Working Together For Success

Anna George de Mille

[An address delivered at the Henry George Congress held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1938]

IN 1857 Lord Macauley wrote to those on this side of the Atlantic:

"As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and while this is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without any fatal calamity. But the time will come when wages will be as low and fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in these Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be out of work. Then your institutions will be brought to the test."

We have reached that point now; we have our Manchesters and Birminghams in the United States and while we have not proportionately as much unoccupied territory as you in Canada, we have hundreds of thousands of acres of desirable unused land. Indeed, according to Mayor LaGuardia's report there are approximately 40,000 acres of unused land in New York City.

But through stupid ignorance of natural law we have permitted the margin of cultivation to be pushed so far that our "frontiers" seem to have disappeared and labor and capital are becoming beggars in a land of vast opportunity. Fulfilling Lord Macauley's prophesy, our institutions are "brought to the test."

"Doing for men," says Emerson, "what they should do for themselves, is the one ugliness in all the governments of the world."

If that were true when Emerson wrote those words how much truer it is now. And yet in spite of European examples of what totalitarian programmes really entail in the crushing of freedom that we, on this continent count our birthright paternalism of one sort or another is being urged by some, in both Canada and the United States, who, a generation ago, would have shied at anything remotely resembling it, since it is the antithesis of the American ideal liberty. And these urgings toward regimentation come chiefly through ignorance of the science of political economy. Certainly it is for us, who realize that it is economic maladjustment which is dragging nation after nation into the morass of hatred and force, to work together as we have never worked before. Single Taxers are of necessity individualists, but now is the time for "united we stand," if we hope to point the only way for a lasting peace for a war-crazed world.

There are many different ways of carrying our message as there are Single Taxers to carry it. Obviously, how- ever, if we work together, since that gives us greater power, we must choose the greatest common denominator and the one programme on which we can all agree, believe is education.

Some of us may contend that political action is the quickest road to education although it develops bitter resistance and tolerance. Judge Jackson Ralston thinks that putting an Amendment on the ballot for the voters of California to pass on, is the quickest and surest mean of educating them. Be that as it may, I wish there have been a hundred extension classes and a few thousand students taking the correspondence course up and down California for two solid years before Judge Ralston had again launched the measure.

If that had happened enough voters in that State would know what the economics of Henry George connoted to make a telling stand against lying opposition and could force proper interpretation where now is powerful misinterpretation. But without such far-reaching preparation by the Henry George School of Social Science the Ralston Amendment is on the ballot, to be voted on in November, and it seems plainly the duty of Single Taxer everywhere, regardless of national or state lines, to help our valiant cohorts in California combat the vicious onslaught made by the privileged powers under the banner of the "Anti-Single Tax League."

Therefore I beg that this Conference make it a major accomplishment to use this great opportunity to spread education in a field where the fear on the part of our enemies proves our strength; that we do everything possible immediately to make the voters of California understand what the taxation of land values in lieu of all other taxes and the philosophy that goes with it, mean for ignorance is the only thing we Georgeists dread and we are working together for certain success when we work to spread the Henry George School of Social Science. For then, with the ever-growing army that understands he natural law "if" as says Henry George, "while there is yet time, we turn to justice and obey her, if we trust liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation."