Review of the Book

Land and Unemployment
by James F. Muirhead

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 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.

Here is another book among the growing number that seek to present the Henry George philosophy as the antithesis of socialism. It would seem that in the world of books at least the issue is being sharply drawn. Against a flood of books that advocate the teachings of communism, or the parlor pink school of socialism, or the New Deal brand, books like those of Francis Neilson, Albert Jay Nock, Gilbert M. Tucker, Louis Wallis, Prof. George Raymond Geiger, Henry Ware Allen, Dr. S. Vere Pearson, Frederick Verinder, the late Dr. Muirhead and many others, the literature of protest against the present trend and in favor of the teachings of the great American economist is receiving adequate presentation as the alternative philosophy.

The editor of LAND AND FREEDOM has already reviewed Dr. Muirhead's Land and Unemployment in the Survey Graphic of this city, but it is well to call attention to it here, for it is a work which merits careful consideration. It is an Oxford book which label bespeaks its character. It is worth reading if for nothing more than the "foreword" of Arnold Wilson, conservative member of Parliament, and the slight but significant sketch of Henry George by its scholarly editor, Garnet Smith.

Perhaps the most portentous of Dr. Muirhead's statement, and he writes with amazing clarity, is the following:

"The Old Order seems to have more or less collapsed; the outlines of the New Order to arise out of the ruins remains very vague. We begin to realize how much of our civilization rested on tradition and how little on reason. We are amazed, now that the crash has shaken the blindness from our eyes, how preposterous were many of the conditions that we accepted unthinkingly and even complacently."

It should be said that the chapter on "Tariffs and Trade" is a bit disappointing.

The absence of a concluding chapter that would "appropriately follow the appeal and exhortation struck at the beginning" is noted by the Editor, and the fact recalls the unfinished task of Henry George in his "Science of Political Economy." In each case death intervened. But while this is to be regretted Dr. Muirhead in his present work has left us material in which the finely persuasive character of the appeal is certain to be of value to the movement.

The progress that has been made in many countries is outlined in one of the latter chapters and reference is had for some of these historic instances to the Single Tax Year Book published and edited by Joseph Dana Miller in 1917, as well as to Prof. George Raymond Geiger, author of "The Philosophy of Henry George," and to Frederick C. Leubuscher from his address at Copenhagen.