Review of the Book

The Prophet of San Francisco
by Louis F. Post

Joseph Dana Miller

[Excerpts from several reviews of the book, The Prophet of San Francisco,
written by Louis F. Post. Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1931]

AMONG the reviews of Louis Post's book recently published by the Vanguard Press of this city, is one by Alice Stone Blackwell in Unity edited by Rev. John Haynes Holmes. The reviewer says: There is such a wealth of material in this book that it is hard even to outline its contents. The author tells of Henry George from many sides his family-life, his spiritual vision, his chief works, his views on many subjects, including the future of his cause, which the author says is steadily though quietly gaining converts. There is a list of the men who advocate like ideas, before and since, and answers to the principal objections; a description of Henry George's chief works; and an account of the Standard and of the Public, which Mr. Post edited so ably for many years. It would be interesting to quote the explanation of the kind of Socialism that Henry George believed in and the kind he did not; his reasons for thinking permanent organization for the promotion of a political reform to be generally unwise; his argument for the immortality of human beings and of animals; and his opinions on many other subjects, including the right relations between husband and wife. Henry George married at twenty-two a girl of eighteen, who was all his life, he declared, his best adviser. The present volume has been brought out under the intelligent and affectionate supervision of Alice Thacher Post, who was so sympathetically associated with her husband for years in Single Tax work and in the editorship of the Public. The book is a treasury of interesting and inspiring material.

A review from Prof. Paul H. Douglass appears in the New Republic of the issue of December 10. Mr. Douglass depricates what he calls "the monotomous monomania" of Single Taxers, and he says "we have been largely a nation of real estate speculators and have, therefore, been reluctant to admit that increased rent which we expected to make us rich should be taken by the community." He adds however:

But neither intellectual fastidiousness nor economic, interest should blind us to the robust central truth that the economic rent of bare land is a social product and should normally furnish a larger part than it now does of the revenues of society. It has been the supreme merit of Henry George that he pointed this out with extraordinary and genuine eloquence, even if not always with impeccable logic. Ricardo had, to be sure, laid the basis for such a social theory when he worked out the nature of rent by showing that it was the difference between the costs of cultivation on the better grades of land and those on the poorest pieces which were utilized. As population increases, the pressure upon the soil becomes greater; poorer and poorer lands would be resorted to and with the increase in the differential, rents and, therefore, the value of land would inevitably rise. It would have been only a logical extension of Ricardo's analysis to have concluded then and there that since rent was not a social cost of production and was, instead, a socially created surplus, the community should mark it as its very own. But this ethical application was not made by Ricardo or by any of his followers with the exception of John Stuart Mill.

We can afford to overlook the charge of "failing in impeccable "logic" which the Professor brings against Henry George. It was but natural that George should have fallen into many errors." These the reviewer with commendable caution fails to indicate. It is a memory of many now living that certain very eminent gentlemen came to grief in trying to point out these "errors" and lapses of logic in Henry George's contentions. But Prof. Douglass is very fair in this review, and makes admissions enough to justify the taking, if not the whole, then a good part of this "socially created surplus," i. e., economic rent.

In a review of Mr. Post's book in the New Church Messenger signed by B. A. Whittemore we find the following clear cut statement:

The value of land in general being due to location on the one hand and to demand for occupancy on the other (an acre in the heart of the Sahara Desert, for instance, being worth nothing, but in the heart of Manhattan being worth a fortune a value created not by any individual but solely by the entire community), the programme is, to take for community uses by taxation the rent that title ownership now enables the owner to exact from the user for use of the land itself. Let title ownership to land remain as at present to begin with; but let the advantages of holding such title to land except by the actual user be taken away by taxation of the location to the extent of the amount of money the highest competitor for that location is willing to pay for occupancy and use. If land were taxed on that basis, speculation in land would become practically impossible, and everybody who cared to do so could occupy land somewhere, on the basis of paying the land-value taxation to the community in which located. Free land was one of the great inducements to immigration to this country. Alas, that in giving free occupancy the government did not see the unwisdom of giving property ownership! But after all, our government was not especially at fault, as the holding of land as property of individuals goes back throughout past history, and most (if not all) titles go back eventually to conquest and the assumption of ownership by the conquerors, titles thus beginning with force and iniquity, later bulwarked and buttressed by human law in the interests of the holding class.

The Prophet of San Francisco, Mr. Post has given to his book the title that the Duke of Argyll applied to Henry George in ridicule, when his doctrine of the taxation of land values first became known in Great Britain. Though first applied in ridicule, the appellation seems a most fitting one, as Henry George manifested the true spirit of the prophet in devoting his life to the promulgation of the message the Lord had given him for the advancement of His kingdom upon earth. That many persons sensed the prophetic element in his function was especially manifest by the burst of applause when, during the funeral service, on November 1, 1897, Father McGlynn in his eulogy said at the climax of his remarks:

We can say of him as the Scriptures say, there was a an sent of God whose name was John; and I believe at I mock not those sacred Scriptures when I say, there s a man sent of God whose name was Henry George. 185.)