Review of the Book

How to Abolish Poverty
by George L. Record

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, September-October 1936]

Joseph Dana Miller was during this period Editor of Land and Freedom. Many of the editorials published were unsigned. This review is signed by Mr. Miller.

This volume contains a statement of the economic and political faith of George L. Record. An introduction by Amos Pinchot and a foreword by James G. Blauvelt are affectionate tributes to the late Mr. Record, and on the whole are not undeserved.

There is no doubt that George L. Record performed a distinct and signal service in keeping alive in the state of New Jersey the flame of social reform. That he fell short of full accomplishment of his aim seems to us to have been due to his marked limitations and a certain self-delusion that he was a politician. This weakness was strikingly exhibited at the convention of the Committee of 48 in Chicago where from motives that must forever remain undisclosed he side- stepped the real issue at the very minute that Oscar Geiger, with his flaming courage, had won a magnificent but bewildered convention to our cause. It was a great moment and the truth must be told that George L. Record failed us.

We dislike to dwell upon this. It may have been that Mr. Record saw or thought he saw the futility of a ringing declaration on the land question that might have immortalized this convention. It is not possible to believe even after this lapse of time that George Record was right and Oscar Geiger wrong.

We prefer to dwell upon the real service Mr. Record rendered to the cause. We want to echo the encomiums pronounced by Messrs. Pinchot and Blauvelt. He was at least a strong figure in the politics of his state and people knew what he stood for. It is no exaggeration to say that he made Woodrow Wilson. He could do for others what he could not do for himself, for despite his strange self-delusion he was primarily an agitator and not a politician, and Henry George was the inspiring impulse of his life. The tragedy of his career was that he mistook himself for a political leader, and he failed in political compromise because every fibre in his nature responded to quite different stimuli.

We can endorse in the main the confession of faith he has given us in these posthumous papers. Only in one chapter do we find statements with which we would take issue. That is the chapter in which he tries to justify income and inheritance taxes. He seems to feel that some part of the great fortunes of Ford and Woolworth are unearned and should be taken in taxation. He supports this contention by the following:

"Society by establishing and maintaining at public expense, public roads, courts, police and fire departments, and the penal statutes affecting property rights, by authorizing and supervising the banks and coining money, and by establishing laws governing the medium of exchange, and by providing for the formation of corporations so as to make possible large aggregations of capital, contributed directly to the productions and to the element of permanency of the wealth acquired by the so-called owners."

Mr. Record has weakened his case, for the argument concedes in great measure the validity of taxes upon all forms of wealth, and could be quoted to sustain the reasonableness of any tax on production.

Mr. Record by dwelling upon the legislative rather than the economic argument has missed the point. Granted that the Ford and Woolworth fortunes do include an unearned portion, society gets all it is entitled to when it collects the economic rent. That both Ford and Woolworth profit by conditions in which labor sells its service at a disadvantage; that in subtle ways great aggregations of capital under present conditions render any bargain entered into by labor and capital a one-sided contract, we are to remember that the taking of economic rent by making all natural resources free will be to establish a very different relationship. We need not therefore concern ourselves in futile speculation as to just what part of these great fortunes is unearned. If society takes what it is clearly entitled to, the shares going to employer and employed in the work if production will be automatically regulated in accordance with justice under the free play of natural laws, in which it is feared Mr. Record, as indeed is the case with many others, had insufficient faith.

But this part of this very useful work may be disregarded in view the contribution to sound economic thinking which Mr. Record has left to his followers. His errors are of little importance but it is important that the Record Memorial Association live and flourish to carry on the work so well begun, and that this little volume will serve to perpetuate both the name and service of one who, if not always proof against the acid test, led the fight in the state of New Jersey in the sordid politics of his day as a lone eagle for the abolition of privilege.

It adds to the value of this little volume that the admirable paper by A. W. Madsen of London, Land Value Taxation in Practice, is included as an Appendix.