.

Nearly forty years ago I walked almost by accident into a public meeting at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon street, London (there is a facsimile of the bill advertising it in Henderson's biography of me) and heard Henry George speak on Land Nationalization. I took it up just as you did and went through all the experiences you describe, in the society called the Fabian Society. I know that kind of life inside and out; and I should be a poor man today if I had not by one chance in several million happened to have the lucrative gift of writing for the theatre.

But the difference between us is that when George turned my attention to the economic root of the evils of our civilization, I had no sooner swallowed Progress and Poverty than I went on to Karl Marx and Proudhon, and finally devoted about four years to the study of abstract economics so as to get my foundations sound for my work as a socialist in devising practicable methods of industrial and political reconstruction. Whilst this was going on George suddenly cast back to the XVIII century and the Impot Unique of old Mirabeau (father of the hero of the French Revolution) and reduced Land Nationalization to the Single Tax. Now Voltaire, in his pamphlet entitled L'Homme aux Quarant Ecus had quite easily smashed Mirabeau; and I had no difficulty in shewing that even if the largest construction was placed on George's propaganda, so as to make his single tax a tax on the rents of capital and ability as well as land, the socialization of these rents by means of the single tax would involve the socialization of industry, for which there was no provision whatever in George's scheme: in fact the Single Tax was advocated by capitalists who opposed Socialism and who saw the advantage to themselves of diverting attention and taxation from their own enormous gains to those of the landlord. Marx's description of land civilization as "capitalism in its last ditch" was not unprovoked.

Except as a stepping stone to Socialism your Single Tax propaganda is waste of time. Your Great Adventure group is nearly a century and a half out of date. George himself was a century late and you don't suppose he stuck there, do you? Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.

Time to Cease Bathing in Ink and "Do, Do, Do!"

Gerrit J. Johnson

[A response to George Bernard Shaw, 6 April, 1918. Reprinted from Everyman, April, 1918]

MY DEAR MR. SHAW :

Replying to yours of March 9th, in which you say that you swallowed Henry George's Progress and Poverty, your experience in the Fabian Society and also your studies of Karl Marx and Proudhon and finally devoted four years to the study of abstract economics, I want to confess to you I have read only a few pages of Progress and Poverty and heard a little about the Fabian Society, Karl Marx and Proudhon. As to your spending four years in the study of abstract economics, why tell that? Why not let bygones be by-gones? To tell you the truth I never suspected it of you.

When I look around and see the finished product of our educational institutions I almost get down on my knees and give thanks for my narrow escape. I might have been born in a rich family. I and my kind are like those on the battle front; we have no time to study, we just aim and shoot.

I look to the right and see miles upon miles of millionaires rows, which is such a wonderful sight to the blind. Then I look to the left and see a flourishing Potters Field, where the sexton told me they had buried ten thousand victims in the last few years. I and my kind don't study; we see and we feel.

The last paragraph of your letter is the most interesting to me. I feel like grasping your hand when you say, "Except as a stepping stone to socialism, your single tax propaganda is a waste of time." I agree with you, only that I hope it may be a step that will lead way beyond the present conceptions of socialism.

In closing you say, "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up." While your good letter was speeding on its way, it was stopped by the censor. Our people in Washington must have taken your remarks seriously. They set time ahead one hour, in order that we may have more light.

The light has gone to our heads, causing the cobwebs to fall. Do you hear that rumbling noise? It is caused by the hundred million brains being set in motion. We will take the cobwebs and use them as a fertilizer from which may spring the most wonderful country that will even surpass your dream.

Again I touch your letter and a feeling of pain comes. I look across the water to the land of Fabian Societies and Karl Marx students. And as I listen I hear groans of agony. They may be the sounds of growing pains or mother pains for the birth of a new humanity.

But right here in California The Great Adventure is working to open the land with the hope of entering a wedge for the world's freedom. Let*s stop bathing in ink and stop our pens, and do, do, do!