Kate Kennedy:

San Francisco's Labor-Loving
School Teacher and Principal

[An unsigned article. Reprinted from Quicksilver, the publication of the Henry George School of Social Science, San Francisco, California, Spring, 2001]

She was born in mid-east Ireland in 1827, on the other end of the month from May Day. Perhaps that's appropriate, for if May 1st celebrates those who are no longer willing to abide economic and social wrongs, we might well say May 31st celebrates those who have come to conclusions regarding those wrongs. Kate Kennedy was such a one.

She came to her convictions through the gethsemane of the mass starvations in Ireland during the potato famine of the late 1840s, and through the indignity of receiving lower pay as a teacher simply because she was female, and through the anguish of being fired because of what she thought and spoke.

What were her convictions? What did she speak again and again before labor union gatherings and general audiences?

Only the most obvious of things. But things which, when looked at anew, and with moral determination, can transform the world.

She declared that labor was its own reward. That what a person fashioned from nature was her very own. That what a person cultivated and made belonged to that individual. Furthermore, she declared that the act of labor was itself all that labor owed society and, therefore, she called for eliminating payroll taxes! Labor in itself puts no demands on society, but is itself a contribution to society.

She declared that stuff made by human beings properly belongs to those who made it. If a man fashions a shoe, that shoe is his, and if a man builds a factory, or hires others to build it for him, then that factory belongs to him. Stuff made by human beings does not itself impose upon society, but is a contribution to society. Houses and bicycles and everything else that is human-made presents before society something which did not previously exist, therefore Kate called for eliminating taxes upon that which labor created! But she firmly denounced monopolies.

She declared that the earth is the birthright of all people. No person made it. No person can live apart from it. For one man to say it is his and to demand that others who would use this earth must pay him for its use is absurd. For society to endorse the arrangement by which, for billions, life on earth is conditional upon paying ground rent to the landholder is monstrous. It is to denature humanity, for what are human beings essentially and incontrovertibly, but earthlings? Therefore Kate called for ground rent to be paid to society. All of it. In short, no one should demand of labor a smidgen for labor's use of the earth. Simultaneously, the advantage the laborer and the capitalist gain in claiming one patch of the earth or another should be paid for in full to society.

Note well: by calling for a 95% tax on the annual value of every piece of land, Kate would eliminate private income from owning the earth. So, the man who owns rental property would make no income from the location of his buildings. In downtown San Francisco this land value tax would be high and the owner of a surface parking lot would make no money from its location; indeed, subtract the locational income of the parking lot from the parking lot's total income, and the owner would walk away with no more in hand than a parking lot located on free land would pay!

Keep this clear, though: people will continue to demand housing and factories and even parking lots. Ground rent going to meet society's needs doesn't mean that people lose incentive to work. Quite the opposite. When there is no personal income from merely owning land then people must work for a living. They must use their land by putting up, for example, the housing which people demand. As it is now, the landlord makes money when other people put up apartments on what the landlord fancies to call his own, private earth.

What sets the level of return to labor and capital is what they earn on free land. The price of using land is rent, and to the extent rent does not go to society it goes to the landholder. Great wealth accumulates with those who own valuable land. They need not work, though they often do. What work they do confuses society as to whence their great wealth derives. The landlord often says great earnings come from his factory or his apartment buildings, but this isn't so. It comes from the location of his factory and the location of his apartments.

After all, where else can people labor and apply their savings and capital but on land? Factories, office buildings, shoe shops, apartments, restaurants, and live-work lofts must be located on land. If not, they are fictitious!

This is why Kate Kennedy declared that for labor and capital to be set free of tyranny, those who labor and save should not pay ground rent to individuals. Rather, those who claim to own the earth should pay to society this ground rent. Then there will be no Earth Boss and laborers will work if they wish, at the wages they wish, with not a dime going to the landlord! And the same for the business owner. One significant reason so many small businesses die is not because of incompetency, but because of high ground rent. And this high ground rent is itself the result of land speculation.

• Kate Kennedy was the first teacher in San Francisco to join a union -The Knights of Labor.
• Kate Kennedy's anti-discrimination case in 1874 set the legal precedent for equal pay for women in the United States!
• Kate Kennedy was the first woman to run for state office -- in 1886 she ran for State Superintendent of Public Schools.
• Kate Kennedy ran for the State Superintendent's office as an active advocate of women's right to vote.

• Kate Kennedy was president of the first self-insurance society for San Francisco teachers.
• Kate Kennedy's 1890 test case destroyed the political spoils system in California, and secured tenure for teachers with dismissal only for professional cause.
• Kate Kennedy declared the wholesomeness of labor in calling for the abolition of taxes upon labor.
• Kate Kennedy declared the equality of all persons as human beings by calling for the abolition of the private appropriation of ground rent.

Kate Kennedy knew Henry George from 1872 onwards till he left for New York in 1880. She was a charter member of the California Tax Reform League which counted James Maguire among its members, Kennedy died in 1890, just months before George's return to San Francisco while bound for Australia and New Zealand. She penned a number of Georgist essays, delivered as talks to working men's gatherings, which she gathered together as Dr. Paley's Foolish Pigeons and Short Sermons to Working Men, published by her brother in San Francisco in 1906.