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Frederick Jackson Turner continues to receive the credit for developing "the frontier thesis" -- namely, that the availability of land was what Bob Clancy summarised as "the cutting edge of American civilization and determined its democracy, its individualism, its culture."[1]

In fact, the elements of that thesis were laid out by Henry George 10 years before the young historian presented his address to the American Historical Society in 1893.

In 1883, George wrote Social Problems[2]. In this, he spotlighted issues which were not only of relevance in his day, but which would repay study today for the insights they offer into modern social problems.

As a journalist who had roamed the western frontier in search of stories, George acquired a deep appreciation of the interaction between man, his culture and the natural environment. He was to distill some of those insights in Social Problems, including this proposition:

"'All that we are proud of in national life and national character comes primarily from our background of unused land."

It was, he said, "the virtue of new soil, the freedom of opportunity given by the possibility of expansion, that has here transmuted into wholesome human growth material that, had it remained in Europe, might have been degraded and dangerous...".

Turner is credited with chronicling the closing of the frontier. Yet George, in 1893, was already sending out the signals that the frontier was about to be closed: "There is no farther West. Our advance has reached the Pacific, and beyond the Pacific is the East, with its teeming millions."

But it was the genius of George that he was not deceived by appearances. He pointed out that this "closure" was nothing more than legal formality: it did not mean that there was no more land for others to occupy.

All that it meant was that the last tracts were about to be fenced off, with the speculators even then moving north-westward into Canada and southward to Mexico, to seek out the soil on which others would later need to live. He drew the parallels with Europe:

"The social pressure which forces on our shores this swelling tide of immigration arises not from the fact that land of Europe is all in use, but that it is all appropriated. That will soon be our case as well. Our land will not all be used; but it will all be 'fenced in' ".

George understood the social significance of that closure: "And, correlatively, one of the most momentous events that could happen to the modern world would be the ending of this possibility of westward expansion".

He concluded his analysis with this statement: "What I want to point out is that we are very soon to lose one of the most important conditions under which our civilization has been developing -- that possibility of expansion over virgin soil that has given scope and freedom to American life…".

This, then, was the framework waiting for embellishment. And along came Mr. Turner, 22 when George's thesis was published.

Ten years later, the two men were present at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Turner delivered his address entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". George was attending one of the first conferences on the Single Tax.

Turner received the credit for this thesis: but Henry George had planted the intellectual seeds.

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[1] "Now to Make an Endless Frontier", Land and Liberty, July-Aug, 1990, p.62.

[2] Soclal Problems (1883): New York; Robert Schakenbach Foundation, 1981, Ch.3.