Henry George 1839-97, American economist, founder of the single tax movement, b. Philadelphia. Of a poor family, his formal education was cut short at 14, and in 1857 he emigrated to California; there he worked at various occupations before turning to newspaper writing in San Francisco. George's experience in a number of trades, his desperate poverty while supporting a family, and the examples of financial rapacity that came to his attention as wage earner and newspaperman gave impetus to his reformist tendencies. George believed that an increase in poverty accompanied and even surpassed the increase in national wealth. He believed that the answer to this seeming paradox lay in the fact that the rental of land and the unearned increase in land values profited a few individuals rather than the community whose existence made the land valuable. He believed that a single tax on land would meet all the costs of government and even leave a surplus, besides unburdening labor and capital of taxes on their output. He first outlined the doctrine in the pamphlet Our Land and Land Policy (1871) and set himself to write a more elaborate treatise, which appeared under the title Progress and Poverty (1879); it sold millions of copies all over the world. In 1880 George moved to New York City and spent the remainder of his life writing and lecturing. He supported the Irish Land League and various economic and political reforms. In 1886 he ran for mayor of New York on a reform platform, and the incumbent Tammany machine was forced to go outside its ranks to find in Abram S. Hewitt a man strong enough to oppose him. Hewitt won, but George, without a party organization, polled a heavy vote, running ahead of the Republican candidate Theodore Roosevelt . In 1897 George ran again but died just before the election. Clear presentation and moral fervor rather than originality make George's ideas outstanding. His theories have influenced tax legislation in Australia, in parts of Canada, in the United States, and in certain nations of Western Europe.

Bibliography: See biography by Henry George, Jr. (1900); studies by A. A. G. DeMille (1950, repr. 1972), S. B. Cord (1965), E. J. Cord (1965), and J. Oser (1973).

Henry George

The American economist and social reformer Henry George (1839-1897) popularized the "single-tax" reform movement.

Henry George was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sept. 2, 1839. He left school when he was 13 years old and spent 2 years as a clerk before becoming a seaman. After his arrival in San Francisco in 1858, he worked as a laborer, gold prospector, and printer. He married and started to raise a family and for several years experienced a desperate, grinding poverty.

In 1865 George became a journalist. In several newspapers, including the San Francisco Daily Evening Post, which he founded and edited (1871-1875), he criticized and exposed some of the major inequities of his day, such as speculation in public lands, the illegal actions of monopolies, and the exploitation of new Chinese immigrants in California. As a deeply religious and moral man, he felt that America could not condone such actions.

George studied economics and slowly systemized his thinking. In his editorials and writings he proposed various economic reforms, including public ownership of utilities and public-oriented industries such as railroads and the telegraph system. Still, he never embraced the ideology of socialism. His major work was Progress and Poverty (1879), which he infused with his strong moral passion for justice and his hatred of poverty. George claimed that private ownership of land was the root cause of poverty and also held up progress. It was morally wrong for people to become wealthy without working, but just from ownership of a natural resource that should be accessible to all people. He claimed that the rise of rents that went along with the growth of industry and progress forced wages to fall. For a "remedy" he proposed the nationalization of land or the taxing of land so highly that the economic rent would go to the community and be used for the public good.

George's simple solution, the "single tax," and his moral questioning of society's values and actions appealed to the people, though not to most economists, and made George famous. In the 1880s the single tax became the focus of a powerful reform movement. Local clubs were formed, and George propagandized for acceptance of the single tax. The idea even had a formidable impact on British radicalism in that decade.

George moved to New York in 1880, where his fame was such that he was asked to run for mayor as a reform candidate in 1886; he was narrowly defeated by Abram Hewitt but ran ahead of the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. Though in poor health, he was persuaded to run again, but he died before the election, on Oct. 29, 1897.

Further Reading

Charles Albro Barker, Henry George (1955), is a thorough study of George's life, and Edward J. Rose, Henry George (1968), is a good, shorter biography. Other studies include Henry George, Jr., The Life of Henry George (1900); Elwood P. Lawrence, Henry George in the British Isles (1957); and Steven B. Cord, Henry George: Dreamer or Realist? (1965). Robert L. Heilbroner discusses George in the context of 19th-century economic thought in The Wordly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953; 3d ed. rev. 1967).

Additional Sources

Barker, Charles A. (Charles Albro), Henry Georg, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press 1974.

Cord, Steven B., Henry George, dreamer or realist?, New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1984.

Geiger, George Raymond, The philosophy of Henry George, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1975, 1933.

George and the scholars: a century of scientific research reveals the reformer was an original economist and a world-class social philosopher, New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1991.

Jones, Peter d'Alroy, Henry George and British socialism, New York: Garland Pub., 1991.

Rather, Lois, Henry George—printer to author, Oakland Calif.: Rather Press, 1978. □

George, Henry (1839–97), left his middle‐class, devoutly Episcopalian Philadelphia home (1855) to sail as a foremast boy to Calcutta, where he was struck by the contrast between poverty and wealth. In 1857 the promise of work drew him to San Francisco, where he struggled against want intermittently for ten years, as printer, gold hunter, publisher, and freelance editor and author, observing the rich new country come gradually under the control of a few land‐hungry speculators. His first article in the Overland Monthly (Oct. 1868) anticipated his later thesis, contending that the railroads would bring riches to a few and poverty to many. His first separate publication, Our Land and Land Policy (1871), a pamphlet, urged that we “charge the expenses of government upon our land,” thus stating the essence of the single‐tax idea. During the depression and labor troubles of 1877 he began writing his great work, Progress and Poverty (1879), which attributes poverty to rent, and proposes a tax on land as the remedy for social ills. This doctrine, developed in six other books, numerous periodicals, and his own weekly, The Standard (1886–92), won national prominence for its author, as well as the support of labor in his two unsuccessful New York mayoralty campaigns. The Irish Land Question (1881) extends his basic tenets to the subject of Irish distress, which he saw at first hand for a year. Social Problems (1884) applies the principles of Progress and Poverty to various social maladjustments. Protection or Free Trade (1886) is a discussion of tariffs and free trade, stating George's belief that poverty would continue under either system, and that a single tax on land would furnish the only solution. Science of Political Economy (1897) is a general restatement of his principles. George lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad, and in England influenced the circle of intellectuals who later founded the Fabian Society. In Germany and Austria his theories contributed to the introduction of increment taxes, while in the U.S. they have led to an increasing concern with problems of wealth distribution.