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
Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same attraction, settles
where there are already two. Another, and another, until around
our first comer there are a score of neighbors. Labor has now an
effectiveness which, in the solitary state, it could not approach.
If heavy work is to be done, the settlers have a log-rolling, and
together accomplish in a day what singly would require years. When
one kills a bullock, the others take part of it, returning when they
kill, and thus they have fresh meat all the time. Together they hire a
schoolmaster, and the children of each are taught for a fractional part
of what similar teaching would have cost the first settler. It becomes
a comparatively easy matter to send to the nearest town, for some one
is always going. But there is less need for such journeys. A blacksmith
and a wheelwright soon set up shops, and our settler can have his tools
repaired for a small part of the labor it formerly cost him. A store
is opened and he can get what he wants as he wants it; a post-office,
soon added, gives him regular communication with the rest of the world.
Then come a cobbler, a carpenter, a harness-maker, a doctor; and a
little church soon arises. Satisfactions become possible that in the
solitary state were impossible. There are gratifications for the social
and the intellectual nature—for that part of the man that rises above
the animal. The power of sympathy, the sense of companionship, the
emulation of comparison and contrast, open a wider, and fuller, and
more varied life. In rejoicing, there are others to rejoice; in sorrow,
the mourners do not mourn alone. There are husking bees, and apple
parings, and quilting parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered and
the orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are yet in the
strain, and Cupid dances with the dancers. At the wedding, there are
others to admire and enjoy; in the house of death, there are watchers;
by the open grave, stands human sympathy to sustain the mourners.
Occasionally, comes a straggling lecturer to open up glimpses of the
world of science, of literature, or of art; in election times, come
stump speakers, and the citizen rises to a sense of dignity and power,
as the cause of empires is tried before him in the struggle of John
Doe and Richard Roe for his support and vote. And, by and by, comes
the circus, talked of months before, and opening to children whose
horizon has been the prairie, all the realms of the imagination—princes
and princesses of fairy tale, mail-clad crusaders and turbaned Moors,
Cinderella’s fairy coach, and the giants of nursery lore; lions such
as crouched before Daniel, or in circling Roman amphitheater tore the
saints of God; ostriches who recall the sandy deserts; camels such
as stood around when the wicked brethren raised Joseph from the well
and sold him into bondage; elephants such as crossed the Alps with
Hannibal, or felt the sword of the Maccabees; and glorious music that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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