Henry George, A Teacher of Teachers:

His Place in the Educational World

Walter Fairchild

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1930]

Somewhere in his biography, Henry George, Jr. says of his father, that the only title that Henry George ever really desired was that of Professor. It is related that Henry George, having attained considerable fame for his writing and speaking, was invited to address the in economics at the University of California, with the idea that he would be asked to fill the chair in economics. After the lecture, which was attended by members of the faculty, and some of the trustees, in addition to the students, there was a silence with respect to the expected call to the professorship, which was due not to the quality of the man, nor to his standard of learning, but rather to the then considered radical character of the subject matter he had presented. The call never came, and Henry George never received the title of professor.

Like Moses, Henry George was permitted to go up unto the heights and look over into the academic promised land, but he was not permitted to enter.

This was before "Progress and Poverty" was written.

It is possible, and indeed probable that if Henry George had been granted a professorship at the time his heart desired it, the book Progress and Poverty, as we now have it, would never have been written.

Progress and Poverty was written not for the Professors, but for humanity. Later in life after his fame was established for all time, Henry George wrote a treatise for the professors in his volumes entitled The Science of Political Economy. These later books are learned in method and sound in doctrine, but they lack something of the fire of life which makes Progress and Poverty move and breathe as a living thing, inspired and inspiring, placing it among the two or three of the world's great books of all time.

If Henry George had written only his volumes on Political Economy, he would have earned a high rank among the professors. But his "Progress and Poverty," which the professors in early days were inclined to decry, has placed Henry George in the front rank of humanity's great men.

As was told to the writer, only a few days ago by the professor of economics in one of the leading schools in the South, Henry George has placed himself for all time, and his works will continue to be read and studied by mankind a thousand years from today.

It is a remarkable thing that the teachers of economics in the colleges and universities today do not use for their class instruction and reference reading, the Political Economy volumes which Henry George prepared especially for that purpose, but always and invariably use the text from Progress and Poverty. It is safe to say that no student of economics attains his Master's or Doctor's degree without a first hand knowledge of the text of "Progress and Poverty." The use of this book among advanced students in the universities has increased rather than decreased with the passage of the years. Today, it stands as standard in its particular field. Every economic department in every school in the country takes up that subject at some point in its course, and considers by name and by text the proposition contained in Progress and Poverty.

Henry George was denied the title of Professor, which he coveted, but he has become a super-professor in that he is by his book, a teacher of teachers. Not since Adam Smith has there appeared any man or any book that has so profoundly affected the thought and teaching method of the professor of economics. Indeed, the works of Adam Smith and of his followers, John Stuart Mill and others, may pass from academic vogue, but Progress and Poverty will remain.

Under the sponsorship of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, it has been the writer's privilege to visit a large number of schools, colleges and universities in the Eastern, Middle West and Southern States. The purpose of these trips has been to interview the heads of the economic departments and the instructors, and encourage or facilitate the use of Progress and Poverty as a text book or as collateral reading.

In the course of these trips, one taken in the spring of 1929, and two this season, I have personally visited more than 75 institutions of learning, including Princeton, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Washington, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Tech, Cincinnati, Ohio State, Berea, Missouri, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Chicago, Oberlin, Western Reserve, Harvard, William and Mary, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Washington and Lee, Richmond, Duke, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Emory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida, Stetson, Rollins, Chattanooga, and many smaller colleges, normal schools and teacher's colleges.

I have personally interviewed nearly 200 professors and teachers of economics, and I do not make a single exception in saying that the attitude of them all is friendly, intelligent and cooperative.

It is a tradition among Single Taxers of the old school that the professorial mind is antagonistic to the teachings of Henry George. To such I would bear the message that the academic times have changed, and that the new generation of teachers, many of whom have been born and have grown to manhood since Henry George passed away, know their Progress and Poverty.

In classes in elementary economics, such as are commonly represented in the Sophomore and Junior years in college, the amount of time that is possible to be devoted to the subject of economic ground rent, is limited to two or three hours as a rule. Most teachers find it impracticable in that short period, to use the unabridged Progress and Poverty as a text or to require the students to read it in its entirety.

To meet this condition, Professor Harry Gunnison Brown, of Missouri University, made selections from Progress and Poverty for use in his classes. These selections have been printed in the volume of 90 pages entitled Significant Paragraphs from 'Progress and Poverty'. As a preface to this book, appears the impressive essay on Henry George by Professor John Dewey of Columbia. This volume, published by the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation of New York, has been most acceptable to the academic departments. Many thousand copies have been sold and distributed to schools throughout the United States and in Canada. It has been a valuable addition to the working tools of the Single Tax cause.

Information about the book and the extent of its use may be found elsewhere in these columns.

Everywhere there is evidence of a revival of interest in Single Tax theory and there is ground for the hope that this generation may see the truth of the Single Tax established, not only in the academic world, but also in practical application in our government affairs.