Henry George School of San Francisco
of San Francisco
189 Ellsworth St,
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: 415-948-4265
info
Henry George Historical Society
God only knows how old, how wizened "like the remainder biscuit of a voyage," how impervious to both hard thinking and idealism you have to be before your betters might tell you the thrilling story of George and his social philosophy. But here it's always just a click away in the bloom and fruitage season of your life!
Born in 1839, twenty minutes easy walk from Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Ship's tar on his hands at 16, bound for Melbourne and Calcutta. A pet monkey on his shoulder on the Hindoo en route home, age 17.
Arrived San Francisco May 27, 1858 as a deckhand on a lighthouse tender. Off to British Columbia's Frazer River gold craze in late July of that year, then back again in late November, rooming at the What Cheer House (Leidesdorff and Sacramento streets), R.B. Woodward's mid-19th century Y.M.C.A.
An ill-planned tramp to the mining fields preceded two years of hard-pressed work as a typesetter, shifting lodging frequently from Natoma St. to Pine. Upon coming of age he joined the Eureka Typesetter's Union. In 1860 George met Annie Fox, and a year later the two eloped rather than submit to her imperious uncle's demand that she quit the penniless printer's company.
"The young man drew from his pocket a single coin. 'Annie,' said he solemnly, 'that is all the money I have in the world. Will you marry me?'
"She gravely answered: 'If you are willing to undertake the responsibilities of marriage, I will marry you.'
"He told her when he came again later in the day that at nightfall he would send a carriage for her to the door inquiring for "Mrs. Brown" and that she should be ready at once to leave. All day long she sat in the parlour of Joseph Flintoff's [her uncle's] house waiting for night and the carriage, while Henry George was off telling some of his friends of the matter, getting credit for two weeks' board for two persons, borrowing a little money and some better-appearing clothes than his wn, and hiring a carriage. There was some difficulty about the carriage, for when the driver grasped the fact that he was about to take part in a runaway marriage, and that he was to get into the very thick of it by inquiring at the door for "Mrs. Brown," he declined, saying that he already had a 'bullet in one leg' for participating in another just such affair."
--The Life of Henry George, Henry George, Jr.
Hard times followed in finding work, with occasional respites of solid employment, including stints in Sacramento with the Sacramento Union. During these Sacramento years, 1861- 1863, George took tickets at a Mark Twain lecture and delivered up a suggestive line about nomadic apartment living in the river city,
"We didn't clean house; we moved, instead!"
In 1864 George and his young family--a son had been born in 1862--returned to San Francisco where George took work as he could get it with the "Evening Bulletin," "The American Flag," and a print office concern he co-owned. But the California economy was sagging and the George family squeaked by in real poverty.
"I came near starving to death, and at one time I was so close to it that I think I should have done so but for the job of printing a few cards which enabled us to buy a little corn meal. In this darkest time in my life my second child was born."
--Meeker interview with Henry George in 1897
According to Annie George the attending doctor told her, "Don't stop to wash the child; he is starving. Feed him!" In a state of horror at the abyss he and his destitute family faced, George stepped out of their miniature home in a reptilian state of mind.
"I walked along the street and made up my mind to get money from the first man whose appearance might indicate that he had it to give. I stopped a man--a stranger--and told him I wanted $5. He asked what I wanted it for. I told him that my wife was confined and that I had nothing to give her to eat. He gave me the money. If he had not, I think I was desperate enough to have killed him."
-Kelly interview with Henry George in 1881
This was January 27, 1865. A full month passed before George began to find, intermittently but ekeingly enough, substitute typesetting work. And he began to write. First just practice essays, then a short fantasy sketch which appeared in the Californian, a literary magazine frequented by Mark Twain. But in the furor that followed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, George found his full resonant voice. A series of letters to the editor, eulogizing Lincoln, astonished the Alta's editor, and he featured George's second effort as the paper's lead editorial.
"No common man, yet the qualities whih made him great and loved were eminently common.
"He was not of those whom God lifts to the mountain tops, and who tell of His truth to ears that will not hear, and show His light to eyes that cannt see--whom their own generation stone, and future ones worship; but he was of the leaders who march close before th advancing ranks of th people, who direct their steps and speak with their voice."
Alta, April 23, 1865
The way seemed open for a writing position with the Alta, but a brouhaha intervened in the shape of a grand scheme to free Mexico from French interposition. A latter day Napoleon (the Third), had sent an Imperial army into Mexico with the intention of making Mexico a domain of France. George joined two well-intentioned but hapless San Francisco efforts to raise expeditionary forces bound to assist in the liberation of Mexico. Both plans came to nothing, but do portray George's anti-imperialist zeal.
Full time type-setting work came George's way soon after this martial-minded spell of time, and George moved himself and his family to Sacramento where this government contract offered. This stint in Sacramento lasted a full year. During this stay, George joined, then resigned from, the National Guard. Ha also affiliated with a literary organization which featured public debates. While attending one of these public debates, George began to seriously reflect on his own assumptions regarding economic reasoning.
"One night in Sacramento I went with a friend to a debating society and there heard a young fellow of great ability, William H. Mills, the present Land Agent of the Central Pacific Railroad, deliver a speech in favour of protection. I was a protectionist when he began, but when he got through I was a free trader. When they asked me what I thought of it I told them that if what he said was true, it seemed to me that the country that was the hardest to get at must be the best country to live in; and that, instead of merely putting duties on things brought from anywhere, fires and wars and impediments to trade and navigation were the very best things to levy on commerce."
-Meeker notes
George kept at his writing ambitions while in Sacramento, composing some short atmospheric pieces for a friend's literary journal in Philadelphia, as well as keeping up a patter of letters to the editor for the Sacramento "Daily Union."
In November 1866 came the opportunity to return to San Francisco. The "Times" was a new paper, and James McClatchy, the talented editor of the Sacramento Bee was hired away to edit the San Francisco venture. McClatchy brought George with him, definitly as a typesetter, but with prospects for the writing corps.A series of disagreements led to McClatchy soon returning to the Bee, but as the strife did not involve George, he was quickly moved up, first to reporter, then to editorial writer, and, by June 1867, he occupied the managing editor's desk.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION, TO BE CONTINUED
Henry George about the time he left San Francisco, 1880.
What's the
big idea?
Of course you're wondering, "Why's this guy got a historical society dedicated to him and his ideas? What did he have to say that's so memorable?"
Here's George's primary line of reasoning and the advocacy he made based upon that thought:
- the earth itself is not made by people
- everyone has an equal and inalienable right to the use of the earth
- the exchange value of any particular portion of the earth is a matrix of community dynamics--public infrastructure, surrounding private investment, population growth, etc.
- All the foregoing being so, the periodic exchange value of land (land rent) belongs to the community, not the private land owner
In fact, there's nothing new about saying, "The earth is the birthright of all people." What's remarkable is the coherent analysis George brought to bear upon the assertion, and the rigor he brought to considering the implications.
Whatever you may think of the moral soundness of George's argument that the whole community has complete property right in the annual rent of what realtors mean by "location, location, location," here are some of the undeniable economic consequences of socializing the market rent of land:
- the abolition of land speculation
- the raising of wages by virtue of raising "the margin of production"
- the end of mortgages issued against land values
Each of these consequences deserves more than a little elaboration, but a little is all we'll give here. We recommend http://www.henrygeorge.org for much more.
First, the abolition of land speculation. George advocated collecting all of the annual market rent of land for use by the community. By eliminating the possibility of private income from mere ownership of land, the rationale for owning land for the purpose of currently or prospectively deriving income from land would be destroyed. NOTE: removing the possibility of income from mere land ownership does not prevent the ownership of land, it merely ensures that those who currently consume (hold title to) land are pay the current market price (to society) for it. That's what renters do.
Second, the raising of wages. The base level of wages is predicated upon what unskilled labor can produce in exchange value where land is free. If you can produce great exchange value and yet pay no land rent, you're not poor. But if land rent eats up most of your produced exchange value you are poor. By abolishing land speculation using the supply and demand price system itself (obliging those who own land to pay the market rent of land to community), land that has exchange value is compelled into production mode (or its exchange value is enjoyed by society through an in lieu use such as a public park or the location of public infrastructure). The abolition of land speculation curtails sprawl, and the reduction of sprawl lowers the rent line, the actual geographical boundary where land rent begins. It is this lowering of the rent line, also known as the margin of production, which raises the base level of wages. As the rent line shrinks towards the center(s) of human activity, less human effort is required to generate exchange value because proximity to co-production is a huge aspect of efficiency in production of stuff people want and make.
It is the raising of wages far above the poverty line which George sought for society. His seminal text, Progress & Poverty, opens with this inquiry,
"Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living?"
If there were infinite amount of land of equal desireability, then everyone could produce just as much food and stuff as he or she liked, without having to work for anyone else.
If there were infinite land of equal desireability.
But there isn't. There's a limited amount of land and it's not of uniform desireability. (We're not speaking of agricultural land merely, but of land desireable because it bears great industrial, commerical or urban use.)
Land rent is the exchange value one person will pay another to gain access to land of greater desireability than the least productive land. The competition for desireable land, measured in price offered above land available for free, takes wages down towards the level of wages where land IS free.
George grasped this fact. That's why he argued for lowering the rent line: moving it towards the center of human activity where productive activity produces more exchange value. And the way to reduce the rent line towards more productive land (speaking commercially as well as agriculturally), is by eliminating land speculation.
Get it? Got it? Good!
No more land free-loaders. No more de facto kings. No more land rent empires hiding behind the mask of Capitalist. Because land is not capital, it is land, a gift of nature, distinguishable from capital because it is not made by human beings. Capital and land are existentially distinguishable.
You don't have to be a French philosopher to understand that. Capital = human made stuff used to make more stuff. Land = gift of nature out of which all tangible stuff is made, and upon which all stuff, tangible or otherwise, is made.
Get it? Got it? Good!
Third, the end of mortgages issued against land value.
With the least reflection, it will be obvious that under a scheme whereby land rent is collected by society, the sales price of land will fall towards ZERO.
Just think: how much would you invest in a business which paid no dividends? ZERO.
What would you pay for a tool which rendered no advantage over doing the work without the tool? ZERO.
Similarly, you would pay nothing for land if it offered no economic advantage. It's price would tend towards ZERO.
However, since it is absolutely necessary to use land in order to live, much less work, land will retain a rental price. Some locations are more desirable than other locations. The economic difference between one location and another is land rent. More accurately, the economic difference between land which can be had for nothing and land already occupied is land rent. Land rent does not disappear just because it is not retained by the private owner. But the sales price of land does disappear when land rent goes to community rather than to the private landowner.
This requires some more thought to make sense to those of us who have been inoculated with "land is private property" thinking.
Yes, private use of land is most useful, perhaps even necessary to ensure someone will tend and care for land, and go to the bother of creating home and business on top of land.
But income from land is not necessary to ensure land use. After all, renters and leasers pay full market rent for land all the time, fderiving their income not from the land rent, but from the improvements upon the land, and from the commercial activities conducted upon the land.
Therefore, one of th results of socializing land rent will be to drive down towards ZERO the sales price of land. That means there will be little if any mortgages to issue against the sales price of land. And that means there will be no INTEREST payments on land price mortgages.
Wow! No bank loans on the value of land! No interest payments on the debt amount of land value.
No boom in land values and precipitous fall in land values.
No economic doldrums occasioned by the real estate market.
Get it? Got it? Fabulous!
UNDER CONSTRUCTION, TO BE CONTINUED
189 Ellsworth St,
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: 415-948-4265
info