Progress and Poverty
By Henry George
THE views herein set forth were in the main briefly stated in a pamphlet entitled “Our Land and Land Policy,” published in San Francisco in 1871. I then intended, as soon as I could, to present them more fully, but the opportunity did not for a long time occur. In the meanwhile I became even more firmly convinced of their truth, and saw more completely and clearly their relations; and I also saw how many false ideas and erroneous habits of thought stood in the way of their recognition, and how necessary it was to go over the whole ground…. [From the Preface to the Fourth Edition]
First Pub. Date
1879
Publisher
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.
Pub. Date
1912
Comments
Includes an introduction by Henry George, Jr.
Copyright
The text of this edition is in the public domain. Picture of Henry George courtesy of The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.
- How the Book Came To Be Written, by Henry George, Jr.
- Preface to Fourth Edition
- Introductory
- Book I, Chapter 1
- Book I, Chapter 2
- Book I, Chapter 3
- Book I, Chapter 4
- Book I, Chapter 5
- Book II, Chapter 1
- Book II, Chapter 2
- Book II, Chapter 3
- Book II, Chapter 4
- Book III, Chapter 1
- Book III, Chapter 2
- Book III, Chapter 3
- Book III, Chapter 4
- Book III, Chapter 5
- Book III, Chapter 6
- Book III, Chapter 7
- Book III, Chapter 8
- Book IV, Chapter 1
- Book IV, Chapter 2
- Book IV, Chapter 3
- Book IV, Chapter 4
- Book V, Chapter 1
- Book V, Chapter 2
- Book VI, Chapter 1
- Book VI, Chapter 2
- Book VII, Chapter 1
- Book VII, Chapter 2
- Book VII, Chapter 3
- Book VII, Chapter 4
- Book VII, Chapter 5
- Book VIII, Chapter 1
- Book VIII, Chapter 2
- Book VIII, Chapter 3
- Book VIII, Chapter 4
- Book IX, Chapter 1
- Book IX, Chapter 2
- Book IX, Chapter 3
- Book IX, Chapter 4
- Book X, Chapter 1
- Book X, Chapter 2
- Book X, Chapter 3
- Book X, Chapter 4
- Book X, Chapter 5
- Conclusion
Book VI, Chapter 2
The True Remedy
We have traced the unequal distribution of wealth which is the curse and menace of modern civilization to the institution of private property in land. We have seen that so long as this institution exists no increase in productive power can permanently benefit the masses; but, on the contrary, must tend still further to depress their condition. We have examined all the remedies, short of the abolition of private property in land, which are currently relied on or proposed for the relief of poverty and the better distribution of wealth, and have found them all inefficacious or impracticable.
There is but one way to remove an evil—and that is to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be, the full earnings of the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil—in nothing else is there the slightest hope.
This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it:
We must make land common property.
We have reached this conclusion by an examination in which every step has been proved and secured. In the chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is weak. Deduction and induction have brought us to the same truth—that the unequal ownership of land necessitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And as in the nature of things unequal ownership of land is inseparable from the recognition of individual property in land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy for the unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common property.
But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied.
In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by subtraction and multiplication by division, so may we, by testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correctness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil.
The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable of application; it must accord with the tendencies of social development and must harmonize with other reforms.
All this I propose to show. I propose to meet all practical objections that can be raised, and to show that this simple measure is not only easy of application; but that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and greater inequality in the distribution of wealth—that it will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want, justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness, and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of civilization.
I thus propose to show that the laws of the universe do not deny the natural aspirations of the human heart; that the progress of society might be, and, if it is to continue, must be, toward equality, not toward inequality; and that the economic harmonies prove the truth perceived by the Stoic Emperor—
“We are made for co-operation—like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.”