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Land and Liberty: Henry George, the Single Tax Movement, and the Origins of 20Th Century Liberalism

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Land and Liberty: Henry George, the Single Tax Movement, and the Origins of 20Th Century Liberalism Land and Liberty: Henry George, the Single Tax Movement, and the Origins of 20 th Century Liberalism A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In History By Christopher William England, B.A. Washington, DC August 25 th , 2015 Copyright 2015 by Christopher England All Rights Reserved [ii] Land and Liberty: Henry George, the Single Tax Movement, and the Origins of 20 th Century Liberalism Christopher William England, B.A. Dissertation Adviser: Michael Kazin, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In the 1880s, Henry George rose to fame with a series of best-selling books that proposed a social state funded by revenue from a single tax on land. Many historians have described his dramatic race for mayor of New York on a Labor Party ticket in 1886. Few, however, have written about the relationship between George, who died in 1897, and his campaign manager, Tom Johnson, who as Mayor of Cleveland became the nation’s leading proponent of public ownership of utilities during the early 20 th century. Similarly absent from the literature is an appreciation of how Louis Post’s single-tax newspaper, The Public , modernized George’s policies for leading progressive reformers like Brand Whitlock, Newton Baker, William U’Ren, and Frederic C. Howe. Rather than fading after George’s death, the movement had by the 1910s developed a firm basis of power in American cities, where it expanded the Democratic Party’s reach and accrued the political capital to obtain high positions in the Wilson Administration. Its leading members worked to establish important reforms like the Australian ballot, direct legislation, and the income tax. I show that George’s ideas found their home in a cosmopolitan, urban, and transnational middle class. The historiography does not account for the importance of the single tax in British liberalism or the implementation of land value taxation in Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark. The single tax, I argue, was a response to exorbitant premiums charged for space in urban areas. George’s disciples hoped to redistribute the wealth levied in high urban rents. By attaching itself to this sort of universal factor of exchange, the movement garnered both global and cross- class appeal. Furthermore, I show that Georgism was part of the transnational ideology of liberalism. Because classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo had composed the canon of liberal thought with a view toward undermining the moral legitimacy of the landed aristocracy, George had ample precedent to argue that the success of modern capitalism was contingent upon the nationalization of land. George offered a powerful way to incorporate elements of socialism into classical liberalism. [iii] Acknowledgements This project began after I found a reference to the single tax in the preamble to the Constitution of the Knights of Labor and developed a suspicion that it amounted to more than it was remembered for. My adviser, Michael Kazin, encouraged me to pursue this hunch. He also deserves thanks for his diligent efforts to elevate the prose of this text with his extensive edits. Similarly, Joseph McCartin shepherded this work through its earliest phases. By recommending that I consult the papers of Louis Post, he set me on the trail that would define this project. Thanks goes to the final member of my committee, Jennifer Burns, for her perseverance in advising me through both my undergraduate and graduate education. The sons’ of carpenters are not wont to write books and I am distinctly aware that I have had the opportunity in large part because of the assistance of others. To this effect, I would like to thank my undergraduate advisers, Lisa Rubens, Nigel Hatton, and Barry Pateman. Similarly, I would like to thank the institutions that supported me during my research: The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, The Roosevelt Institute, the History of Economics Society, and the Georgetown Scholarship Program. Thanks also goes to all of my friends who either housed me during my research trips or with whom I had importation conversations about my work. An exhaustive list might not be possible, but notable mention goes to: Yyvonne Islas, James Young, David Morar, Pete Pin, Paul Adler, Paul Roge, Mary Cleveland, Jesse Germinario, Patrick Dixon, Joshua Bender, James Benton, Ben Feldman, Marc Halusic, Angela Pullen, Paula Z. Segal, Alan Roe, and Chad Frazier. [iv] Everyone in my family has also played an important role in getting me to the end of this project. From my grandmother, Marietta Cooper, I learned the value of hard work. My mother, Sylvia England, instilled in me the confidence necessary both to pursue a career in history and to take up a difficult project such as this one. My father, Jimmy Cooper, taught me to distrust authority. It was a lesson that proved useful in charting an original course through a discipline that is quite nearly the antithesis of newness. Especial thanks go to my wife, Tameka Porter. For the sake of this project, she endured more hours of a nonresponsive spouse than she ever should have had to. After a long day at the Library of Congress, returning home to her and Kitty revitalized me. She gave me the endurance to persevere through the long course of research and writing necessary for this project. [v] Table of Contents Introduction: Land and Liberty ..................................................................................................................... 1 The Truths of Smith and Proudhon: Liberalism and Republicanism in the Modern Metropolis ................ 23 The Prophet of San Francisco: Henry George and the Evolution of the Free Land Tradition .................... 47 Labor Omnia Vincit: Assembling the Movement ....................................................................................... 89 The Democracy of Henry George: Incremental Reform and Integration into the Democratic Party ....... 128 Seeing the Cat: Modernity, Secular Faith, and The Impact of Single-tax Ideology on Progressivism ..... 154 A Great and Glorious City: The Single Tax and Urban Reform in Ohio.................................................. 187 The Good Ship Earth: The International Progress of the Single Tax........................................................ 247 Justice not Charity: The Fels Fund and the Spread of Land Value Taxation ............................................ 266 The Point of Least Resistance: Land Nationalization in the Wilson Administration ............................... 309 The Will to Believe: The Decline of the Single Tax and the Rise of Regional Planning ......................... 376 Back to the Land: The New Deal, Land Policy, and the Single Tax Movement ...................................... 417 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 472 Appendix A.………………………………………………………………………………...…………....479 Note on Sources ...……………………………………………………………………………………… 483 Bibliography ...……………………………………………………………………………………….….484 Introduction Land and Liberty In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a subscription to the Associated Press (AP) was the only way Western periodicals could provide their readers with timely news from the East Coast. In 1869, Henry George, a self-educated San Francisco newspaper editor, traveled to New York on a mission to break the AP monopoly. He failed. Popular lore, however, was that he did something more significant. Wandering through the city’s slums, he swore to dedicate his life to alleviating poverty. His walks brought him face-to-face with the pathos of urban squalor, but they also sparked, as his son recounted it, an intellectual revelation: This young man, as by a kind of fascination, walked the streets of the great city, thinking how here, at the center of civilization, should be realized the dream of the pioneer – the hard conditions of life softened, and society, preserving the general relations of equality, raised as a mass from the bottom into a state of peace and plenty. How different the view that met his gaze! On every hand he beheld evidences of advancing civilization, but of a civilization that was one- sided; that piled up riches for the few and huddled the many in filth and poverty. 1 Because of the rapid, uneven process of nineteenth-century industrialization, traveling from a provincial city to the metropole seemed like a trip to the future. Such a trip called into question the idea that progress was a concomitant of technological development. As much as George differed Karl Marx, this story speaks to a shared origin story for 19 th century utopianism. George’s experience in New York bore similarities to Charles Fourier’s interactions with Paris or Friedrich Engels’ with Manchester; each of these thinkers had traveled 1 Henry George Jr., The Life of Henry George (New York: Doubleday and McClure Company, 1900), 191. [1] to the metropole only to conclude that the benefits of scientific progress promised by the Enlightenment would not be realized under existing social arrangements.2 However, each of these thinkers would produce their own very different diagnoses for the dilemma that George most aptly named: the paradox of progress and poverty. After a decade of intellectual inquiry inspired by his visit to New York, George concluded that, for the average citizen, all of the material benefits of progress were sacrificed to the high
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