Land Reform Union. — Tract No. 4.— ios. per ioo . 
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 
 
 
 GEORGE SARSON, M.A. 
 
 iBeprinted from The Modern Review, January, 1883, 
 hy the Land Reform Union.'[ 
 
 J. C, DuEANT, Printer, Clement's House, Clemeni's Inn 
 Passage, Strand, W.C. 
 
 PRICE TWOPENCE.
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY* 
 
 DURING the last half-century much thought and investi- 
 gation have been devoted to the study of the conditions 
 and prospects of poverty. What can the State do to lift to a 
 richer level the poorest stratum of its subjects ? has been the 
 problem of problems with thinker after thinker, with philo- 
 sopher and prophet and poet and practical man of the world. 
 And what has resulted from all this thought, and from many 
 a hard-won legislative triumph ? If we see our way any 
 clearer, can we see our way to doing anything ? Or are the 
 conditions of the poorest decidedly better than they were ? 
 Undoubtedly, those who will read these pages, and most of 
 those whom our readers employ are respectively better 
 supplied with necessaries and luxuries than were people in 
 like position in the early part of this century. And perhaps 
 the poorest boy in a large town has occasional enjoyments 
 which were beyond the attainment of princes fifty years ago- 
 But the question is not whether shoemakers in regular work 
 to-day are better off than the regularly-employed shoemakers 
 of the past, or whether more bread and groceries a head are 
 consumed per annum now than in the year 1840. The ques- 
 tion is, whether we have at the poorest level of the social 
 strata a class whose struggle for the necessaries of life is as 
 hard and as hopeless as that of the corresponding class in the 
 past ; and whether this class is as large as ever. And more, 
 are we any nearer to a remedy for the ills of the very poor ? 
 do we know any better how to prevent the existence of masses 
 of dense poverty ? 
 
 * Progress and Poverty : An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions, 
 and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth. The Remedy. By Henry 
 George. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1882^
 
 4 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 As to the probable numbers and poverty of our very poor 
 we cannot consult a more hard-headed and reliable authority 
 than Professor Fawcett. In 1871, when Free Trade and 
 kindred forces had received at least as fair a trial as since, 
 and had provided their arrays of statistics startling enough to 
 silence the most querulous grumblers, Professor Fawcett wrote 
 as follows* : — 
 
 We are accustomed to hear much boasting about the vast wealth 
 of England. We are told that our exports and imports are rapidly 
 increasing ; glowing descriptions are given of our Empire, upon which 
 the sun never sets, and of a commerce which extends over the world. 
 Our mercantile marine is ever increasing ; manufactories are 
 augmenting in number and in magnitude. All the evidences of 
 growing luxury are around us ; there are more splendid equipages 
 in the parks, and the style of living is each year becoming more 
 sumptuous. This is one side of the picture ; and if we look upon it 
 and close our eyes to other sights, and close our ears to other sounds 
 that are around us, we might fold ourselves in the mantle of self- 
 complacency, and repeat the platitudes so often uttered, that nothing 
 can exceed the happiness and prosperity of England. But let us 
 look on another side of the picture, and what do we then observe? 
 Side by side with this vast wealth, closely contiguous to all this 
 sinful luxury, there stalks the fearful spectre of wild-spread poverty 
 and of growing pauperism ! Visit the great centres of our commerce 
 and trade, and what will be observed ? The direst poverty always 
 accompanying the greatest wealth, . . . Official returns show 
 that in London there are never less than 125,000 paupers, and that 
 as each winter recurs the number rises to 170,000. There is 
 abundant reason to conclude that a number at least equally large are 
 just on the verge of pauperism, often struggling with admirable 
 resolution to obtain their own livelihood, and frequently suffering 
 far more than is endured by the recipient of parochial relief But 
 it is not only in our large towns that this wide-spread poverty is to 
 be observed ; the condition of the rural population is scarcely more 
 satisfactory. t . . . How comes it that the augmented produce 
 
 * Pauperism : its Causes and Remedies. The substance of a course of lectures 
 in the University of Cambridge. Macmillan. 
 
 t If our personal observations do not convince us of the justice of Mr. Faw- 
 cett's sentence as to rural life, we must remember how easily the poor can now 
 move into the towns and swell the ranks of poverty there. 
 
 -UIUC J\ 
 
 \ i
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 5 
 
 is so distributed that the condition of those who till the soil has not 
 only not improved, but has in some cases retrograded ? How, again, 
 does it happen that the greater is the wealth accumulated in our 
 large towns, the deeper seem to be the depths of poverty into which 
 vast multitudes sink ? By an official return just issued, it is shown 
 that there is at the present time (187 1) an annual increase, amounting 
 to ;^io,ooo,ooo, in the export and import trade of this country, 
 Mr. W. J. Fox, who was, perhaps, at one time, the most 
 distinguished orator of the party (Anti-Corn Law League), when 
 addressing a large meeting in Covent Garden Theatre, asserted 
 that the abolition of protection would exterminate pauperism ; and 
 he predicted that in a few years the ruins of the workhouses would 
 mark the extinction of protection. ... If anyone, a quarter of 
 a century since, could have foreseen all that was about to take place ; 
 if he could have known that trade was soon to be trebled ; that rail- 
 ways would be taken to almost every small town in the kingdom, 
 would it not have appeared absolutely incredible that all these favour- 
 able agencies should have produced so little effect that it may now be 
 fairly disputed tvhether the poverty of the poor has been perceptibly' 
 diminished ? There has, no doubt, been an unprecedented accumu- 
 lation of wealth, but this wealth has been unhappily so distributed that 
 the rich have become much richer, whilst the poor have remained as^ 
 poor as they were before. 
 
 This may fairly be taken as the verdict of our most skilled"' 
 inquirer. To say, in the face of such evidence, that the 
 condition of our very poor is progressing surely although^ 
 slowly, is rather stupidity than optimism. An unskilled judge- 
 will more rationally conclude that, slowly but surely, things - 
 are getting worse. 
 
 But, it will be replied, we, at least, see our way to grappling- 
 with the advance of this evil. Those who have depicted these: 
 harrowing facts, and have sympathised most radically with the 
 poor, have also discovered with scientific precision the causes 
 of poverty and its remedy. 
 
 Yes ; we are told by the same authority that the causes are 
 very obvious, and the remedies are simple, though not easy. 
 There is no disputing them. On this point, happily, politicians 
 of both parties are agreed. There is a patriotic concord as to 
 the only means of deliverance from our most distressing and
 
 6 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 alarming ill at home. The remedy is educational and not 
 revolutionary. Thrift and abstinence from improvident and 
 injudicious marriages, &c., will prevent poverty and low wages. 
 Without these any other attempt at remedy will only make 
 the condition or the poorest worse. To encourage hope of 
 alleviation from any other sources in lieu of these is cruelty. 
 The false, mistaken kindness of the Poor-Law and of benevo- 
 lent private effort has hindered people from seeing and learning 
 the natural and inevitable consequences of common human 
 actions. All we can do for the permanent improvement of 
 the pool* is to teach them how to help themselves by conform- 
 ing to the irresistible laws of Nature. 
 
 And so, many who have been most anxious for the enrich- 
 ment of the poor, if necessary even at the expense of the rich, 
 are compelled by sheer common sense to own themselves and 
 all philanthropy and statecraft helpless. Their helplessness 
 has been enormously self-compensating. Their conviction of 
 the impotence of the State, or of money to lift out of their 
 poverty the recurring generations of the very poor has filled 
 them with more pitying inventive many-sided personal zeal. 
 The characteristic of those who have been most prominent and 
 energetic and self-sacrificing of late in attempts to cope with 
 the masses of poverty has been a certain hardness. Hardness 
 has become the religion of philanthropists, and every religion 
 has its phrases which degenerate into cant on the lips of some 
 of its devotees. " No pauperising " has become a second " No 
 Popery " shriek. " Is there a market for you ? " has been the 
 successor of " Are you saved ? " Yet no one who knows them 
 for a moment doubts that there has been a nobility and 
 heroism and tenderness and stern martyr-like self-repression 
 about many who have seemed hard as flint in their dealings 
 with the poor. They have been merciless as the gentlest 
 warrior may be merciless in some dreadful critical battle, upon 
 whigh hangs the fate of unseen homes and unborn babes. 
 And the very voices that have cried alike to kid-gloved alms- 
 givers, whose ready hands were in their well-filled pockets, 
 and to tender-hearted Communists eagerly grasping at the 
 pockets of the State, " Hands off, in the interests of the unborn
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 7 
 
 poor," have been the first to say that the rich may find plenty 
 to do for the poor, in beautifying and refining their homes and 
 haunts, and in sharing with them some of their own most 
 costly privileges. Much energy has been liberated which 
 would have been spent in political agitation had there been 
 any measure to fight for which, like the abolition of the Corn 
 Laws and Protection, promised wide-spread relief to poverty. 
 This energy has had its out-put in varied and blessed channels 
 which might otherwise have never been opened. Such bodies 
 as the Kyrle Society and others, which bring the rich into 
 close contact with the poor, probably number among their 
 most active members men and women who might have been 
 leading Revolutionists, had not the unanswerable science of 
 political economy taught them that nothing great can be 
 hoped for from legislation ; that no new legislative stroke, 
 however revolutionary, can diminish poverty, that the laws of 
 population and supply-and-demand are as unerring as the law 
 of gravitation. We have concluded that patience is a necessity, 
 and have made a virtue of this necessity. The utmost which 
 our intelligence would allow our democratic sympathies to do 
 has been to give a moral, but unasked-for, support to trades- 
 unions, &c. We may have wished that the country would 
 turn its attention to Mill's doctrine about the unearned incre- 
 ment. But we have at the same time felt that this would be 
 of very little use to the poor. For we have seen that, with 
 every increase of their wealth, there must be a fatally dispro- 
 portionate increase in the number of hungry mouths. 
 Practical legislative effort has been forbidden by those dogmas, 
 those unquestionabilities of political economy which have 
 inherited that abandoned air of absolute finality which was 
 once supposed to attach exclusively to the formularies of the 
 clergy. I am not joking or exaggerating. There are hundreds 
 of men, beneath middle-age, of vigour and ability, to whom 
 inaction on behalf of poverty has been intensely painful and 
 yet a solemn duty. If current doctrines have checked nothing 
 else, they have checked hope and thought in the direction of 
 solutions of our problem. From such a point of view there 
 has seemed to educated Englishmen to be an ineradicable
 
 8 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 hopelessness in things themselves. They have seen all that 
 Mr. Mallock has cleverly palmed off upon himself as his con- 
 tribution to a new science ; and more, for the science which 
 has forbidden their hopes has been much more definite and 
 elaborate than any that can possibly group itself around its 
 fragment. 
 
 Mr. Mallock's work* reminds us that it may not be waste 
 of time to emphasize this fact, that the science of political 
 economy has been intensely anti-revolutionary in its bearings. 
 The philosophising radicals whom he would fain deter in their 
 course of destruction really need nothing more deterrent than 
 their own theories supply them with. His book shows no 
 familiarity whatever with the common leading tenets of our 
 English political economists. Had he devoted a single page 
 of his work to a resume of the main principles enunciated by 
 Mill, Fawcett, and Thorold Rogers, he might have spared his 
 efforts to prove the impossibility of universal pecuniary 
 equality ,t and the need of any further ingenuity in this direc- 
 tion ; unless his object is to fortify the hearts of those two 
 splendidly-dressed ladies in the carriage whom he shields 
 from Mr. Bright's wanton shafts. He has mistaken the 
 combination of Radical and political economist in the same 
 man for a proof that political economy is the source of 
 Radicalism. But it is easier and more natural to suppose that 
 the man made political economy his study because, to begin 
 "with, he had democratic sympathies, than that his desire and 
 hopes of ameliorating the condition of the masses sprang from 
 his devotion to political economy, which has hitherto been a 
 revelation of the complex and permanent difficulties presented 
 by Nature to any attempt to alter existing proportions of 
 wealth. Mr. Mallock does not even seem to be aware that 
 political economy has generally been regarded, alike by 
 philanthropists and socialists, as the " dismal science," for- 
 
 * Social Equality : a Short Study in a Missing Science. 
 
 t His book should rather have been entitled, " Pecuniary Equality," or 
 " Economic Equality." A veritable work from his hands on social equality would 
 be most interesting, especially if he broke his convenient silence as to the fact 
 thit he has in Mr. Matthew Arnold a foeman worthier of his peculiar metal than 
 Mr. John Bright.
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 9 
 
 bidding hope in their direction. E.g. — " With regard, how- 
 ever, to voluntary poverty, it will be one main object of these 
 pages to prove that the leniency and want of firmness with 
 which it has been treated may probably be regarded as the 
 most powerful of all the agencies which have produced the 
 widespread distress which afflicts even the most wealthy 
 countries."* 
 
 Philosophic Radicals like Mill and Fawcett have been so 
 anxious for national education, because they have felt that 
 only an educated people could rise to a scientific appreciation 
 of the real difficulties which beset their financial progress. Ill- 
 educated people might imagine that, if the State were to 
 appropriate the land and to distribute the capital of our mil- 
 lionaires, poverty would be annihilated. An educated people 
 will be able to understand economic laws, to see which are 
 laws of Nature, and which, "subject to certain conditions, 
 depend on human will," to see how helpless the State is unless 
 the people who compose it conform to the permanent laws of 
 Nature. 
 
 Let us try to state in a few sentences how the problem of 
 poverty will present itself to a people well enough educated 
 to read Mill and Fawcett. 
 
 These economists teach that wages tend always to a certain 
 minimum rate ; that there is a certain minimum of earnings 
 on less than which people cannot, or will not, live ; and that 
 the natural state of things tends to force the wages of the 
 worst paid labourer down to this minimum. According as this 
 minimum is lowered or raised will the whole scale of wages in 
 a country be lowered or raised ; for the wages of the higher 
 grades of skill are acted upon by the same causes as force up 
 or down the lowest grade. Wages tend down to this minimum 
 rate because population tends to increase as fast as wages will 
 allow. If through any improvement, lessening the cost of 
 common articles, the value of wages is increased, or if emigra- 
 tion raises the wages of those who remain behind, the down- 
 ward tendency will again operate, because population will 
 increase with the increased ease of livelihood. 
 
 * Fawcett, Pauferism, p. 9. .,
 
 10 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 To say the same thing in sHghtly altered language, the rate 
 of wages depends on supply and demand. The Capital oi 
 the Country, or the Wages Fund, furnishes the total wages of 
 that country to the masses of the people. Thus capitalists 
 will have to pay a rate of wages large or small according as 
 the population of the country is so scarce or so plentiful that 
 there is little or much competition against one another on the 
 part of the people for the lump sum of capital at their disposal. 
 But the higher wages are, the more rapidly will population 
 increase, and the increased competition of wage receivers will 
 thus always tend to bring down the rate of wages to the 
 minimum on which the masses of the people can and will 
 subsist. If capitalists were to pay a higher rate of wages than 
 that fixed by the inter-action of supply and demand, they 
 would increase the difficulties of a future day, for they would 
 enable population to outstrip its natural limits. And this is 
 the effect on a smaller scale of all alms-giving to the poon 
 and of a lenient Poor-Lavv. And so much more are Commu- 
 nistic schemes forbidden by the facts of life. 
 
 Thus have our scientific political economists stated the 
 causes which impede the progress of the poorest classes. They 
 have elaborated and enforced this main thought with pages of 
 arguments and facts which are eloquently and sim.ply set forth 
 in such chapters as those of Mill on " The Law of the Increase 
 and Production from Land" (Book I., 12, 13), and those on 
 wages (Book II., 11 — 13). To sum up the case in a motto 
 from Mr. Mill, which Mr. Mallock might have taken for the 
 hatband of his newly-dressed scare-crow, " The niggardliness 
 of Nature, not the injustice of society, is the cause of the 
 penalty attached to over-population." (I. 13, ii.) 
 
 To shirk the acknowledgment of, or to be sceptical about, 
 these iron conditions which environ poverty, has hitherto been 
 condemned as rank ignorance or criminal folly by the very 
 men who have often been regarded by society as dangerous 
 democratic doctrinaires. At the same time, the force of these 
 ideas has silently seized the minds of all people sufficiently 
 educated to entertain abstract questions, and an unmentioned
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY ii 
 
 Malthusianism dominates the thought of our most Conserva- 
 tive Poor-Law reformers and charity organisationists. 
 
 I have dwelt thus lengthily on the condition of dominant 
 economic thought in England, because only those who realise 
 the air of finality which prevails on this subject can appreciate 
 the enormous importance of Mr. George's Progtess and 
 Poverty as a new contribution to the [science of political 
 economy. The kind of sacred obligation which attaches, in 
 the minds of our most serious and sober social reformers, to 
 the principles I have quoted, accounts, I suppose, for the 
 silence that has been accorded to the book, and has kept 
 most English readers unaware that there has been circulating 
 in our libraries for some two or three years a well-sustained 
 impeachment of the main current principles of political 
 economy. Only a skilled economist is capable of dealing 
 adequately with the chain of Mr. George's argument. The 
 damaging effect upon the influence of our economic writers 
 which has ensued from their blank silence is very dangerous 
 and lamentable.* They, beyond most men, have been trusted 
 by thoughtful people as are pilots who know the shape and 
 character of shoals in unsound depths. We expected them 
 at least to speak, if other guides, so evidently competent as 
 Mr. George shows himself, declared their old warnings to be 
 hocus pocus.t It is the specialists who must thoroughly sift 
 Mr. George's complicated attacks upon their life-work. I can 
 only lay before my readers the leading conclusions he has 
 arrived at, and the bearing they have upon popular thought, 
 political and social. I would premise, however, that the book 
 is, of its kind, unusually easy reading, that it is worthy at 
 
 * A hundred thousand copies have been sold in America, the cheapest edition 
 there being 2s. Since the sixpenny edition appeared in England, in September, 
 about 20,000 copies have been sold (November). 
 
 t Professor Fawcett has lately mentioned Mr. George by name, but not the 
 characteristics differentiating his work from the political economy of his own 
 school. M. E. de Laveleye has an article on " Progress and Poverty" in the 
 Contemporary Review, November, 1882. He agrees in his main conclusions with 
 Mr. George, but his article fails to thoroughly grapple with the book by its 
 omission to notice Mr. George's account of industrial depressions.
 
 12 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 once of a poet and a man of science, full of observant detail, 
 and chastened, honest emotion, which we may suppose are 
 due to the writer's original artisanship, and that nothing I say 
 about it can give a fair account of the unity and force of the 
 work as a whole. 
 
 Mr. George opens with a statement, touching beyond 
 description, of the problem which I preferred to couch in the 
 language of Professor Fawcett, in order to show that the 
 opposing parties are agreed as to the actually existing con- 
 comitance of " Progress and Poverty," and of " Increase of 
 Want with Increase of Wealth," and because the verdict of 
 Professor Fawcett as to the facts will be accepted by English- 
 men who might be indisposed to accept the statement of an 
 American. 
 
 The great fact that poverty and all its concomitants show them- 
 selves in communities just as they develop into the conditions 
 towards which material progress tends, proves that the social diffi- 
 culties existing wherever a certain stage of progress has been reached, 
 do not arise from local circumstances, but are in some way or another 
 engendered by progress itself. 
 
 The new forces, elevating in their nature though they be, do not 
 act upon the social fabric from underneath, as was for a long time 
 hoped and believed, but strike it at a point intermediate between top 
 and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were being forced, 
 not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above 
 the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are 
 crushed down " (Progress and Poverty^ " The Problem "). 
 
 All agree then in asking, " Why, in spite of increase of pro- 
 ductivc power, do ivages tend to a miniimnn zvhick ivill give but 
 a bare living?'' But in his reply, Mr. George flings himself 
 into direct conflict with those current statements which I 
 have enumerated. He denies that wages are drawn from 
 capital. 
 
 If it be true that wages depend upon the ratio between the amount 
 of labour seeking employment, and the capital devoted to its employ- 
 ment, then high wages (the mark of the relative scarcity of labour) 
 must be accompanied by low interest (the mark of the relative 
 abundance of capital), and, reversely, low wages must be accom- 
 panied by high interest. This is not the fact, but the contrary.
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 13 
 
 Eliminating from interest the element of insurance,* and regarding 
 only interest proper or the return for the use of capital, is it not true 
 that interest is high where and when wages are high, and low where 
 and when wages are low? Both wages and interest have been 
 "higher in the United States than in England (I., 2). 
 
 The counter proposition which Mr. George lays down as to 
 the source of wages is, " That wages, instead of being drawn 
 from capital, are in reality drawn from the product of the labour 
 from zvJiicJi they are paid!' On the face of it this seems very 
 absurd. Cannot everyone see that the capitalist pays the 
 wages of his employes long before the goods they have made 
 are sold ? Yes, but to think accurately on economic processes 
 it is an universal axiom that we must put out of the mind, as 
 much as possible, the thought of money — mere counters in 
 the process of exchange — and set our minds exclusively on 
 the wealth which money represents. Mr. George contends 
 that before the Saturday night, when wages are paid, the 
 labourers have presented the capitalist with his goods as they 
 existed at the commencement of the week augmented in value 
 by the week's labour expended upon them. His capital on 
 Monday was worth ;^i,000, and on Saturday it is p^i,ooo 
 plus the value added by the week's work ; and he receives 
 this before he pays the wages. It has been more convenient 
 to him not to have sold the goods during the week. Had he 
 done so and received on Saturday night their money's worth 
 before he paid the wages, it would have been evident to him 
 that he received the capital at the hands of the labourers 
 before he paid them their wages out of it. And so Mr. 
 George asks, " As in the exchange of labour for wages the 
 employer always gets the capital created by the labour before- 
 he pays out capital in the wages, at what point is his capital 
 lessened even temporarily ?'M The current theory that wages 
 are drawn from capital finds its most plausible shelter in the 
 case of agricultural work. But if readers have followed me 
 so far, they will understand Mr. George's meaning when he 
 
 • This elimination is especially necessary in the case of India, which may be quoted as a 
 glarin-,' exception to Mr. Georsje's rule. And allowance must be made for low productiveness 
 &nd other considerations in estimating the low wages of India. 
 
 t Book I., chap. 3.
 
 14 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 asserts that the farmer before he pays on Saturday night has 
 got an inereased amount of money's worth in his land. It is 
 not the custom that farms should change hands except at 
 stated seasons. If it were, and valuation were made on any 
 Saturday, any farm would fetch so much more than its holder 
 gave for it on the previous Monday, and he could get this 
 increased amount before he paid the wages ; in which case 
 it would be evident that the labourers had advanced some- 
 thing to him, and not he to the labourers. Mr. George does 
 not question that capital is a valuable auxiliary to labour. I 
 must ask my readers' patience when I say that his book indeed 
 claims to be written in the interests of capital. What he does 
 deny is that wages are drawn from anything more solid than, 
 or over and above, the product of the labour which created 
 them and something else into the bargain. In simple primitive 
 cases the truth is evident. If a labourer devotes himself to 
 gathering berries, and is paid at the end of the week a certain 
 share of the berries, no one would say that he was paid out 
 of capital existing beforehand. 
 
 Capital has never to be set aside for the payment of wages when 
 the produce of the labour for which the wages are paid is exchanged 
 as soon as produced ; it is only required when the produce is stored 
 up, or what is to the individual the same thing, placed in the general 
 current of exchanges without being at once drawn against — that is, 
 sold on credit. But the capital thus required is not required for 
 the payment of wages, nor for advances to labour, as it is always 
 represented in the produce of the labour. It is never as an employer 
 of labour that any producer needs capital ; when he does need 
 capital, it is because he is not only an employer of labour, but a 
 merchant and speculator in, or an accumulator of, the products of 
 labour. This is generally the case with employers (I., 3). 
 
 Readers must see for themselves how Mr. George, alike 
 from simpler and complex instances, elaborately illustrates 
 and fortifies this conclusion, that — 
 
 If each labourer in performing the labour really creates the fund 
 from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot be diminished 
 by the increase of labourers, but, on the contrary, as the efficiency
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 15 
 
 of labour manifestly increases with the number of labourers, the 
 more labourers, other things being equal, the higher should wages 
 be (L, 5). 
 
 It is manifest that if Mr. George be right, our problem is 
 not so eternally hopeless as it would otherwise seem to those 
 who cannot anticipate any popular submission to Malthusian 
 conduct. Our author next confronts these Malthusian 
 theories to which he has been led by the proviso, "other things 
 being equal" in his last sentence. It was the doctrine of the 
 Rev. Mr. Malthus, and political economists ever since have, 
 ■with varying modifications, accepted the doctrine, that, to use 
 the words of Mr. Mill* : 
 
 " After a certain, and not very advanced, stage in the pro- 
 gress of agriculture, it is the law of production from the land 
 that, in any given state of agricultural skill and knowledge, 
 by increasing the labour the produce is not increased in an 
 equal degree ; doubling the labour does not double the produce ; 
 or, to express the same thing in other words, every increase of 
 produce is obtained by a more than proportional increase in 
 the application of labour to the land." And this law applies 
 not only to agriculture t : — " All natural agents which are 
 limited in quantity . . . yield to any additional demands 
 on progressively harder terms. A greater number of people 
 cannot, in any given state of civilistaion, be collectively so well 
 provided for as a smaller. The niggardliness of Nature, not 
 the injustice of society, is the cause of the penalty attached to 
 over-population." % 
 
 Thus the increasing population of any country have not 
 only to compete against one another for wages, but have to 
 buy all their food, tools, and clothing at an increasing cost of 
 production as soon as improvements in production cease to 
 multiply in proportion to the increased difficulty in acquiring 
 the increased demand for raw material. Righteously, then, 
 did Mill pen that famous note about the squires and clergy. 
 Patriotic is the bishop of that once famine-smitten diocese of 
 factory-hands, if, as is reported, he punishes the curates who 
 marry. But what says Mr. George ? 
 
 * Political Econo77iy, I., 12, ii. t lb. I., 12, iii. X lb. I., 13, ii.
 
 i6 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 He first examines — too lengthily for quotation — the in- 
 ferences from the facts of various countries, boldly selecting; 
 India, China, and Ireland, in behalf of whose populations, 
 ravaged with chronic hunger, Malthusians have pathetically 
 besought the world to suppress its prejudices. Mr. George's 
 reply with regard to India is well worth reading, if it be only 
 as a piece of nervous and persuasive English. The misrule of 
 man, not the superabundance of population, is the cause to 
 which he traces recurring famine. 
 
 As to Ireland, he has a like account to give. After de- 
 scribing the conditions under which tenants have worked, he 
 goes on : 
 
 But even under these conditions it is a matter of fact that Ireland 
 did more than support eight millions. For when her population was 
 at the highest, Ireland was a food exporting country. Even during 
 the famine, grain and meat and butter and cheese were carted for ex- 
 portation along roads lined with starving, and past trenches into 
 which the dead were piled. For these exports of food, or at least 
 for a great part of them, there was no return. So far as the people 
 of Ireland were concerned, the food thus exported might as well have 
 been burnt up or thrown into the sea, or never produced. It went 
 not as an exchange, but as a tribute — to pay the rent of absentee 
 landlords (II., 2). 
 
 Examining the inferences from analogy in support of the 
 Malthusian theory, Mr. George elicits as the real law of popu- 
 lation — not that population will always increase with in^ 
 creased abundance, but that a contrary tendency will set in. 
 "Give more food, open fuller conditions of life, and the 
 vegetable or animal can but multiply ; the man will develop.'* 
 
 That besides the positive and prudential checks of Malthus there 
 is a third check which comes into play with the elevation of the 
 standard of comfort and the development of the intellect, is pointed 
 to by many well-known facts. The proportion of births is notoriously 
 greater in new settlements, where the struggle with Nature leaves 
 little opportunity for intellectual life, and among the poverty-bound 
 classes of older countries, who in the midst of wealth are deprived of 
 all its advantages and reduced to all but an animal existence, than it
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 17 
 
 is among the classes to whom the increase of wealth has brought 
 independence, leisure, comfort, and a fuller and more varied life 
 (11-, 3). 
 
 He does injustice here in ignoring the fact that Mill and 
 others have propounded as a possible remedy for the tendency 
 to over-population extensive emigration — schemes which, by 
 suddenly raising the " standard of comfort " amongst a popu- 
 lation, and by giving them experience of a better condition, 
 will make them less likely to throw away their new comforts 
 by imprudent over-populating. And Malthusians may answer 
 that, if these conditions which Mr. George apprehends come 
 into operation, of course, the evil they forebode will be averted 
 in the way they recommend and desiderate. So it is necessary 
 for Mr. George to advance a " disproof of the Malthusian 
 theory ;" and to this he applies himself. 
 
 The question of fact into which this issue resolves itself is not iri 
 what stage of population is most subsistence produced? but in what 
 stage of population is there exhibited the greatest power of producing 
 wealth ? For the power of producing wealth in any form is the power 
 of producing subsistence — and the consumption of wealth in any 
 form, or of wealth-producing power, is equivalent to the consumption 
 of subsistence. ... If I keep a footman I take a possible 
 ploughman from the plough (IL, 4). 
 
 "Does the relative power of producing wealth decrease with 
 the increase of population ? " The question is declared to be 
 one of fact, and not for abstract reasoning. 
 
 That the production of wealth must, in proportion to the labour 
 employed, be greater in a densely populated country like England 
 than in new countries, where wages and interests are higher, is 
 evident from the fact that, though a much smaller proportion of the 
 population is engaged in productive labour, a much larger surplus is 
 available for other purposes than that of supplying physical needs. 
 In a new country the whole available force of the community is 
 devoted to production — there is no well man who does not do pro- 
 ductive work of some kind, no well woman exempt from household 
 tasks. There are no paupers, no beggars, no idle rich, no class 
 whose labour is devoted to ministering to the convenience or capric e 
 of the rich, no purely literary or scientific class, no criminal class who
 
 1 8 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 live by preying upon society, no large class maintained to guard 
 society against them. Yet with the whole force of the community 
 thus devoted to production, no such consumption of wealth in pro- 
 portion to the whole population takes place, or can be afforded, as 
 goes on in the old country ; for, though the condition of the lowest 
 class is better, and there is no one who cannot get a living, there is 
 no one who gets much more — few or none who can live in anything 
 like what would be called luxury or comfort in the older country. 
 That is to say, in the older country the consumption of wealth in 
 proportion to population is greater, although the proportion of 
 labour devoted to the production of wealth is less — or that 
 fewer labourers produce more wealth ; for wealth must be produced 
 before it can be consumed (IL, 4). 
 
 Indeed, we should not be engaged in this inquiry, which 
 occupies the attention of Malthusians as keenly as that of Mr. 
 George, were it not for this very fact, that " want appears' 
 where productive power is greatest and the production of 
 wealth is largest." 
 
 It is intensely interesting to speculate as to what answer 
 Mr. Fawcett will make when his silence is broken, or he has 
 unravelled Mr. George's tangled skeins of argument. It is 
 open to a student of Mill to anticipate that all Mr. George 
 alleges is true, on the Malthusian theory of any old country, 
 such as that which Mr. George antithesises to a new colony, 
 until the old country has reached that " Stationary State " 
 (Mill, Political Economy, IV., 6), in which the increase and 
 improvement of productive arts and sciences have ceased to 
 keep pace with the increased pressure of population, and 
 capital and population have ceased to overflow into new- 
 countries. But our author might fairly ask the objector to 
 point to such a country, or the likelihood of any such prospect. 
 
 Of course Mr. George, in his anti-Malthusian ardour, is not 
 foolish enough to question that often it may be poverty-pro- 
 ducing for a particular individual to have a large family. 
 Nor, in questioning the possibility, does he deny the conceiva- 
 bility of this globe being over-populated. What he does deny 
 is — the very plausible induction of a Malthusianising law ot
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 19 
 
 population from the frequently observed fact that an individual 
 impoverishes himself by improvidence in marriage, or the de- 
 duction of such a law from the admitted conceivability that 
 on the surface of a globe thickly populated the abstract theory 
 of Malthus would be realised. 
 
 Mr. George claims, then, to have discovered, in his Inves- 
 tigation into the source of wages and the Malthusian theory — 
 
 That the cause which, in spite of the enormous increase of pro- 
 ductive power, confines the great body of producers to the least share 
 of the product upon which they will consent to live, is not the limita- 
 tion of capital, nor yet the limitation of the powers of Nature, which 
 respond to labour. As it is not, therefore, to be found in the laws 
 which bound the production of wealth, it must be sought in the laws 
 which govern distribution. 
 
 At this point it is cheering to one who, like myself, has had 
 all his old schooling in political economy exposed as absurd, 
 to be told that there is one great law laid down by the stan- 
 dard political economists which he has not to unlearn. And 
 the law as to which there is this relieving concord is an im- 
 portant one. In the words of Mill — " It is one of the cardinal 
 doctrines of Political Economy, and until it was understood 
 no consistent explanation could be given of many of the more 
 complicated industrial phenomena." It is the law of Rent, 
 and is stated as follows by Mill — "The rent which any land 
 will yield is the excess of its produce beyond what would be 
 returned to the same capital if employed on the worst land in 
 cultivation."* Or, in Mr. George's almost identical terms — 
 " The rent of land is determined by the excess of its produce 
 over that which the same application can secure from the 
 least productive land in use." Anyone unfamiliar with this 
 law will see its truth when stated in this slightly shifted form 
 — " The ownership of a natural agent of production will give 
 the power of appropriating so much of the wealth produced 
 by the exertion of labour and capital upon it as exceeds the 
 return which the same application of labour and capital could 
 secure in the least productive occupation in which they freely 
 engage" (III., 2). 
 
 * Political EiOJtoiny, 11., i6, iii.
 
 20 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 The produce of any piece of land has to be divided into 
 Rent, Return to the Farmer for his own labour and capital, 
 and Wages. Or, classing the reward of the farmer, qua farmer, 
 for his labour of superintendence, as wages of superintendence, 
 and calling the return to his capital interest ; Produce = Rent 
 + Wages + Interest ; or. Wages + Interest = Produce - Rent. 
 
 Thus wages and interest do not depend upon the produce of 
 labour and capital, but upon what is left after rent is taken out ; or 
 upon the produce which they could obtain without paying rent — that 
 is, from the poorest land in cultivation. And hence, no matter what 
 be the increase in productive power, if the increase in rent keeps 
 pace with it, neither wages nor interest can increase (III., 2). 
 
 Mr. George proceeds on the same lines to gather the law 
 regulating wages. In a new colony it is evident that a man's 
 wages will be what he can earn by working for himself on 
 land for which he has to pay no rent. Anyone who employs 
 labour will have to pay the equivalent of what a labourer can 
 earn for himself on land as yet unappropriated ; otherwise as 
 long as there was land unappropriated he would get no one to 
 work for him. At first, then, in such a new colony, wages are 
 very high. But as fast as the better land is appropriated, and 
 people who work for themselves have to work on inferior 
 lands, the rate of wages will fall to the amount that can be 
 earned on those inferior lands. Thus,, according to the law 
 by which rent rises to a greater and greater share of the pro- 
 duce as a country is more and more thickly populated, and 
 there is less and less unappropriated land, wages at the same 
 time fall in rate to a smaller and smaller share in the produce, 
 because the amount which a labourer can earn for himself by 
 leaving his master and working at unappropriated land or 
 natural resources is becoming less and less. 
 
 And if this be true, the rate of all wages will gradually fall 
 as there is less and less opening for labourers on non-rent- 
 producing land. For employers of all kinds of unskilled 
 Labour will only have to give the same wages, or a shade more, 
 than men can earn for themselves on the as yet unappropriated 
 land. And the various kinds of employers of skilled labour 
 in all its ascending grades will only have to give each so many
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 21 
 
 shades more than can be got on this best unappropriated 
 land. Thus, in proportion as the best unappropriated land 
 to which recourse can be had is of a lower and lower produc- 
 tiveness, the wages of all kinds of labour, skill, and superin- 
 tendence will fall. And we get as the universal law of wages 
 that " Wages depend upon the margin of prodiictio7i^ or upon the 
 produce which labour can obtain at the Jiighest point of natural 
 productiveness open to it without the payment of rent." 
 
 The plausible, and at first sight unquestionable, dictum, that 
 the rate of wages depends on supply and demand is only true 
 of each separate kind of labour. The wages of shoemakers, 
 or jewellers, or clerks, will, of course, depend on the supply 
 and demand in their respective occupations. But beneath the 
 temporary causes regulating the relative values of wages of 
 clerks, &c., as compared with jewellers, &c., is the common 
 permanent cause operating on the rates of wages in ^//occupa- 
 tions, and raising all or lowering all according to the rate that 
 prevails for the lowest stratum, Mr. George asserts that to 
 speak of supply and demand as a law covering the whole 
 question of wages is an absurdity in terms. For " supply " is 
 seen to be the same thing as " demand," when each is logically 
 traced to the material which it stands for. The " supply " of 
 the universe is the whole labour of mankind ; and the demand 
 of the universe is what collective mankind possesses to offer 
 in return for supply — viz., the whole labour of mankind. And 
 so to talk of universal over-production, universal over-con- 
 sumption, or over-population (short of an over-crowded globe) 
 are absurdities in phraseology. 
 
 Having shown the effect upon wages and rent of the increased 
 influx of population as long as there is land to be had in a 
 new country, Mr. George proceeds to examine what effect 
 material progress, the increase of population and of improve- 
 ments in the productive arts, will have. 
 
 Improvements in the arts of production will counteract the 
 tendency of wages to sink beneath the cause which we have 
 just found to be in universal operation. Like increase in 
 population, these improvements will also add to the amount
 
 22 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 of production which goes to rent ; for all productions above 
 what is yielded by land at the margin of lowest cultivation 
 will still go to rent. However much the productiveness of a 
 factory, a shop, or a field may be increased by improved 
 methods of production, the owner of the bit of land will be 
 able to subtract from the produce raised on his ground, be it 
 in a factory, a shop, or a field, all that is produced beyond 
 what could have been produced on an equal bit of the poorest 
 land in cultivation, or the most inconvenient site eligible. The 
 greater the improvements the more will rents rise. And as 
 Wages + Interest = Produce- Rent, Wages and Interest may 
 well be low, as they are in an old and wealthy country as 
 compared with a new and undeveloped one. 
 
 But material progress has a still further tendency to increase 
 rent and diminish the comparative return to labour and capital. 
 
 Speculation for land, of course,sets in with material progress. 
 Land of inferior quality, where land is to be had, must be 
 resorted to before certain lands of superior worth are cultivated, 
 because speculators hold back lands from use with a know- 
 ledge of their certain rise in value, and thus the wage-adjust- 
 ing margin of cultivation is forced even lower. Here Mr 
 George's American experience has turned his eyes to facts 
 which will surprise Englishmen, This speculation in land, he 
 concludes, is — 
 
 The force, evolved by material progress, which tends constantly to 
 increase rent in a greater ratio than progress increases production, 
 and thus constantly tends, as material progress goes on, and produc- 
 tive power increases, to reduce wages, not merely relatively, but 
 absolutely. It is this expansive force which, operating with great 
 power in new countries, brings to them, seemingly long before their 
 time, the social diseases of older countries ; produces " tramps " on 
 virgin acres, and breeds paupers on half-tilled soil (IV., 4). 
 
 This brings our author to the cause he assigns for industrial 
 depressions. 
 
 Given a progressive community, in which population is increasing 
 and one improvement succeeds another, and land must constantly 
 increase in value. This steady increase naturally leads to speculation,
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 23: 
 
 in which future increase is anticipated, and land values are carried 
 beyond the point at which, under the existing conditions of produc- 
 tion, their accustomed returns would be left to labour and capital. 
 Production, therefore, begins to stop. Not that there is necessarily, 
 or even probably, an absolute diminution in production, but that 
 there is what in a progressive community would be equivalent to an 
 absolute diminution of production in a stationary community — a 
 failure in production to increase proportionately, owing to the failure 
 of new increments of labour and capital to find employment at the 
 accustomed rates. 
 
 This stoppage of production at some points must necessarily show 
 itself at other points of the industrial network, in a cessation of 
 demand, which would again check production there, and thus the 
 paralysis would communicate itself through all the interlacings of 
 industry and commerce, producing everywhere a partial disjointing 
 of production and exchange, and resulting in the phenomena that 
 seem to show over-production or over-consumption, according to 
 the standpoint from which they are viewed. 
 
 The period of depression thus ensuing would continue until (1) 
 the speculative advance in rents had been lost ; or (2) the increase 
 in the efficiency of labour, owing to the growth of population and 
 the progress of improvement, had enabled the normal rent line to 
 overtake the speculative rent line ; or (3) labour and capital had 
 become reconciled to engaging in production for smaller returns. 
 Or most probably all three of these causes would co-operate to pro- 
 duce a new equilibrium, at which all the forces of production would 
 again engage, and a season of activity ensue ; whereupon rent 
 would begin to advance again, a speculative advance again take 
 place, production be again checked, and the same round be gone 
 over again (V., i). 
 
 Whatever maybe the fate of this newly-propounded account 
 of industrial depressions, it is evident that it has the appear- 
 ance of accounting simply for phenomena which have hitherto 
 been the battle-ground of conflicting theorists, and which, one 
 after another, have been proved untenable by one leading 
 economist or another. General over-production, whilst we 
 all want more than we have. General over-consumption, 
 whilst people are standing idle who would gladly supply con-
 
 24 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 sumers with what they want. Speculation in goods, which is 
 known to have a beneficial equalising effect in its play. Over- 
 population, when crowds of able-bodied men are in need of 
 goods, and are ready to make goods in return for what they 
 need. These incoherent causes dwindle into insignificance and 
 inadequacy as accotinting for depressions compared with the 
 undoubtedly and universally operative force to which Mr 
 George points. 
 
 Thus the cause of industrial depressions, and of increase 
 of want with increase of wealth, is stated to be the private 
 ownership of land. 
 
 Mr. George gives us vivid illustrations of his law in active 
 operation in San Francisco, California, and the United 
 States : — 
 
 The present commercial and industrial depression which first 
 clearly manifested itself in the United States in 1872, and has 
 spread with greater or less intensity over the civilised world, is 
 largely attributed to the undue extension of the railroad system, 
 with which there are many things that seem to show a relation. I 
 am fully conscious that the construction of railroads before they are 
 actually needed may divert capital and labour from more to less pro- 
 ductive employments, and make a community poorer instead of 
 richer ; . . . but to assign to this wasting of capital such a 
 widespread industrial dead-lock seems to me like attributing an 
 unusually low tide to the drawing of a few extra bucketfuls of water. 
 The waste of capital and labour during the civil war was enormously 
 greater than it could possibly be by the construction of unnecessary 
 railroads, but without producing any such results. And certainly 
 there seems to be little sense in talking of the waste of capital and 
 labour in railroads as causing this depression, when the prominent 
 feature of the depression has been the superabundance of capital 
 and labour seeking employment. 
 
 Yet, that there is a connection between the rapid construction of 
 railroads and industrial depression, anyone who understands what 
 increased land values mean, and who has noticed the effect which 
 the construction of railroads has upon land speculation, can easily 
 see. Wherever a railroad was built or projected lands sprang up .in 
 value under the influence of speculation, and thousands of millions 
 of dollars were added to the nominal values which capital and
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 25 
 
 labour were asked to pay outright, or to pay in instalments, as the 
 price of being allowed to go to work and produce wealth. The 
 inevitable result was to check production, and this check to produc- 
 tion propagated itself in a cessation of demand, which checked pro- 
 duction to the furthest verge of the wide circle of exchanges, 
 operating with accumulated force in the centres of the great 
 industrial commonwealth into which commerce links the civilised 
 world (v., 2). 
 
 It is not so easy to trace concrete instances of this law in 
 operation in an old country like ours, with its elaborate 
 industrial development. But we have only to think of the 
 enormous rents in our great cities to see that, if what goes to 
 capital and labour out of their joint production is that pro- 
 duction minus rent, then rent and speculation for rent must 
 have the same effect in England as elsewhere, must lower 
 the rate of wages and diminish the return to capital which 
 otherwise would accrue from material progress until the 
 return to labour and capital is so small that production is 
 checked, and the symptoms of industrial depression ensue. 
 
 Thus Mr. George has led us on step by step to a conclusion 
 startling in its simplicity. I can see no flaw in his process. 
 The facts tally with one another. They must be summarised 
 in Mr. George's own words : 
 
 The simple theory which I have outlined (if, indeed, it can be 
 called a theory which is but the recognition of the most obvious 
 relations) explains this conjunction of poverty with wealth, of low 
 wages with high productive power, of degradation amid enlighten- 
 ment, of virtual slavery in political liberty. It harmonises, as results 
 flowing from a general and inexorable law, facts otherwise most per- 
 plexing, and exhibits the sequence and relation between phenomena 
 that, without reference to it, are diverse and contradictory. It 
 explains why interest and wages are higher in new than in older 
 communities, though the average, as well as the aggregate, production 
 of wealth is less. It explains why improvements which increase the 
 productive power of labour and capital increase the reward of 
 neither. It explains what is commonly called the conflict between 
 labour and capital, while proving the real harmony of interest 
 between them. It cuts the last inch of ground from under the 
 fallacies of Protection, while showing why Free Trade fails to per-
 
 26 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 manently benefit the working classes. It explains why want increases 
 with abundance, and wealth tends to greater and greater aggregations. 
 It explains the periodically recurring depressions of industry without 
 resource either to the absurdity of " over-production " or the 
 absurdity of "over-consumption." It explains the enforced idleness 
 of numbers of would-be producers, which wastes the productive force 
 of advanced communities, without the absurd assumption that there 
 is too little work to do, or that there are too many to do it. It 
 explains the ill effects upon the labouring classes which often follow 
 upon the introduction of machinery, without denying the natural 
 advantages which the use of machinery gives. It explains the vice 
 and misery which show themselves amid dense population, without 
 attributing to the laws of the All-Wise and All-Beneficent defects 
 which belong only to the short-sighted and selfish enactment of 
 men"(V., 2). 
 
 Private ownership in land, then, stands condemned, unless 
 Mr. George's account of low wages and industrial depressions 
 can be disproved. And this condemnation of private owner- 
 . ship has a totally different basis from the many that have 
 been often advanced previously. Hitherto, educated people 
 in England, though perhaps not on the Continent, have 
 generally felt that the various schemes for the extrusion of 
 cur present landowners have been as questionable in expe- 
 diency as in justice, and that their possible alleviation of our 
 present evils was small and unpromising compared with the 
 risks entailed. But if Mr. George's political economy be 
 correct, it becomes a public cruelty and wickedness to allow 
 private ownership to continue unmitigated as at present. And 
 the paramount problem is as to how the required change is to 
 be effected. 
 
 Mr. George's proposed remedy is as simple in appearance as 
 his demonstration of the evil. He would not have the State 
 extrude a single landowner. He would throw all taxes on 
 ground rent.* Thus land, having lost its rent-producing value 
 for private owners, would cease to be the subject of specula- 
 tion as at present, and the common cause of industrial depres- 
 
 * He carefully distinguishes between ground rent and interest on improve- 
 ments, which is not to be taxed ; for, unlike ground rent, it is produced by effort 
 or labour.
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 27 
 
 sion would no longer exist. Capital and labour would be 
 relieved of their present load of taxation, every penny of which, 
 as Mr. Fawcett told his hearers the other day, presses indi- 
 rectly on the denizen of the dingiest garret. There would be 
 no new expense of collection ; no wasteful State management 
 of landed property ; no positive need for people who use land 
 productively, or who are rich enough to indulge in the enjoy- 
 ments of large landownership, to give up any of their domains. 
 Improvements would not be impeded as at present, for the 
 tax would be confined to ground rent, which valuers can 
 approximately eliminate from the total value of the land to 
 its owner. And even if there were some risk that improve- 
 ments would not escape taxation, they would not be taxed in 
 so many ways as at present. 
 
 I have here dealt with less than the first three-fifths of our 
 author's volume. The remainder, which space forbids me to 
 notice now, deals with the justice of his proposals and their 
 probable economic and social effects. As to these chapters, 
 M. E. de Laveleye's words will be more telling than any of 
 my own. 
 
 " I can but unreservedly approve the elevated views of the 
 future in store for modern society which terminate Mr. George's 
 book. I also believe that if Democracy do not succeed in 
 effecting a more equitable distribution of property and of the 
 produce of men's labour, it will perish amid corruption and 
 anarchy, and finally end in Caesarism. The picture which the 
 author draws of the vices which growing inequality is 
 developing in the noble institutions of America is really 
 fearful, and, I suspect, not in the least exaggerated."* 
 
 It only remains for me now to point out how the propo- 
 sitions of our author, granted their economic provability, are 
 likely to strike a public at present strongly under the 
 dominion of the views I have enlarged upon in the earlier part 
 of this paper. 
 
 * Co7iicmtorarv Review ^ November, 1S82.
 
 28 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 I speak of the probable effect upon educated people in all classes. 
 I do not allude to the appeal which may be made to the greed 
 of the masses, nor do I attempt to estimate the effect the book 
 will have upon people who, if intelligent enough to read it, are 
 yet sufficiently ill-educated or fanatical to lump together all the 
 wide-spread craving for social change as motived by jealousy 
 of the rich. The direct appeal to the masses will be nothing 
 more than has been made by others chemes ; indeed, it will be 
 less forcible, for the masses will be slow to sympathise with 
 Mr. George's regard for capital. At present, Democracy in 
 England trusts its Parliamentary and political leaders. Till 
 they are won, no scheme at present has any chance of success. 
 
 The kind of appeal inherent in this new political economy 
 is one which will have as much cogency with educated and 
 patriotic landowners as with other kindred minds. 
 
 I. A dead weight will be lifted off the hopes of all who 
 have hitherto turned away from politics, because economic 
 science has compelled them to see that whatever the State 
 may imagine, she can no more relieve the burdens of poverty 
 than she can stop people from marrying. A great amount of 
 hope, enthusiasm, and intelligence will be set free, and will 
 turn aside for a time from their exclusive devotion to slower 
 personal methods of helping the poor towards this rift in the 
 clouds of pessimism and hopelessness. If there is anything in 
 this discovery it is the discovery of a new Cobden, and it will 
 call forth such political energy as has had no object or mani- 
 festation since someone found out that Protection made every 
 mouthful of the poor man's food harder to get, and Cobden 
 and his friends gave tongue to the discovery. There is even 
 an element in this new discovery which will fire the imagina- 
 tion of philanthropists far more than did the Anti-Corn Law 
 Agitation. It was cruel enough to maintain laws which made 
 every mouthful of food dearer. But it is an aggravation of 
 this cruelty to maintain a state of things which has not only 
 kept back from the poorest classes of the nation the fresh 
 food which Free Trade has furnished, but must always leave 
 them and all classes of the community to be tossed backwards
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 29 
 
 and forwards between plenty and poverty by upheavals and 
 depressions, as it were of mother earth herself, which we know 
 must succeed one another, but cannot foresee or avert. The 
 appeal of economic science will be, not any longer as hitherto, 
 in the name of mercy to hold off our hands ; nor will the 
 appeal of the new economic creed be to take something from 
 the rich and give it to the poor, but to cut away the perennial 
 cause of industrial calamity, and to take care that that un- 
 earned increase of wealth, which is the mechanical outcome of 
 increasing population and productiveness, shall no longer be 
 allowed to impoverish labour and capital. The appeal is 
 essentially to the thoughtful. 
 
 2. There is nothing " communistic" in the scheme. It 
 will not interfere with, or seek to check, any natural in- 
 equalities in wealth which flow from inequalities in genius, 
 thrift, or industry. " Social equality " will be as far off as even 
 Mr. Mallock could wish it to be. M. E. de Laveleye's fear 
 seems to be that the relief to taxation would be chiefly advan- 
 tageous to capital. 
 
 3. It is not easy to say who will be most interested in 
 opposing or supporting the reform. Unlike other schemes, 
 this does not affect merely agricultural rent. The landowner 
 with a thousand acres will lose less than many an owner of a 
 little patch of ground in a crowded neighbourhood. The 
 Corn Law Reform was chiefly resisted by " the landed in- 
 terest," and everyone thought that the landowners would be 
 great losers ; but the result has been that rents have increased 
 enormously. The owners of agricultural land, so many of 
 whom have " farms on their hands " at the present time, will 
 all benefit as farmers and capitalists ; and who will deny that 
 in countless instances it would be a happy thing for agri- 
 cultural England, and for themselves, if a greater number of 
 landowners worked their farms themselves, and earned as 
 capitalists what they would lose in rent? This would 
 naturally occur in cases where the tenant-farmer is at present 
 in the shakiest condition, and where it is least desirable for 
 himself or his neighbours that his existence as tenant should
 
 30 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 
 be prolonged. The larger farmers, who are possessed ot 
 capital, would probably become owners instead of tenants, as 
 they would be the chief competitors in the new state of things 
 for any land in the market. Evidently the reasons for resist- 
 ance upon the part of the counties would be much less violent 
 than they were at the time of the Corn Law Repeal. And the 
 forces on the side of the reform in towns would consist of all 
 who are capitalists rather than rent-owners. 
 
 4. If Mr. George's economic arguments be accepted by poli- 
 ticians as sound, it will not follow that they will be acted 
 upon as thoroughly or as speedily as he recommends, even by 
 those who heartily accept them. He will get very few 
 educated English people to act with him upon his conclusion 
 that the nation has a right to claim compensation from the 
 landlords for past wrongs rather than landlords from the 
 nation for the injury done to them by fresh legislation. At 
 the same time, I believe, most people will be surprised to see 
 how much Mr. George can urge, in the name of justice and 
 necessity, against any compensation except to widows and 
 ophans. But a distinguishing characteristic in the application 
 of this new economic theory is that it can be made gradually, 
 without inflicting any of the individual cruelties of sudden 
 revolutions. Taxes will be gradually shifted on to the land if 
 there prevails even a strong suspicion of the economic truth 
 of these new propositions ; and it is not absurd to argue that 
 so the scheme may become law without either compensation 
 or cruelty. 
 
 5. And supposing that the work should be proved to be a 
 tissue of economic fallacies, it is too brilliant a production to 
 be lost sight of rapidly. For a generation to come it will be 
 talked about more than most books, if it be only by English- 
 speaking economists, who will find in it the richest illustra- 
 tions and the most elaborate specimens of the fallacies which 
 economists exist to confute. If it be a failure as an attempt 
 to account for industrial depressions, it will have done at least 
 this service to political economy, that, for good or evil, it will 
 have brought home with unprecedented force to the public
 
 PROGRESS AND POVERTY 31 
 
 mind that law of rent, of which Mills says, " It is one of the 
 cardinal doctrines of political economy," 
 
 I have said enough to call the attention of readers better 
 qualified than myself to the study of Progress and Poverty. 
 Let those who condemn the author for extravagances re- 
 member that, at worst, he has not imposed upon them in 
 the problem, that it exists, and cries to heaven and earth for 
 solution.
 
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 PROGRESS AND POVERTY: 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO 
 
 The Cause of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want 
 with Increase of Wealth ; the Remedy. 
 
 By henry GEORGE. 
 
 WITH REPLY TO ENGLISH CRITICS. 
 
 This remarkable book has already won, both in the United States and in 
 Europe, a greater reputation than was ever before won in the same space of time 
 by a book of the kind. Even those who shrink from its radical conclusions admit 
 the force of its logic and the intense interest of its treatment of vital questions. 
 Conceded to be the most profound and original contribution made for a 
 century to the science of political economy, it is yet pre-eminently a popular 
 work. It is, as one of its critics says, "a book which has been written to be 
 read." The clearness of its reasoning, the ease and beauty of its style, the 
 aptness of its illustrations, its earnestness and candour, and the practical 
 importance of the subject it treats, give it as absorbing an interest to the 
 business or working man as to the philosopher or politician. 
 
 A A'cv Edition will shortly he ready, in ivhich zuill appear Mr, Geor<^es Reply to 
 English Critics, now being specially written. 450 pages. One Shilling. 
 
 One of the cheapest works ever issued. 
 
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 THE CHRJSTIAN^OCIALIST. 
 
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 Can be ordered of all NrMsagcnts, or of the Publisher, 
 
 William Reeves, 185, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
 
 
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