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Introductory Notes

Edward J. Dodson, March 2005

The origins of this pamphlet and the exchange between the author, J.W. Sullivan, and Henry George are quite interesting. Sullivan was hired by George as "labour editor" and writer for his New York newspaper, The Standard when first established in 1887. In the second year of publication, Henry George embarked on a lecture tour throughout the British Isles and the European continent, turning over the editorship of the paper to his son, Henry George Jr. As his son later recalled: Discord soon began to brew in the chief's absence, and T.L. McCready and J.W. Sullivan, each of whom in his own way had done telling work in the columns of the paper, went outside and published a weekly just started by Hugh O. Pentecost what Mr. George regarded as an attack upon the policy of "The Standard." Mr. McCready did not wait for Mr. George's return to withdraw from "The Standard," but Mr. Sullivan nominally remained and was dismissed. Two months and a half later he published in the Pentecost paper a long article entitled "A Collapse of Henry George's Pretensions," which began with abuse and ended with a charge that "Progress and Poverty" was based upon Patrick Edward Dove's "The Theory of Human Progression." Mr. George would have ignored the article as unworthy of attention had not the charge of plagiarism been extensively noticed in the press and elsewhere. He therefore reprinted the Sullivan article in "The Standard" (October 19,1889), passed over the abuse, and answered the remainder by showing the absurdity of the charge on its face and by pointing out that if similarity of thought and priority of authorship on Dove's part had proved George a plagiarist, then the same reasoning would prove Dove to have copied from Herbert Spencer, who wrote similarly and earlier... [Henry George Jr., Life of Henry George, p.520] Although Henry George's response and the power of his personality made the controversy raised by Sullivan short-lived, the analysis of George's writings by Sullivan is detailed and raises questions for the historian and biographer. Charles A. Barker records in his biography of Henry George (p.537) that George's wife, Annie, commented "that two of her husband's co-workers have proved treacherous..." Barker offers his own conclusion (pp.537-538) regarding Sullivan's motives and the content of this pamphlet: "Sullivan, as an editor of the Standard, identified himself with the Nationalists only so far, he says, as to protest when it seemed to him that Croasdale insulted them needlessly on the editorial page. Why should not the Standard in New York take as generous an attitude toward an American brand of socialism as Henry George in England was taking toward the Fabians? Must the whittling down of Georgism go on forever -- as McGlynn and Pentecost, the Marxian socialists, the Anti-Poverty Society, and the United Labor party editor's questions, as he took leave of the Standard, and of the Georgist movement, for good. His questions had considerable moral force before he weakened his case, as he did after George's return, by issuing an absurd pamphlet, 'Ideo Kleptomania, the Case of Henry George,' in which he set out to prove that Progress and Poverty was a plagiarism from Patrick Dove." Unfortunately, Sullivan proved to be quite accurate about the demise of the movement George's writings and lectures had crystalized. The reasons for this are complex and deserving of serious study. A fuller understanding will be of considerable value to those of us who continue to look to the socio-political principles espoused by George (as well as by his many recognized precursors) and since re-evaluated and refined. As for Sullivan, he continued to play a significant role in the labor movement. One of his main issues was the right of citizens to put issues on the ballot. "He argued that if citizens were entrusted with direct democracy, 'each would consequently acquire education in his role, and develop a lively interest in the public affairs in part under his own management' (quoted in Cronin 1989, 48; see also Donovan and Bowler 1998, 2)". "J.W. Sullivan's publication of Direct Legislation by Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum in 1892 inaugurated the direct democracy movement in the United States. The first state campaign appeared in New Jersey that same year. Although ultimately unsuccessful, reformers learned a number of lessons about publicity and education that they would employ later in other states. They particularly came to rely upon speakers, newspapers, pamphlets, and books to generate grass-roots support."

There is in existence an old book the contents of which are calculated to seriously disturb the peace of mind of even the most tenaciously tried and true Georgeite. Half a dozen men who have lately read it have reached the same conclusions regarding it and George's book. The conclusions are: The doctrines of Henry George are not Henry George's. The framework of "Progress and Poverty" was not of his construction. His argument for the absorption of rent by the public was audaciously appropriated by him. His demonstration of "the law of human progress" is, from caption to conclusion, a mere elaborate paraphrasing of the ideas of a genius who in the exposition of that law was admirably direct and simple.

How have these men come to regard George as a mere converter of old ideas into new forms of expression?

George admits, or rather contends, (page 305, Lovell's edition), that the French physiocrats Quesnay and Turgot proposed just what he proposes, that all taxation should be abolished save a tax upon the value of land. Quesnay, he believes, "arrived at practical truth, though it may be through a course of defectively expressed reasoning." "Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doctrines," he proceeds to say, "I have reached the same practical conclusion by a route which cannot be questioned by the accepted political economy." On page 399 he says: " I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own thought. When, in mind, I set out on it, I had no theory to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for thinking of what caused it and how it could be cured. But out of this inquiry has come to me something I did not seek to find," etc. Here are what, to the lay mind at least, would seem to be positive assertions of originality both for his system of opinions and the course of investigation on which they are based.

"Progress and Poverty," abounding in figures of speech, in fanciful and pathetic allusion, the collectanea of a mind long dwelling on a few leading thoughts, owes much to the poets, but interwoven with its mass of extra scientific writing are certain extraordinary postulates, certain unfamiliar forms of reasoning, and certain startling conclusions. Putting aside illustration, digression, the discussion of collateral issues, and a plenitude of sentimental expression, the gist of the argument may be summarized briefly.

• The statement of the problem: Why in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living?
• The development of the reply that through the monopoly of land its rent tends to advance until laborers' wages are barely sufficient for their subsistence.
• The remedy -- to restore to labor the natural equilibrium in opportunity by taxing away the rent of land and abolishing all other taxation.
• The theory that from such an adjustment human progress, proceeding in harmony with natural laws, will steadily be in the direction of the abolition of poverty, the civilization of the world, the highest moral and intellectual development of all men and the universal recognition of divine truth. See George's own summary in the preface to Lovell's edition.

Without the matter directly pertaining to these major ideas, George's book would be a congeries of notes, formless and incoherent. They are the trunk and branches of the tree. All the rest is twig and leaf. George's fame as a philosopher rests solely on their originating with him -- on the assertion that he was the first to trace the poverty of the masses to land monopoly, the first to discover a just and effective remedy in the appropriation of rent by the government, and the first to perceive the coordination of certain great natural laws.

Thirty years before George wrote "Progress and Poverty," Patrick Edward Dove published anonymously in London "The Theory of Human Progression." Compare the following extracts from the latter work with the principal divisions in George's train of thought in "Progress and Poverty": (Italics are as in the original; the four head lines are mine)

I. THE PROBLEM

… how comes it that, notwithstanding man's vast achievements, his wonderful efforts of mechanical ingenuity, and the amazing productions of his skill, his own condition in a social capacity should not have improved in the same ratio as the improvement of his condition with regard to the material world? In Britain, man has to a great extent beaten the material world. He has vanquished it, overpowered it; he can make it serve him; he can use not merely his muscles, but the very powers of nature, to effect his purposes ; his reason has triumphed over matter; and matter's tendencies and powers are to a great extent subject to his will. And, notwithstanding this, a large portion of the population is reduced to pauperism, to that fearful state of dependence in which man finds himself a blot on the universe of God -- a wretch thrown up by the waves of time, without a use and without an end, homeless in the presence of the firmament, and helpless in the face of the creation. . .

But what is the cause of British pauperism? Why are there periodic starvations in Ireland and the Highlands? Why is there a crisis every few years in England, when able-bodied men, willing to work, can find no employment? Why are Britons obliged to be shipped off to other countries? Is it because the natural capabilities of the soil have been wrought up to the highest pitch, and yet there remains a surplus population that the soil will neither employ nor feed? Is it because manufacturing has been carried to its utmost extent, and there really is no further room for the employment of a larger population? Is it, in fact, because man has done his best with Britain, made the most of it, got out of it all the food and all the wealth that it is capable of producing, and yet it will not keep its own inhabitants, either by the food it produces, or by articles of exchange that it might give to other countries for food? Is it a matter of necessity that there shall be paupers (that vile word) in the richest country in the world? Is it true that England can no longer support Englishmen; nor Ireland, Irishmen; nor Scotland, Scotchmen? Have we, in fact, arrived at the last term of population, and must all, over and above, expatriate or starve? Is this true, or is it false? Either pauperism and degradation are the work of the Creator of our system, the All-Powerful, who has placed present man in circumstances where the natural capabilities of the earth are insufficient for his support; or, pauperism and degradation are the work of fallen man, who through ignorance has based his arrangements of the earth on superstitious propositions, and thereby necessarily has rendered it impossible that the amount of good intended by the Creator can be extracted from the earth. … -- [Dove, pages 306 and following. Boston edition.]

II. LAND MONOPOLY RESULTING IN PAUPERISM

The evil is expressed in a few words; and, sooner or later, the nation will appreciate it and rectify it. It is "the alienation of the soil from the State, and the consequent taxation of the industry of the country." Britain may go on producing with wonderful energy, and may accomplish far more than she has yet accomplished. She may struggle as Britain only can struggle. She may present to the world peace at home, when the nations of Europe are filled with insurrection. She may lead foremost in the march of civilization and be first among the kingdoms of the earth. All this she may do, and more. But as certain as Britain continues her present social arrangement, so certainly will there come a time when -- the other questions being cleared on this side and on that side, and the main question brought into the arena -- the labor of Britain will emancipate itself from thralldom. Gradually and surely has the separation been taking place between the privileged landowner and the unprivileged laborer. And the time will come at last that there should be but two parties looking each other in the face, and knowing that the destruction of one is an event of necessary occurrence. That event must come. …Of the two parties, one must give way. One must sink to rise no more ; one must disappear from the earth. Their continued existence is incompatible. Nature cannot support both.

And when once this last great question of liberty has been disposed of, the country cannot fail to commence another evolution, and to enter on a line of progress that shall ultimately place men on the same equality with regard to natural property that will then prevail with regard to political liberty. -- [Dove, page 315]

One generation was not content with making arrangements which were to be in force for that generation alone; but laws were enacted, and customs were acknowledged, whereby the arrangements of one generation were to descend to future generations, and to be imposed on men not yet born, who were to be born into a world already portioned out, and consequently to which they had no title. Those, therefore, who were born into the world in a country where the land had been accorded to individual proprietors could obtain their livelihood only by laboring for other men; and as those to whom the land had been accorded could not cultivate it themselves, and as the land was required for the support of the population, the laborers were under the necessity of paying a rent to those who thus procured a vast revenue without labor. This system of diversity of rights to the natural earth, which God intended for the race, being perpetuated from generation to generation, entails with it, as its necessary attendant, that baneful condition of society in which we have a few aristocrats endowed with vast wealth without labor, and a multitude of laborers reduced to poverty, destitution, and sometimes to actual starvation. -- [Dove, page 365]

III. THE REMEDY

If, then, we admit that every generation of men has the same free right to make its own arrangements, and to carry into effect the principles it knows or believes to be true, quite independently of the arrangements that have been made by any anterior generation, we must also of necessity admit, that the earth and all it contains belong, for the time being, to every existing generation, and that the disposition of the earth (as the great storehouse from which man must derive support and sustenance) is not to be determined by the laws, customs, arrangements, king's gifts, or prescriptive rights of any past generation of men, but by the judgment and reason of the existing generation, ordering all arrangements according to the rules of equity, which are always valid and always binding, and which at every given moment of time are the rules which ought to determine human action. Consequently the question at every period is, " What is the equitable disposition of the earth?" … The great social problem, then, … is, "to discover such a system as shall secure to every man his exact share of the natural advantages which the Creator hat provided for the race; while, at the same time, he has full opportunity, without let or hinderance, to exercise his skill, industry, and perseverance for his own advantage."

No truth can be more absolutely certain, as the intuitive proposition of the reason, than that "an object is the property of its creator," and we maintain that creation is the only means by which an individual right to property can IKJ generated. Consequently, as no individual and no generation is the creator of the substantive, earth, it belongs equally to all the existing inhabitants; that is, no individual has a special claim to more than another.

But while on the one hand we take into consideration the object -- that is, the earth -- we must also take into consideration the subject; that is, man, and man's labor.

The object is the common property of all, no individual being able to exhibit a title to any particular portion of it. And individual or private property is the increased value produced by individual labor.

But the permanent earth never can be private property -- although the laws may call it so, and may treat it as such -- it must be possessed by individuals for the purpose of cultivation and for the purpose of extracting from it all those natural objects which man requires. The question then is, upon what terms, or according to what system must the earth be possessed by the successive generations that succeed each other on the surface of the globe? …How can the division of the advantages of the natural earth be effected?

By the division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the rent of the soil the common property of the nation. That is, (as the taxation is the common property of the State), by taking the whole of the taxes out of the rents of the soil and thereby abolishing all other kinds of taxation whatever. And thus all industry would be absolutely emancipated from every burden, and every man would reap such natural reward as his skill, industry, or enterprise rendered legitimately his, according to the natural law of free competition. …

We have no hesitation whatever in predicting that all civilized communities must ultimately abolish all revenue restrictions on industry, and draw the whole taxation from the rents of the soil. And this because (as we shall endeavor to show in a future portion of the subject) the rents of the soil are the common produce of the whole labor of a community. …

The State has alienated the lands to private individuals called proprietors, and the vast majority of Englishmen are born to their labor minus their share of the taxation.

This taxation of labor has introduced vast systems of restriction on trades and industry. Instead of a perfectly free trade with all the world, England has adopted a revenue system that most materially diminishes both the amount of trade and its profit. And, instead of a perfectly free internal industry, England has adopted an excise that is as vexatious in its operation as can well be conceived. Both the customs and excise laws, and every other tax on industry, have arisen from the alienation of the soil form the State; and had the soil been alienated, no tax whatever would have been requisite; and were the soil resumed (as it undoubtedly ought to be), every tax of every kind and character, save the common rent of the soil, might at once be abolished, with the whole army of collectors, revenue officers, cruisers, coastguards, excisemen, etc., etc.

Taxation can only be on land or labor. (By land we mean the natural earth, not merely the agricultural soil.) These are the two radical elements that can be subjected to taxation, capital being originally derived from one or the other. Capital is only hoarded labor or hoarded rent. -- [Dove, 371-380]

IV. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS

When political economy shall have done her work on earth, and taught men how to evolve the maximum of material good, and when equity shall have taught men to construct society in accordance with the principles of justice, the reason of mankind will still go onward, and the higher and nobler good, the aspirations after immortality, will still beckon on humanity; and earth, transformed by truth, harmoniously reverberating from reason to revelation, shall at last rejoice in the universal knowledge of Him whose kingdom is everlasting. …

But on the continent, philosophy is the theology of the great mass of thinking-men; and their theology, derived from the revelation of nature, does actually follow the development of science. And as skepticism was first posited with its negation, and the Pantheism with its most general affirmation, and now, instead of a mere power, an intelligent power is beginning to be seen as absolutely necessary to explain the phenomena of nature, we may rest assured that, with the development of social and moral science (which cannot fail to undergo their evolution in their order), there will arise necessarily a moral theology, and the world will be indoctrinated with the theory of a moral Deity. …

Now, if it be true that all human science ends in morals, and that natural theology follows the developments of science (and it can never legitimately be in advance of science), then natural theology will come ultimately to be a purely scientific moral theology, and will thus be brought to the point where man identifies the God of nature with the God of scripture. And thus the long-lost unity will be once more restored, and the enlightened reason of mankind, reading aright the revelation of the true God in the cosmos of creation, will see - not in doubt nor in darkness, but in the full day-light splendor of its own inherent majesty -- the divinity of that gospel which opens up the heaven of the moral universe, and spreads before the full grown intellect of man the eternal joys of a purchased immortality. -- [Dove, page 483]

Here, then, ready to hand, could George have found all his cardinal doctrines. Here is the marrow of the philosophy of "the prophet of San Francisco."

But, many may be found who will ask: Is it not possible that George knew nothing of Dove's book; -- he might have conceived the main thought independently, and the rest, coming in logical order, would naturally run parallel with Dove's? Possible, but hardly the fact. There is much internal evidence that George ransacked Dove's book for points, generally, however, polishing them up in his own language. George never wants for words.

Between the two following passages is the strong family resemblance of a younger to an older brother:

Let us suppose an island divided into thirty estates. These estates belong to thirty proprietors and are cultivated by slaves, by genuine out-and-out salable negroes. These slaves are the property (!) of the white proprietors, each of whom has a stock of one hundred. There are then thirty proprietors, and three thousand laboring slaves, supported by the island -- the slaves having sustenance and the labor, the proprietors having indolence and the luxury. As the slaves belong to the proprietors, they are individual slavcs, confined to the cultivation of their respective estates. Let us now suppose that the proprietors made a new arrangement of their affairs; that, instead of possessing each a hundred slaves, they thought it would be more convenient to establish a system by which those proprietors who wanted the labor of more at any particular time should be able to have it, and those who at any particular time had not work for a hundred should relieve themselves of the expense of their keep. To effect this, and to throw the trouble of the new system on the slaves, they abandon the system of individual slavery and generalize it. Each proprietor gives up his right to his negroes, but the negroes are still to do the work of the island, and the proprietors arc still to have the profit. Nor is it difficult to effect this arrangement without compulsion -- all that is necessary being to establish the rule, that the negroes shall be fed by those for whom they work, and that their wages shall be their sustenance. All the land being in the hands of the proprietors, the negroes can obtain support only by laboring for the proprietors. …Are they [the laborers] not still the serfs of the proprietors? … It makes little difference whether we have an imaginary island with thirty proprietors and three thousand laboring serfs, or a real island with thirty thousand proprietors and five or six millions of laboring serfs. -- [Dove, page 349].

Place one hundred men on an island from which there is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner of the soil of the island, will make no difference either to him or to them.

In the one case, as the other, the one will be the absolute master of the ninety-nine -- his power extending even to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission to live upon the island would be to force them into the sea.

Upon a larger scale, and through more complex relations, the same cause must operate in the same way and to the same end -- the ultimate result, the enslavement of laborers, becoming apparent just as the pressure increases which compels them to live on and from land which is treated as the exclusive property of others. Take a country in which the soil is divided among a number of proprietors, instead of being in the hands of one, and in which, as in modern production, the capitalist has been specialized from the laborer, and manufactures and exchange and all their many branches have been separated from agriculture. Though less direct and obvious, the relations between the owners of the soil and the laborers will, with increase of population and the improvement of the arts, tend to the same absolute mastery on the one hand, and the same abject helplessness on the other, as in the case of the island we have supposed. Rent will advance, while wages will fall. Of the aggregate produce, the landowner will get a constantly increasing, the laborer a constantly diminishing share. Just as removal to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, laborers, no matter what they produce, will be reduced to a bare living, and the free competition among them, where land is monopolized, will force them to a condition which, though they may be mocked with the titles and insignia of freedom, will be virtually that of slavery. -- [George, page 250]

Here, again, the vein is much the same:

Serfdom and aristocracy are, in fact, the correlatives of each other. Wherever there are serfs, there there are aristocrats; and wherever there are aristocrats, then there are serfs; and though the laborers of England are not serfs in one sense, inasmuch as they may emigrate if they can find the menus, they are to all intents and purposes, serfs so long as they remain in England. It is a mere fallacy to suppose that serfdom has been abolished in England. It has not been abolished, it has only been generalized. … Serfdom, or even slavery, may be abolished in appearance, and yet retained in reality, the means of compulsion being changed with the advance of society, which would no longer tolerate the open employment of individual force. -- [Dove, page 348]

The ownership of land is the basis of aristocracy. …The simple privilege of the ownership of the soil produced, on the one side the lord, on the other the vassal -- the one having all the rights, the other none. The right of the lord of the soil acknowledged and maintained, those who lived upon it could only do so upon his terms. …The English landowner of today has, in the law which recognizes his exclusive right to the land, essentially all the power which his predecessor the feudal baron had. …Between the condition of the rack-rented Irish peasant and the Russian serf, the advantage was in many things on the side of the serf. -- [George, pages 252-253]

Forms of expression occurring in the following passages cannot but sound familiar to readers of "Progress and Poverty":

Let the political arrangements be what they may, let there be universal or any other suffrage, so long as the aristocracy have all the land, and derive the rent of it, the laborer is only a serf, and a serf he will remain until he has uprooted the rights of private landed property. The land is for the n at ion, and not for the aristocracy.

We affirm, then, that serfdom has not been abolished, but only generalized, in England, Ireland and Scotland. …A serf is a man who, by the arrangements of mankind, is deprived of the object on which he might expend his labor, or of the natural profit that results from his labor, and, consequently, is under the necessity of supporting himself and his family by his labor alone. And a lord, or an aristocrat, is a man who, by the arrangements of mankind, is made to possess the object, and who, consequently, can support himself and his family without labor, on the profits created by the labor of others. - [Dove, page 353]

And what is the cause of human pauperism and human degradation? for the two go hand in hand. …Does any man suppose that the nation will much longer believe that Britain cannot support its inhabitants? Does any man believe that the men who can make steam engines, cotton milts, and railroads, and ships, and the largest commerce in the world, and spinning jennies, and steam printing machines, and Skerryvore lighthouses and electric telegraphs, and a thousand other wonders, could not make such a distribution of Britain as should enable every man in it, and many more, to earn an abundant livelihood by their labor? Does any man believe this? And if he does not believe it, does he suppose that any superstitious notions about the king's right to grant the soil to individuals will long stand in the way of their doing it? If Englishmen discover that pauperism and wretchedness are unnecessary; that the divine being never intended such things; that the degradation of the laboring population, their moral degradation consequent on poverty, is the curse of the laws and not of nature -- does any man suppose that Englishmen would not be justified in abolishing such laws, or that they will not abolish them? Can we believe for a moment, that if any arrangement would enable the population to find plenty, that such an arrangement will not be made? If any man believe this, he is at all events willing to be credulous. For ourselves, we believe it not. -- [Dove, page 312]

Was it for this that the Almighty made man in his own image and gave him the earth for an inheritance? Was it for this that he sent his Son into the world to proclaim the divine benevolence, to preach the doctrine of human brotherhood, and to lay the foundation of a kingdom that should endure forever and ever? We do not believe it, neither do we believe that pauperism comes from God. It is man's doing, and man's doing alone. God has abundantly supplied man with all the requisite means of support; and where he cannot find support, we must look, not to the arrangements of the Almighty, but to the arrangements of men, and to the mode in which they have portioned out the earth. To charge the poverty of man on God, is to blaspheme the Creator instead of bowing in reverent thankfulness for the profusion of his goodness. He has given enough, abundance, more than sufficient; and if man has not enough, we must look to the mode in which God's gifts have been distributed. There is enough, enough for all, abundantly enough; and all that is requisite is freedom to labor on the soil, and to extract from it the produce that God intended for man's support. -- [Dove, 306]

It is not trade that Britain wants, nor more railroads, nor larger orders for cotton, nor new schemes for alimenting the poor, nor loans to landlords, nor any other mercantile or economical change. It is social change. New social arrangements, made on the principles of natural equity. No economical measure whatever is capable of reaching the depths of the social evils. Ameliorations may, no doubt, be made for a time; but the radical evil remains, still generating the poison that corrupts society. -- [Dove, page 315]

But resemblances do not cease here. On reading "The Theory of Human Progression," one finds that Dove, a generation before George, showed the injustice and absurdity of any attempt at a division of the land itself; declared the invalidity of titles to land founded on the gifts of kings, or on war or despoliation of any kind; referred to the inclosure of the commons in Great Britain; traced the changes from the feudal form of land tenure to the present system; employed to strengthen his position the condition of the peasants of Ireland and the Highlands; denied the possibility of over-production or over-population; found the origin of poor laws and national debts to be the monopolization of the land; dwelt on the injury of indirect taxes to the poor; declared that equality before the law includes natural rights; maintained that the only just theory of property is that by which the laborer is given the full fruits of his toil; drew the line of distinction between property in land and property in the products of industry; showed that social improvements result in increase of rent; held that the attainment of full political rights must be followed by that of property rights; narrowed the social problem to a discussion of the laws of distribution, and pointed out the insufficiency of every remedy for poverty save the tax on land values.

Scores and scores of times has George been presented to audiences as the master political-economist, the first to prove the one world-wide source of poverty, the inspired originator of the theory of the Single-tax. Did he ever deny it and say that Dove was the man?

At a dinner given to George at the Brighton Beach Hotel two months ago, he was greeted formally in these words: "You re-examined the tenets of political economy, you sounded the depths of philosophy, you measured your conclusions by the eternal laws of morality, and you gave to the world an explanation so simple and yet so conclusive that candid criticism is defied. But you did not rest when you had solved the problem. A remedy was demanded, and you found one --one that harmonizes with your habits of thought, and while involving the essential principles of justice is in the drift of current political agitation."

Knowing the truth, what were Henry George's thoughts and feelings then? Was he honest in thus reaping where another had sown? And how many times in the past ten years had he been the centre of similar scenes and accepted like praise? Did he think no tribute due Patrick Edward Dove?

George's paper has never mentioned Dove. If George ever referred to Dove on the platform in this country as his source of inspiration, the press has not reported the fact.

Is there any evidence that George ever knew anything about Dove's book? There is. Five years ago he spoke favorably of it publicly in Glasgow, where Dove has friends still living. A report of his speech on the occasion is contained in the " British Daily Mail," December 19, 1884.

How many people have since asked George how he ever came to think of the Single-tax ?

These cold facts must leave every Georgite -- every one holding to the man -- a prey to depressing thought. Henry George, the conscientious Single-taxer would be apt to reflect, might well have been content with the large credit justly his due for giving Dove's propositions to the world in a brilliant and moving style. Much as it is to discover truth, equally honorable is it to succeed in bringing it before the people, if the indebtedness to the original be but acknowledged. But no. Was it not and is it not Henry George's weakness to think of himself before all else? Has he not a consuming desire to appear greater that he is -- to wield a power not rightfully his? And has not his selfish ambition ended in ruining him? Who can now await his thought? Who will follow his leadership?

George has taught some queer morality.

An example: In the issue of his paper of June 23, 1888, in an editorial of many thousand words, he devotes some three thousand to the rights of authors in their works. He here takes the ground that, as the expenditure of labor in the invention or discovery of a machine gives no natural rights or ownership in the idea, so the ownership of an author is, not in his ideas, but in the labor of the literary production of his book. Somebody in England has used the ideas of "Progress and Poverty," but George says he will not try to prevent it. He says:

Nor have I any moral right to ask it. When another sees these truths they are his as much as they are mine. If I discovered them, it was only in the sense that one may discover the belt of the Orion. They are there to be seen, and have been seen, and will be seen by many before and independently of me. All I, or anyone else, can do, is to point another in their direction. To really see them, he must see them for himself, with his own power of perception.

When George wrote thus, was he anticipating the day when his deed should find him out? Perish the suspicion. He was simply consistent. And now if men should take a lively interest in the contents of Dove's book, and in certain passages of the works of Leslie, Senior, and others, there is no reason at all why George's philosophic equipoise should be disturbed. He has really believed it was his word-carpentering that made "Progress and Poverty." His conscience has approved his acts.

Patrick Edward Dove was born near Edinburgh in 1815. He died in 1873. He projected a series of three works on "The Science of Politics." The first volume was "The Theory of Human Progression." Besides the edition printed in London in 1850, an American edition was printed in Boston in 1851 at the expense of Charles Sumner. The second volume of Dove's series was issued in 1856. The third was never printed, and the manuscript was lost. Dove was regarded by Carlyle and others as a genius. He was for a time editor of the Glasgow "Commonwealth," but mostly led the life of an English country gentleman. He traveled much and studied in Germany.

NOTE -- Information concerning Dove's book first reached me about six weeks ago. It came from an active Single-taxer, who had, however, heard nothing more than whispers as to the existence of an old anonymous work containing the genesis of "Progress and Poverty" between its covers. A few days later a man well-known in the reform movement wrote me giving the name of the book and saying a copy was in the Astor Library, which was then closed. As soon as the library was reopened I read the volume and prepared the foregoing article. I have placed it with the Twentieth Century as as the readiest means of communication with free land men. Dove's book, it turns out, has been passing about for several months in a small circle of literary men in New York. The facts relating to Dove's life, including a statement that he anticipated George, are to be found in "The Dictionary of National Biography," 1888, an English work. They were mostly furnished by Dove's son. A copy of the Boston edition of "The Theory of Human Progression" is in the Astor Library and one of the English edition in the Mercantile. Many bookstores in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston have been searched in vain for other copies.

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