Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
Though the varying strength of the vital forces of nature is thus
brought to uniformity, there may be a difference in the different
stages of social development as to the proportionate extent to
which, in the aggregate production of wealth, these vital forces are
enlisted. But as to this, there are two remarks to be made. In the
first place, although in such a country as England the part taken by
manufactures in the aggregate wealth production has very much increased
as compared with the part taken by agriculture, yet it is to be
noticed that to a very great extent this is true only of the political
or geographical division, and not of the industrial community. For
industrial communities are not limited by political divisions, or
bounded by seas or mountains. They are limited only by the scope of
their exchanges, and the proportion which in the industrial economy of
England agriculture and stock-raising bear to manufactures is averaged
with Iowa and Illinois, with Texas and California, with Canada and
India, with Queensland and the Baltic—in short, with every country to
which the world-wide exchanges of England extend. In the next place,
it is to be remarked that although in the progress of civilization
the tendency is to the relative increase of manufactures, as compared
with agriculture, and consequently to a proportionately less reliance
upon the reproductive forces of nature, yet this is accompanied by a
corresponding extension of exchanges, and hence a greater calling in
of the power of increase which thus arises. So these tendencies, to a
great extent, and, probably, so far as we have yet gone, completely,
balance each other, and preserve the equilibrium which fixes the
average increase of capital, or the normal rate of interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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