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
When in all trades there is what we call scarcity of employment; when,
everywhere, labor wastes, while desire is unsatisfied, must not the
obstacle which prevents labor from producing the wealth it needs, lie
at the foundation of the industrial structure? That foundation is land.
Milliners, optical instrument makers, gilders, and polishers, are
not the pioneers of new settlements. Miners did not go to California
or Australia because shoemakers, tailors, machinists, and printers
were there. But those trades followed the miners, just as they are
now following the gold diggers into the Black Hills and the diamond
diggers into South Africa. It is not the storekeeper who is the cause
of the farmer, but the farmer who brings the storekeeper. It is not
the growth of the city that develops the country, but the development
of the country that makes the city grow. And, hence, when, through
all trades, men willing to work cannot find opportunity to do so, the
difficulty must arise in the employment that creates a demand for all
other employments—it must be because labor is shut out from land.
In Leeds or Lowell, in Philadelphia or Manchester, in London or New
York, it may require a grasp of first principles to see this; but
where industrial development has not become so elaborate, nor the
extreme links of the chain so widely separated, one has but to look
at obvious facts. Although not yet thirty years old, the city of San
Francisco, both in population and in commercial importance, ranks
among the great cities of the world, and, next to New York, is the
most metropolitan of American cities. Though not yet thirty years old,
she has had for some years an increasing number of unemployed men.
Clearly, here, it is because men cannot find employment in the country
that there are so many unemployed in the city; for when the harvest
opens they go trooping out, and when it is over they come trooping
back to the city again. If these now unemployed men were producing
wealth from the land, they would not only be employing themselves, but
would be employing all the mechanics of the city, giving custom to the
storekeepers, trade to the merchants, audiences to the theaters, and
subscribers and advertisements to the newspapers—creating effective
demand that would be felt in New England and Old England, and wherever
throughout the world come the articles that, when they have the means
to pay for them, such a population consumes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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