Progress and Poverty - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of
Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Progress and Poverty
Increase of Wealth: The Remedy is an 1879 book by
social theorist and economist Henry George. It is a treatise on
the questions of why poverty accompanies economic and
technological progress and why economies exhibit a tendency
toward cyclical boom and bust. George uses history and
deductive logic to argue for a radical solution focusing on the
capture of economic rent from natural resource and land titles.

Progress and Poverty, George's first book, sold several million

copies,[1] becoming one of the highest selling books of the late
1800s.[2][3] It helped spark the Progressive Era and a
worldwide social reform movement around an ideology now
known as 'Georgism'. Jacob Riis, for example, explicitly marks
the beginning of the Progressive Era awakening as 1879
because of the date of this publication.[4] The Princeton
historian Eric F. Goldman wrote this about the influence of
Progress and Poverty:

For some years prior to 1952 I was working on a

Cover of the 1881 edition
history of American reform and over and over again
my research ran into this fact: an enormous Author Henry George
number of men and women, strikingly different Country United States
people, men and women who were to lead 20th
Language English
century America in a dozen fields of humane
activity, wrote or told someone that their whole Subjects Capitalism, socialism,
thinking had been redirected by reading Progress Georgism, tax policy,
and Poverty in their formative years. In this land, economic rent
respect no other book came anywhere near
Publication 1879
comparable influence.[5] date
Media type Print (Hardback)
Progress and Poverty had perhaps even a larger impact Pages 406
around the world, in places such as Denmark, the United
ISBN 1-59605-951-6
Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, where George's
influence was enormous.[6] Contemporary sources and OCLC 3051331 (https://ww
historians claim that in the United Kingdom, a vast majority of w.worldcat.org/oclc/3
both socialist and classical liberal activists could trace their 051331)
ideological development to Henry George. George's popularity

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was more than a passing phase; even by 1906, a survey of Text Progress and Poverty
British parliamentarians revealed that the American author's at Wikisource
writing was more popular than Walter Scott, John Stuart Mill,
and William Shakespeare.[7] In 1933, John Dewey estimated that Progress and Poverty "had a
wider distribution than almost all other books on political economy put together."[8]

Context
Progress and Poverty seeks to explain why poverty exists notwithstanding widespread advances in
technology and even where there is a concentration of great wealth such as in cities.

George saw how technological and social advances (including education and public services)
increased the value of land (natural resources, urban locations, etc.) and, thus, the amount of
wealth that can be demanded by the owners of land from those who need the use of land. In other
words: the better the public services, the higher the rent is (as more people value that land). The
tendency of speculators to increase the price of land faster than wealth can be produced to pay has
the result of lowering the amount of wealth left over for labor to claim in wages, and finally leads to
the collapse of enterprises at the margin, with a ripple effect that becomes a serious business
depression entailing widespread unemployment, foreclosures, etc.

In Progress and Poverty, George examines various proposed strategies to prevent business
depressions, unemployment and poverty, but finds them unsatisfactory. As an alternative he
proposes his own solution: a single tax on land values. George defines land as "all natural
materials, forces, and opportunities," as everything "that is freely supplied by nature." George's
primary fiscal tool was a land value tax on the annual value of land held as private property. It
would be high enough to end other taxes, especially upon labor and production, to provide limitless
beneficial public investment in services such as transportation, since public investment is reflected
in land value, and to provide social services such as a basic income. George argued that a land value
tax would give landowners an incentive to use well located land in a productive way, thereby
increasing demand for labor and creating wealth. This shift in the bargaining balance between
resource owners and laborers would raise the general level of wages and ensure no one need suffer
poverty. A land value tax would, among other things, also end urban sprawl, tenant farming,
homelessness, and the cultivation of low value monoculture on high value land.

Soon after its publication, over three million copies of Progress and Poverty were bought,
exceeding all other books written in the English language except the Bible during the 1890s. By
1936, it had been translated into thirteen languages and at least six million copies had been sold.[9]
It has now been translated into dozens of languages.[10]

Excerpts
The following excerpt represents the crux of George's argument and view of political economy.[11]

Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to
make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city—in
ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of
the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously
multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will

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tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you,
"No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?"
"Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." And
if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, you need do nothing more. You may
sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples or the
leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon or down a hole in the ground; and
without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community,
in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but
among its public buildings will be an almshouse.

An often-cited passage from Progress and Poverty is "The Unbound Savannah", in which George
discusses how the building of a community increases the value of land.[12]

Notable recognition
After completing Progress and Poverty, George accurately wrote to his father: "It will not be
recognized at first—maybe not for some time—but it will ultimately be considered a great book, will
be published in both hemispheres, and be translated into different languages. This I know, though
neither of us may ever see it here."[13]

Emma Lazarus wrote, "Progress and Poverty is not so much a book as an event. The life and
thought of no one capable of understanding it can be quite the same after reading it," and even that
reading it would prevent such a person, who also "prized justice or common honesty", from being
able to ever again "dine or sleep or read or work in peace". Many famous figures with diverse
ideologies, such as George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Hayek, H. G. Wells,[14] and Leo Tolstoy, mark
their first encounters with Progress and Poverty as literally life-changing experiences.

John Haynes Holmes wrote, "My reading of Henry George's immortal masterpiece marked an
epoch in my life. All my thought upon the social question and all my work for social reform began
with the reading of this book,".[15] He knew of "nothing more touching, in all the range of our
American literature."[16] Holmes also said that "Progress and Poverty was the most closely knit,
fascinating and convincing specimen of argumentation that, I believe, ever sprang from the mind
of man."[17]

In 1930, during the Great Depression, George W. Norris entered an abridged version of 'Progress
and Poverty' into the Congressional Record and later commented that an excerpt from the book
was "one of the most beautiful things" that he "ever read on the preciousness of human liberty."[18]

Some readers have found George's reasoning so compelling that they report being unwillingly
forced into agreement. Tom L. Johnson, a streetcar monopolist and future progressive reformer,
read and reread Progress and Poverty, finally requesting assistance from his business associates to
find flaws in George's reasoning. Johnson took the book to his lawyer and said, "I must get out of
the business, or prove that this book is wrong. Here, Russell, is a retainer of five hundred dollars
[$13,000 in 2015]. I want you to read this book and give me your honest opinion on it, as you
would on a legal question. Treat this retainer as you would a fee."[19][20][21] Frank Chodorov, a
pacifist libertarian of the American 'old right', claims to have read Progress and Poverty many
times, and almost constantly for six months straight, before finally accepting George's
conclusions.[22] The literary critic Horace Traubel wrote that "George died in the charge of battle.

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But his book is battle spared. It has been in all battles and has survived all. Antagonism no longer
has surprises for it."[23]

Philip Wicksteed wrote that Progress and Poverty had opened "a new heaven and a new earth"[24]
and that it was “by far the most important work in its social consequences that our generation or
century [1882] has seen.”[25] Alfred Russel Wallace later echoed this opinion when hailing
Progress and Poverty as "undoubtedly the most remarkable and important book of the present
century," placing it even above Darwin's On the Origin of Species.[26] Nobel laureate Gary Becker
said that Progress and Poverty was the first economics book he read, because Henry George "was
famous in those days" and "influenced a lot of us in economics." Becker also said that the book was
wonderful and had a lasting impact on his thinking.[27][28] Ilya Tolstoy said that the book was a
revelation to his father.[29]

William Simon U'Ren wrote that he "went to Honolulu to die," but that a chance encounter with
Progress and Poverty gave him a sense of purpose and renewed his desire to live. U'Ren went on
to become a pioneering reformer of municipal elections and activist for direct democracy.[30]

Clarence Darrow wrote that he had "found a new political gospel that bade fair to bring about the
social equality and opportunity that has always been the dream of the idealist."[31] Sara Bard Field
wrote that Progress and Poverty was "the first great book I ever encountered", for how it impacted
her thinking on poverty and wealth.[32]

Albert Einstein wrote this about his impression of Progress and Poverty: "Men like Henry George
are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness,
artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation."[33]

In the Classics Club edition forward, John F. Kieran wrote that "no student in that field
[economics] should be allowed to speak above a whisper or write above three lines on the general
subject until he has read and digested Progress and Poverty."[34] Kieran also later listed Progress
and Poverty as one of his favorite books.[35] Michael Kinsley wrote that it is "the greatest economic
treatise ever written."[36]

After reading selections of Progress and Poverty, Helen Keller wrote of finding "in Henry George’s
philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of
human nature."[37] Father Edward McGlynn, one of the most prominent and controversial Catholic
priests of the time, was quoted as saying, "That book is the work of a sage, of a seer, of a
philosopher, of a poet. It is not merely political philosophy. It is a poem; it is a prophecy; it is a
prayer."[38]

Among many famous people who asserted that it was impossible to refute George on the land
question were Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell. Tolstoy and
Dewey, especially, dedicated much of their lives to spreading George's ideas. Tolstoy was preaching
about the ideas in Progress and Poverty on his death bed.[39]

In his 1946 foreword to Brave New World, Aldous Huxley writes "If I were to rewrite the book, I
would offer the Savage...the possibility of sanity...where community economics would be
decentralist and Henry-Georgian".

See also

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▪ Land reform
▪ Henry George Theorem
▪ History of economic thought

References
1. "American History: Excerpt from Henry George Progress and Poverty 1879" (http://www.let.rug.
nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/excerpt-from-henry-george-progress-and-poverty-1879.php).
University of Groningen. Retrieved 2021-07-02.
2. Hackett, Alice (1945). Fifty Years of Best Sellers, 1895 - 1945. R.R. Bowker Co.
3. Noble, Barnes &. "Progress and Poverty|Paperback" (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/prog
ress-and-poverty-henry-george/1101426083). Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 2022-10-19.
4. Frederick, Peter (1976). Knights of the Golden Rule the Intellectual as Christian Social
Reformer in the 1890s. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813152313.
5. "Quotes: Notables on Henry George" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160513073711/http://ww
w.earthrights.net/wg/q-about-george.html). Earth Rights Institute. Archived from the original (htt
p://www.earthrights.net/wg/q-about-george.html#_E._F._Goldman) on 2016-05-13. Retrieved
2014-12-05.
6. Boast, Richard (2008). Buying the land, selling the land : governments and Maori land in the
North Island 1865–1921. Wellington N.Z.: Victoria University Press, Victoria University of
Wellington. ISBN 9780864735614.
7. Rose, Jonathan (2010). The intellectual life of the British working classes. New Haven, Conn:
Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300153651.
8. Dewey, John. "John Dewey's Foreword to Geiger's "The Philosophy of Henry George" (1933)"
(http://lvtfan.typepad.com/lvtfans_blog/2015/07/john-deweys-foreword-to-geigers-the-philosoph
y-of-henry-george.html). Retrieved 2 July 2015.
9. Hecht, Charles. "E. Haldeman-Julius A Confused Economist" (https://web.archive.org/web/201
41030133933/http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/hecht-charles_e-haldeman-julius-a-conf
used-economist-1934.html). Archived from the original (http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org
/hecht-charles_e-haldeman-julius-a-confused-economist-1934.html) on 30 October 2014.
Retrieved 30 October 2014.
10. "Progress and Poverty, Prefaces" (http://www.henrygeorge.org/pintro.htm). Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20160311165008/http://www.henrygeorge.org/pintro.htm) from the original
on 2016-03-11. Retrieved 2014-12-06.
11. Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (2000) 186, Penguin.
12. George, Henry (1879). Progress and Poverty (http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp19.htm)
.Chapter 19
13. Holmes, John Haynes. "Henry George – a biography" (https://web.archive.org/web/201412090
63757/http://www.grundskyld.dk/11-Henry_George.html). Archived from the original (http://ww
w.grundskyld.dk/11-Henry_George.html) on 2014-12-09. Retrieved 2014-12-05.
14. Experiment in Autobiography; H. G. Wells
15. "Charles R. Eckert / Henry George, Sound Economics and the 'New Deal' -- 1935" (https://web.
archive.org/web/20141209094902/http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/eckert-charles_henr
y-george-sound-economics-and-the-new-deal-1935.html). Archived from the original (http://ww
w.cooperativeindividualism.org/eckert-charles_henry-george-sound-economics-and-the-new-de
al-1935.html) on 2014-12-09. Retrieved 2014-12-05.

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16. Holmes, John Haynes (January 1947). "Henry George and Karl Marx: A Plutarchian
Experiment" (https://web.archive.org/web/20141209111958/http://www.cooperativeindividualis
m.org/holmes-john_henry-george-and-karl-marx-1947.html). American Journal of Economics
and Sociology. 6 (2): 159–67. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1947.tb00657.x (https://doi.org/10.111
1%2Fj.1536-7150.1947.tb00657.x). Archived from the original (http://www.cooperativeindividual
ism.org/holmes-john_henry-george-and-karl-marx-1947.html) on 9 December 2014. Retrieved
5 December 2014.
17. "Earth Rights - Quotes" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160513073711/http://www.earthrights.n
et/wg/q-about-george.html#_Rev._John_Haynes#_Rev._John_Haynes). Archived from the
original (http://www.earthrights.net/wg/q-about-george.html#_Rev._John_Haynes) on
2016-05-13. Retrieved 2014-12-05.
18. Putz, Paul Emory (2 July 2015). "Summer Book List: Henry George (and George Norris) and
the Crisis of Inequality" (http://peputz.blogspot.com/2015/07/henry-george-and-george-norris-a
nd.html). Retrieved 2 July 2015.
19. Warner, Hoyt Landon (January 1, 1964). Progressivism in Ohio 1897–1917. Ohio State
University Press.
20. Majercak, Nicole. "Tom L. Johnson, America's Best Mayor" (https://vimeo.com/28309268).
Retrieved 25 December 2014.
21. Howe, Frederic C. The Confessions of a Reformer. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1988.
22. Chodorov, Frank (1952). One is a Crowd (https://books.google.com/books?id=9o7gTAZ3xSAC)
. p. 22. ISBN 9781610163767. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
23. Traubel, Horace (1896). "Progress and Poverty" (https://books.google.com/books?id=JjwZAAA
AYAAJ&pg=PA252). The Conservator. 7–9: 252–53. Retrieved 13 December 2015.
24. Laurent, John. Henry George's Legacy in Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar
Pub., 2005
25. Flatau, Paul (2004-06-22). "Jevons's one great disciple: Wicksteed and the Jevonian revolution
in the second generation". History of Economics Review. 40 (Summer, 2004): 69–107.
doi:10.1080/18386318.2004.11681191 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F18386318.2004.11681191).
S2CID 53971900 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:53971900).
26. Buder, Stanley. Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern
Community. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
27. Becker, Gary. "Gary Becker Interview" (https://web.archive.org/web/20151006122911/http://ww
w.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bec0int-6). Archived from the original (http://www.achieveme
nt.org/autodoc/page/bec0int-6) on 6 October 2015. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
28. Bryson, Phillip (2011). The economics of Henry George : history's rehabilitation of America's
greatest early economist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 145.
29. Tolstoy, Ilya (September–October 1928). "Leo Tolstoy and Henry George" (http://www.cooperati
ve-individualism.org/tolstoy-ilya_leo-tolstoy-and-henry-george-1928.htm). Land and Freedom.
XXVIII (5). Retrieved 1 February 2016.
30. Johnston, Robert (2003). The radical middle class: populist democracy and the question of
capitalism in progressive era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ISBN 0691126003.
31. Kersten, Andrew (2011). Clarence Darrow : American iconoclast (https://archive.org/details/clar
encedarrowam0000kers). New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0809094868.
32. Fry, Amelia R. "Sara Bard Field: Poet and Suffragist" (http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt1p300
1n1&doc.view=entire_text). Calisphere. Suffragists Oral History Project. Retrieved 22 March
2015.

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33. Sklar, Dusty. "Henry George and Zionism" (https://web.archive.org/web/20141028225026/htt

p://jewishcurrents.org/henry-george-zionism-32779). Archived from the original (http://jewishcur
rents.org/henry-george-zionism-32779) on 2014-10-28. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
34. Kieran, John. "Forward to the Book Progress and Poverty by Henry George" (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20141030091418/http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/kieran-john_forward-to-he
nry-george-progress-and-poverty-1942.html). Archived from the original (http://www.cooperativ
eindividualism.org/kieran-john_forward-to-henry-george-progress-and-poverty-1942.html) on
30 October 2014. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
35. Dirda, Michael (2004). An open book : coming of age in the heartland (https://archive.org/detail
s/openbook00mich). New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0393326144.
36. Michael Kinsley, "The Time is Right to Finally Destroy OPEC," The Wall Street Journal, March
5, 1987
37. "Progress & Poverty" (https://books.google.com/books?id=kKFQdRePRBYC&dq=Helen+Kelle
r+henry+george&pg=PA262) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20161220021954/https://b
ooks.google.com/books?id=kKFQdRePRBYC&lpg=PA262&ots=6waJoLbN-2&dq=Helen%20K
eller%20henry%20george&pg=PA262#v=onepage&q=Helen%20Keller%20henry%20george&f
=false) December 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Robert Schalkenbach Fdn..
38. Yardley, Edmund (1905). Addresses at the funeral of Henry George, Sunday, October 31,
1897. Chicago: The Public publishing company. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
39. L'Estrange, Sarah (11 October 2007). "Jay Parini's Last Station: Tolstoy's Final Year" (http://ww
w.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bookshow/jay-parinis-last-station-tolstoys-final-year/32192
50#transcript). The Book Show. ABC. Radionational. Retrieved 6 December 2014.

Further reading
▪ England, R. W. (2010). Ricardo, gold, and rails: Discovering the origins of Progress and
Poverty (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_4_69/ai_n56237531/?tag=content;col1).
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 69, pp. 1279–93.
▪ Edgar H. Johnson, "The Economics of Henry George's Progress and Poverty," Journal of
Political Economy, vol. 18, no. 9 (Nov. 1910), pp. 714–35. In JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stabl
e/1820687)

External links
▪ Progress and Poverty (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry-george/progress-and-poverty)
at Standard Ebooks
▪ Digitized version of the fifth edition (https://archive.org/details/cu31924013685460) from the
Cornell University Library, hosted at the Internet Archive
▪ Progress and Poverty (https://librivox.org/search?title=Progress+and+Poverty&author=Geor
ge&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&so
rt_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook at
LibriVox
▪ Text of the 25th anniversary edition (http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP.ht
ml), hosted at the Library of Economics and Liberty
▪ Digitized version of the 25th anniversary edition (https://archive.org/details/progresspovertyi01g
eor) from the Library of Congress, hosted at the Internet Archive
▪ Text of Bob Drake's 2006 revision of the book (http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm),

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hosted at the Henry George Institute (http://www.henrygeorge.org/)

▪ Text of the centenary edition (http://www.progressandpoverty.org) via the Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation (http://schalkenbach.org/)
▪ Cross-reference table of the contents of various editions (http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/P
P/toc.htm)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Progress_and_Poverty&oldid=1144881908"

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