ship, and contends that, while the possession of land should be left to the individual, it should be subject to the payment to the community of land values proper, or economic rent. This doctrine, now known as the Single Tax, aims at abolishing all taxes for raising revenues except a tax levied on the value of land irrespective of improvements. He published Our Land and Land Policy (1871); Progress and Poverty (1879); Irish Land Question (1881); Social Problems (1883); Property in Land, a controversy with the Duke of Argyll (1884); Protection or Free Trade (1886); The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII. (1891), and A Perplexed Philosopher (Herbert Spencer) (1892). Mr. (1892). Mr. George visited Great Britain again in 1883-84, 1884-85, and 1889, lecturing on economic questions, particularly that of land ownership, and in 1890 made a similar tour through Australia. In 1886 he was nominated by the United Labor Party as candidate for the Mayoralty of New York, and polled 68,000 votes against 90,000 for his Democratic opponent, and 60,000 for the Republican. The next year he received over 70,000 votes as the same party's candidate for Secretary of State of New York. On the adoption by the Democratic Party in 1888 of a low tariff as a national issue, Mr. George announced that he should, as a free trader, support Mr. Cleveland, and this ended the United Labor Organization, though the propagation of the Single Tax has gone on in quieter ways more actively than ever. In the Presidential campaign of 1892 over a million copies of a very cheap edition of Protection Trade were circulated in the United States, a marked result upon the election. Between W.. U OF ILL LIB. 1887 and 1890 Mr. George published the Standard, a weekly paper, in New York. Lloyd Sanders, in his Celebrities of the Century, says that "the charm of Progress and Poverty lies in the simplicity of its style, and the drastic remedy proposed for an exasperated people. Mr. George," continues this English writer, "maintaining that the 'unearned increment' in rent, as Mill had called it, was rightfully the property of the nation, proposes to 'appropriate rent by taxation,' which he argues would be no injustice, for 'it is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent."" In January, 1897, Mr. George was given four votes for United States Senator by the New York Legislature, and in the following October he was nominated. for mayor of Greater New York by the United Democracy. His death occurred suddenly during the contest for the Mayoralty. THE BASIS OF PROPERTY. What constitutes the rightful basis of property? What is it that enables a man to justly say of a thing, "It is mine?" From what springs the sentiment which acknowledges his exclusive right as against all the world? Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to himself, to the use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his own exertions? Is it not this individual right, which springs from and is testified to by the natural facts of individual organization - the fact that each particular pair of hands obeys a particular brain and are related to a particular stomach; the fact that each man is a definite, coherent, independent whole which alone justifies individual ownership? As a man belongs to himself, so his labor belongs to him. And for this reason, that which a man makes or produces is his own, as against all the world to enjoy or destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong to any one else. Thus there is to everything produced by human exertion a clear and indisputable title to exclusive possession and enjoyment, which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it descends from the original producer, in whom it is vested by natural law. The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer, to whom it was transferred by the importer, who obtained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of purchase, vested the rights of those who dug the material from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus, my exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the natural right of the individual to the use of his own faculties. Now, this is not only the original source from which all ideas of exclusive ownership arise as is evident from the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the manner in which social relations develop - but it is necessarily the only source. There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer, and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself. There can be no other rightful title, because (1st) there is no other natural right from which any other title can be derived, and (2d) because the recognition of any other title is inconsistent with and destructive of this. For (1st) what other right exists from which the right to the exclusive possession of anything can be derived, save the right of a man to himself? With what other power is a man by nature clothed save the power of exerting his own faculties? How can he in any other way act upon or affect material things or other men? Paralyze the motor nerves, and your man has no more external influence or power than a log or stone. From what else, then, can the right of possessing and controlling things be derived? If it spring not from man him |