of land to prohibitive heights? Forced in great multitudes to sell themselves to a job, bled white by the exactions of land-owners, speculators, interest mongers and an iniquitous tax system, no wonder that at intervals the general poverty of the masses brings progress to a halt, while in alarm society seeks the way out of the crisis, but can discover no better remedy than doles, the soup-kitchen and the bread line.

HOW CIVILIZATION DEVELOPS

Thirdly, Georgism points to society as a whole, the great organism which develops with the growths of population, industry and commerce, science and art. What we call civilization is the outcome of centuries of advances in knowledge and inventions, in association and cooperation. When governments are established, the operation and continuance of government demands a stable revenue. But we have yet to find in history a single example of a revenue s> stem that answers the requirements of equity. Robbing Peter to pay Paul has always been the easiest formula followed. Hence property taxes, license taxes, poll taxes, tariff taxes, every indirect and crooked kind of tax that the mind of man could devise has been tried with all the variations, and always to the disaffection of the plucked geese, notwithstanding the complacency of the privileged classes, For the system which turns the golden flow of land rent, of interest and of even' variety of unearned increment into the laps of the few, leaving the common people, the impoverished producers of the world, to sustain the disheartening and impossible burden of carrying everything on, is now seemingly up for examination. Meanwhile, have we learned anything? We have learned that in the economic rent of land, graded from the negligible values at the frontiers or borders of population to the enormous ground rent we find in the centers of activity, trade and population (such, for example, as in Chicago or New York the latter with a ground rent of nearly a billion dollars a year) in this economic rent the nation as a whole has the reflection, the measure of all the advantages which nature and society, which invention and the arts of production and exchange have bestowed upon us as a people. What crass idiocy then in the continuation of our present system which gives unearned riches to the parasites and leeches of society and denies to the hard pressed would-be industrious masses of the population more than is sufficient for "bread and the circus." Dangerous in the extreme is the ignorance and cynicism manifested by our so-called better classes.

Accordingly this great plan of justice and order, illuminated by the genius of Henry George, conies like another Cross of Constantine in the heavens, beckoning the world to salvation. A menace to the privileged few, by these it is misrepresented, denounced and maligned in terms bitter with anger and fear. But some day the common people may hear the Georgist message gladly. Not a revolution, but a mighty restoration would be the outcome. For the yearly land rent of the United States would constitute a superb revenue of the people, sufficient for all the needs of the body politic without recourse to any taxation whatever, From the Socialist standpoint this land rent would furnish the continuous means of carrying out those great public undertakings, national, state, and municipal, which to the Socialist seem the first desirability in the art of government. The collection of economic rent would leave to the wages of labor their full reward. The filchings of taxation, the rake-off of interest, the private collection of ground rent being passed and gone, the Socialist would find that the prophecy of George Bernard Shaw for equality of income would be measurably attained, while the great law of Progress, association in equality, as formulated by Henry George, would have become a world-embracing fact.

Finally, what is the Georgist ideal? Not the spirit of charity, hovering over us "like an ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," but rather the spirit of progress, driving unerringly above the clouds of doubt and the mists of ignorance and superstition, a radiant Apollo of art, peace and civilization, descending finally to earth in the midst of a sea of upturned faces, exultant with welcome, delirious with joy!