What Does It Mean to See the Cat?

Anna George de Mille

[Reprinted from the Henry George News, February, 1944]

SIRS:

It occurs to me that some of the readers of the Henry George News may not understand the Old Timers' reference to "seeing the cat." "Has he seen the cat yet?" these latter will ask, concerning: one who purports to understand the teachings of Henry George.

The expression was born of Progress and Poverty, Book V, Chapter II, where, on page 294 (R. Schalkenbach Foundation edition) George writes: "As land is necessary to the exertion of labor in the production of wealth, to command the land which is necessary to labor, is to command all the fruits of labor save enough to enable labor to exist . . . (page 295) But so simple and ,so clear is this truth, that to see it fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures which, though looked at again and again, present only a confused labyrinth of line or scroll work - a landscape, trees, or something of the kind - until once the attention is called to the fact that these things make up a face or figure. This relation once recognized is always afterward clear. It 'is so in this case. In the light of this truth all social facts group themselves in an ordinary relation, and the -most diverse phenomena are seen to spring from one great principle."

Following this simile, Judge James G. Maguire of San Francisco, at the Anti-Poverty Society meeting held in the New York Academy of Music, on November 6, 1887, said: "The way people rise up to defend this cause, when they fully understand it reminds me of Mr. George's story of the cat." He explained that there are those who have heard lectures on the Georgist analysis or have read it for themselves, yet, though they try again and again, still fail to understand it.

"You have seen pictures in store windows - trees, animals, birds," Judge Maguire continued. "At first glance you don't think there is much of anything to one of these pictures but when you see a fellow standing and staring … you inquire. He answers: 'I am looking at the picture. Don't you see the question down at the bottom, where is the cat?' You look but do not see any cat. By and by somebody comes along who has seen the picture before. And, according to Judge Maguire, "this newcomer indicates the contours, one after another, of a cat. Finally you see the whole cat. If you should not see that picture again for twenty years, the very minute you glance at it, the first thing you see is the cat, the most prominent thing of all. So it is with a simple natural truth; so it is with the great truths that are involved in this proposed reform."

Alas and alack, not all who have read Progress and Poverty or even studied fundamental (economics have "seen the cat." if they only had, much of today's "postwar planning" might not be as confused and as wide of the mark as it is!