William Ogilvie -- Decentralist

Catherine M. Washburn

[Reprinted from the Henry George News, April, 1956]

There is a legend (or a record of interest to psychical researchers, if you prefer) that when a member of the great Scottish faimily of Ogilvie is about to pass from the world, the drummer of Cortachy is heard. The Ogilvies themselves never heard the music -- it was always someone else, perhaps a visitor. Even the Ogilvie ghost in this clan of gentlefolk was considerate. It is not known whether the musical notes were heard at the passing of Professor William Ogilvie (a valiant precursor of Henry George), but surely no soul more truly deserved such a fitting accompaniment to his departure.

In a previous article "Wm. Ogilvie -- Landlord and Scholar" [Henry George News, Dec. 1955], it was pointed out that though he was a landholder his sympathies were with the common people. In fact he became openly a Land Leaguer from the year 1776, though this took great courage. Like Henry George, he was no mere theorist. He believed in practising his principles, whether in the capacity of teacher, landlord or --friend. As a master in Kings College, for instance, he waged a hard-fought battle to keep the college property from being pilfered away by the other masters, and led a reform aimed at having "the emoluments of the professors arise chiefly from the fees of their classes."

Before 1747 the great landlords of Scotland held not only power of military tenure but the right to hang miscreants according to their own verdict. When, in 1747, these powers were removed, the Duke of Argyle alone was awarded £21,000 compensation for loss of these privileges. But was his power greatly diminished? In 1890 his descendant, with other dukes, lairds, etc. had control of the church to the extent that they received tithes amounting to £3,700,000. Of this they paid the clergy a little more than £240,000, and divided the test up among themselves. The Duke of Argyle possessed the patronage of 30 churches. The clergy, whose crumbs came from this source, usually preached as though the landlords were a chosen race unconnected with the rest of humanity, who in that day were largely considered tainted with Original Sin.

Puzzled by all this, a Highland boy in the neighborhood of Inverary Castle, whose logic suggests an older mind sagely concealing its identity, is reported to have asked his mother "who gave birth to the immaculate and uncursed family of the Lord of the Manor."

'Whisht !" [Hush] the mother answered. 'It was the devil that tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit,' continued the boy.

"'Yes, my dear,' replied the much-relieved mother, on finding that her son was coming back to things which she could easily explain.

'But,' said the boy, 'if the devil is a Land Leaguer, as the minister said last Sunday, why does he not tempt that other woman, Whisht, also? Then all landlords would be like other men; and father would get a piece of land to plough and sow, instead of having to go to the fishing, or to Glasgow to work in coal-pits; and we should be able to keep a cow, or perhaps two, and some sheep, and I should keep a dog, and you would not require to work so hard at washing clothes for the servants of the castle. The castle might be turned into a great school, and the duke himself might teach in it and have many teachers there, instead of flunkies and other servants who, like the Duke himself, do no good now.. .

"The nonplussed mother was now obliged to admit that the devil was not a Land Leaguer at all.

"'I was thinking that,' replied the youthful logician, 'because if lie were, he never would have done anything to bring about the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, with the wrath and curse of God upon all their children, and condemned to serve the children of Whisht, as slaves and rent-earners.'

William Ogilvie, having sold the ancestral home, later bought "the barren fields of Old-fold and Stonegavel." He then proceeded to improve them, stating "there is no natural obstacle to prevent the most barren ground from being brought by culture to the same degree of fertility with the kitchen garden of a villa." If the professor were alive today he would no doubt be welcomed as much by the decentralist movement, led by Ralph Borsodi, as by the Geotgists. A sort of inverted Hedonist, he believed the increase of public happiness to be the primary object of the state and he thought the happiness of men was "nearly in proportion to their virtue and their worth." Quotations like the following, from the biographical notes of D. C. MacDonald, show that while he did not define virtue he knew where it could be found.

"Men employed in cultivating the soil, if suffered to enjoy a reasonable independence, and a just share of the produce of their toil, are of simpler manners, and more virtuous, honest dispositions, than any other class of men. The testimony of all observers, in every age and country, concurs in this, and the reason of it may be found in the nature of their industry, and its reward. Their industry is not like that of the laboring manufacturer, insipidly uniform, but varied, it excludes idleness without imposing excessive drudgery, and its reward consists in abundance of necessary accommodations, without luxury and refinement.

"Those who are employed in agriculture, if not oppressed by the superior orders, if permitted to enjoy competent independence and rustic plenty, remote from the contagion of intemperance, are known to excel in strength, comeliness and good health, every other class of men in civilized nations."

Without caviling as to whether there are any statistics on the rural or urban origin of the "best people," can one not see here a parallel to the normal, balanced life taught by the decentralists in their new School of Living in Florida? In a mechanized world which often stultifies the creative urge, these people have withdrawn ("escaped," if you will), to a partially self-sustaining private universe where "a man can be a man for a'that." Decentralists defer to reality by working part time in a cash-producing job, but by aid of special plans, they build their houses at half the usual cost, raise most of their food on a few subsistence acres, enjoy better milk from the goat, and make their bread from grains ground at home (with electric motor). In some instances they weave cloth from wool gathered from their own sheep. Patterns vary but the idea is for the family to live more creatively, developing more skills and keeping a closer Contact with the whole process of production. Machines are not frowned upon; they are brought into the home. Parents and children share the labor of producing food and clothing needed. About one hour a day is estimated for such work per person. Here is a "back to nature" movement that carries its machine along as it goes.

As Georgists know from the amount of space given in The Interpreter to Henry George's ideas, these people, although "decentralized have absorbed and supported George's political theory. Henry George was not a decentralist in his appreciation of the division of labor, but who knows how he would view the deadening monotony of our present large-scale division of labor?

The decentralists have a singular facility for embracing other movements, in whole or in part. They operated a small consumers' cooperative in their Suffern (New York) venture, at the same time embracing bio-dynamic agriculture for their subsistence farms. Considering the coexistence of the Justice party and the cooperative movement in Denmark, one wonders if those Georgists who tend to a single purpose of a single tax might perhaps be more effective proponents if they expanded or "decentralized" themselves a little.

Georgists and decentralists alike will agree with Professor Ogilvie, when in the chapter on "The Right of Property in Land, as founded on public Utility," he wrote, "The labor of men applied to the cultivation of the earth tends more to increase the public wealth, for it is more productive of things necessary for the accommodation of life, wherein all real wealth consists, than if it were applied to any other purpose; and all labor applied to refined and commercial arts, while the state can furnish or procure opportunities of applying it to the cultivation of the soil, may be said to be squandered and misapplied unless insofar as it is given to those liberal arts whose productions operate on the mind and rouse the fancy or the heart.

At least the Georgists who hold the quantitative view of wealth as opposed to the value theory, will agree, and all will appreciate the recognition of the earth as the source of all wealth. Perhaps the thought that "labor applied to commercial arts is misapplied, will seem unrealistic. How many of our gadgets might Ogilvie have relegated to the commercial arts of misapplied energy, and how many would he have welcomed as contributing to man's higher nature?

The beautiful painting of a suburban home with a prestige car in the driveway, or of the richly panelled interior in which charming old gentlemen testify to historic Bourbon-do these "operate on the mind and rouse the fancy or the heart?" Bread and butter they do put on the artist's table, yes, and he must eat, even if a non-producer. Advertisements for many goods, if truly informative, (e.g. travel, literature and possibly a new recipe for an old dish associated with a pleasant culture), may well arouse the fancy. But this cigarette. this "enriched" (devitalized) bread, more than any other? Hardly so.

To close reluctantly this report on an extraordinary man, we quote from a letter written by a former student of Ogilvie after his death: 'Myself alone could know the full extent of his goodness, the sense of which has continued to increase. From him I imbibed principles and tastes which will abide with me through life, and always prove as they have hitherto done, their own reward."