The Continuing Struggle for Justice

Anna George de Mille

[An address delivered at the Henry George Congress, Chicago, Illinois.
Reprinted from Land and Freedom, September-October, 1933]

Here we are a small group of the advocates of a great truth. We have got together to help one another to impart that truth. We have got to preach it in a form that will be comprehended and accepted. This means that we have got to use as many different tactics as there are minds to be reached. But for our general mode of attack we must find the Greatest Common Denominator that may inspire interest in the majority. It was to make this broad appeal that Henry George on occasions stepped from his study or lecture platform into the political arena.

He knew that he could not carry his deepest subtilities to the masses but he could awaken a vast number of voters and inocculate them with a desire for sound economic advancement and with a surer understanding of and faith in Jeffersonian democracy.

Thus while he spent his last strength in a New York Mayoralty campaign, fighting municipal graft and preaching clean government and honest policies to millions of his fellow citizens, the ink was hardly dry on The Science of Political Economy that he was writing.

What our greatest Common Denominator is today I know not. That is for us to decide at this conference that we may go forth with a definite programme. But I do know that in making our big campaign we must not ignore the little ways of campaigning. A sniper carrying off a general may be more efficient in winning a battle than a "big Bertha" shelling a hundred privates.

The enemy is at our very doors. There is no time to waste in petty differences, in arguments as to what name to use in place of the "Single Tax," or attacking the Socialists or other reformers, who are trying for the same goal as we are no time for anything but winning new converts to the faith. For now is the appointed time!

People are thinking as they have not thought for decades we must reach them now while they are groping for understanding and help. It is our supreme opportunity. It means tremendous work, boring, fatiguing work requiring patience and tact. Our enthusiasm must not make us intolerant or didactic. We must not demand that our programme be adopted over night, or even that the understanding of it be made over night.

We have got to preach our philosophy while we are advocating the fiscal reform.

Many of us are unconsciously waiting for another Joseph Fels to come and back a highly advertised campaign, or another Tom L. Johnson to carry us into the political arena.

We cannot blame old Single Taxers who have fought through the years for being weary now though now is the time for that second wind, and the renewed spirit that leads to victory. And now is the time to train and send forth that spiritual heir, that younger man, to go out with the same old courage and perhaps newer tactics into today's front line trenches.

We come to these conferences and have the joy and inspiration of meeting one another, but how many of us go back to our own circles and really work?

We are at a vital point now civilization is standing with her back against the wall. It is for us who know the way to fight as we have never fought before, and whether we decide at this convention what is the Common Denominator we can each and all return to our homes with renewed enthusiasm and strength for our own particular solo work. For my part I have joined the League for Political Action. I think Single Taxers have flocked alone too long, that much can be gained and little lost if we trail along with those who are going even part of the way in our direction.

Henry George did not see eye to eye with Grover Cleveland, but he campaigned with him because of his free trade leanings. Henry George did not believe in free silver, but he worked for Bryan because of his Jeffersonian tendencies. But in neither of these campaigns did he cease to preach the full philosophy.

So I wish that in a body we could join the League for Independent Political Action even though we do not approve of all the planks in their platform. We could make ourselves felt, could leaven the lump, could prove that we are again to be reckoned with, that we are a living, vibrant force.

Single Taxers seem always to have no money, and what little they have must be given to keep going the activities already started, our magazines, this foundation, our leagues, and above all that splendid work, the Henry George School. That is more important even than my own particular pet, the Essay Contest, which demands not only money but a sympathetic and understanding professor.

Whenever I get to a place of black despondency and walk the floor weeping because we have no money to carry on, because there is no leader with the flaming personality of a Henry George, I have to re-strengthen myself with the memory of his words that "though defeated and defeated we would still go on." I have to give myself new hope chronicled so many times in his experience where having worked his very hardest he came to a blank wall, when lo, a door had opened!

For us this is a glorious gamble. One of us here in this room may sow the seed that is to grow to a mighty tree.

A great adventure, where one of us today may light the very spark that shall ignite, not the conflagration that will destroy civilization, but a light that shall illumine the world!