The Real Failure of Formal Education

John Luxton

[A reply to a speech delivered by Louis H. Brown, President of the Johns-Manville Corporation. Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1938 ]

Louis H. Brown, President of the Johns-Manville Corporation, in a recent address before the National Advertisers, said: "After all it is our own fault if three-fourths of the teachers in our schools and colleges have never been inside a factory. It is our own fault if all they know about business and industry is what they have read in books in Karl Marx or Henry George." John Luxton, a high school teacher as well as a teacher in the Henry George School, protested against the coupling of the names of Henry George and Karl Marx, and Mr. Brown explained it was not his intention to indicate that Henry George and Karl Marx were alike in any way. "In the case of Henry George," he said, "I believe in his philosophy. I think if put into effect it would succeed and he gives a period of fifty years to make it effective." To this letter John Luxton again replies and the letter is so good that we reproduce it here:

I am glad to know that you had no intention of linking Henry George and Carl Marx as to likeness of ideas but I am afraid that your address does not make this clear. The impracticality of the Marxian philosophy seems to be common ground for us to meet upon. It is impractical because it is not founded upon justice to all but aims at getting for the worker what it claims the capitalist class has now, an unfair advantage.

Having met more or less with teachers for the last thirty years in my capacity of instructor in our city schools, I know for a fact that the ignorance of a large part of an educated class in regard to the teachings of Henry George is profound. Also, as a teacher of the philosophy of Henry George I have met many persons other than teachers, who have refused to open their minds to a just appraisal of Henry George's proposal because they could not dissociate the ideas of property in the products of industry and property in land. To such people the Georgeist is synonymous with Marxist. So you see not everyone recognizes the philosophies of George and Marx as being diametrically opposite.

I agree with you as to the time needed for the successful application of George's philosophy, and am very glad to know that you are a believer. But I am still unaware of any passage in any of George's works where anything appears that can be construed into an exposition of business. I believe that was a slip, without any intention. It doesn't matter now that you have stated your case. I do not agree with you as to the philosophy of Henry George being a theory, or based upon a theory. As business is a practical development of human beings over the ages so is George's philosophy, with this difference: business begins as human beings recognize the need for exchange following upon division of labor, and has been continuous, growing and developing to the present day: the way proposed by Henry George for the attainment of universal justice was the natural way of living as men gathered together in communities and trade began, but as the one continued and progressed the latter fell in disrepute and finally, was abandoned over a large part of the world. Why, and how, are of no moment in this letter.

It is enough to know that in the German forests liberty and democracy flourished und this natural way of life and the Angles and Saxons carried it to England. Returning legionaires from the Roman armies introduced Germany to the Roman system of land tenure and the Normal modified the English system with Feudalism. In Ireland under the natural system a Golden Age, marked by no unemployment, no poverty no concentration of wealth, and by great advances in the arts and sciences, lasted for a thousand years until destroyed by the English Courts under Henry VIII. In Mongolia the natural system exists today and their refusal to give allegiance to the Republic of China was due to the Chinese attempt to consider each chief of a nom; tribe the actual owner of the land used by the tribe in defiance of custom held by the nomads before the time of Ghengis Khan. As Germany before the fall of Rome, see Green's History of the English People, for Ireland, see Henry W. Foley's articles in the Gaelic American, and in regard to Mongolia, see "the Crime of being a Nomad in Asia", Oct., 1934, or thereabouts.

I thank you again and hope that we have both overestimated the period of fifty years, if only that the small homeowner may provide by his saving in taxation on articles produced by labor and capital so that he may be able to insulate his house from cellar to roof and enjoy all the benefits of air conditioning, winter and summer, with the other things he would like to have now but doesn't dare to hope for.