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Hidden History: Henry George and the Single Tax Movement [1]

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Date: 2023-09-12

At the turn of the 20th century, the Single Tax Movement was an enormously popular economic and political reformist movement.

"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.

Single Tax Poster, 1910

photo from WikiCommons

Henry George was born in Philadelphia in 1839. As a young man he tried his hand at various jobs, working as a sailor in India and Australia, a gold miner in Canada, and as editor of several newspapers in San Francisco. During the Financial Panic of 1873 he became involved with politics, writing political tracts and running unsuccessfully for State Assembly under the Democratic Party. In 1876 George received a political patronage job as a California gas meter inspector.

Influenced by the effects of the Financial Panic, George began thinking about political solutions to the increasing divide between the poor mass of people and the wealthy Gilded Age elite. In particular, he closely studied the railroad industry in California and the effects it had on the economy, and was especially struck by how much the price of land rose as the railroads began to buy rights of way for their tracks--leading to massive profits for the landowners who were selling their holdings.

This led George to his concept of "rent". As the economy developed and wealth was created, George concluded, the prices of land inevitably rose, and the landowners would reap ever-increasing profits even though they sat idle and did nothing to actually increase the value of their land. George asserted that this was mere parasitism and eventually these ever-increasing land profits would became a burden on the economy as well as feeding economic inequality.

The solution, George concluded, was to remove these unearned profits from the landowners by taxing them at the value of their land. By thereby transferring this windfall from the landowners to the government, this wealth could be used for the public good. In effect, all landowners would be paying rent to the public for the use of the land. George calculated that this "single tax" alone would provide the government with enough revenue to meet all of the public's needs, and could be used to fund programs such as public transportation, education, and utilities.

In 1879, George put all of his ideas about social and economic reform into a self-published book he titled Progress and Poverty. In detail, he laid out his ideas about a "single tax" on land. The book was an immense success and became enormously influential. Not only was it translated into 15 languages and sold over six million copies worldwide, but it inspired a network of "single tax leagues" everywhere from the United States to Ireland to Australia, as political clubs appeared to discuss, debate and advocate for "Georgist" reforms. In some towns, like Arden DE and Fairhope AL, "Single Tax Colonies" were organized by the local government to put Georgist ideas into practice. When an attempt was made in Houston to change the tax system to incorporate Georgist ideas, the plan was declared unconstitutional by the Texas courts.

George's campaign even entered indirectly into American popular culture: in 1904 an activist named Lizzie Magie created a new board game called "The Landlord Game", which was intended to teach children the evils of large-scale land ownership and the principles of Georgist reform. The marketing rights to "The Landlord Game" were purchased by the Parker Brothers, who modified it and changed the focus, and renamed it "Monopoly".

In some areas, the Single Tax movement became a serious political competitor to the Socialist Party. Conservatives of all stripes attacked George and his ideas as "socialist", but in reality George was an advocate of free trade capitalism and had no desire to confiscate property or socialize the economy, and his entire program was opposed by the Socialist Party. But many liberal social reformers of the time embraced it, some even specifically arguing that it served as an ideological and practical bulwark against the more radical Socialists.

George followed up in 1883 with another book titled Social Problems, which expanded his reformist views to include proposed changes to the electoral system and a series of anti-corruption measures, then followed this book with Protection or Free Trade in 1886. Some of the progressive ideas that were supported by George were women's suffrage, racial equality, and a guaranteed minimum income for all citizens, financed by the single tax on land. And in a time when most government revenue came from excise taxes and import tariffs (the personal income tax did not exist yet), George argued in favor of international free trade and the elimination of trade barriers.

George rode the wave of political enthusiasm that had been generated by his books. In 1880 he moved to New York City, where he gave political speeches and advocated for his political and economic programs. Six years later he ran for Mayor of New York under the banner of the United Labor Party, and came in second--losing to the Tammany Hall-backed Democratic candidate Abram Stevens Hewitt but receiving more votes than the Republican candidate (and future President) Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1897, George ran for Mayor again, this time for the Jefferson Democracy Party. During the campaign, however, George suffered a stroke, which killed him just four days before the election. Over 100,000 people viewed George's body as it lay in memorium at Grand Central Palace, and there were funeral services and eulogies in every major city across the country. Some newspapers called it the largest public mourning since the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Meanwhile, the Single Tax movement began to decline in influence and eventually disappeared, overshadowed by the Socialist Party and then the Progressive Movement.

But it was never completely forgotten. George's reformism was praised by William Jennings Bryan and by Franklin D Roosevelt. Even in the free-wheeling 1980s era of Reaganomics, free-market guru Milton Friedman declared that Henry George's single tax on land value was "the least bad tax" that had ever been proposed.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/12/2180122/-Hidden-History-Henry-George-and-the-Single-Tax-Movement

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