Progress And Poverty

Progress and Poverty
Published by D. Appleton Company
Author	Henry George
Year Published	1879
Language	English

Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy was a highly influential book^[1] written in 1879 by Henry George that influenced several prominent Fabian Socialists such as Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, and H. G. Wells. He was also influential with many Americans, such as Joseph Fels, who financed several Georgist utopian colonies such as the ones at Fairhope Alabama and Arden Delaware.

Book Reviews[edit]

After reading the book in braille, Helen Keller said that "Who reads shall find in Henry George’s philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature."^[2]

Other reviews include:

I have been acquainted with Henry George since the appearance of his "Social Problems." I read them, and was struck by the correctness of his main idea, and by the unique clearness and pow er of his argument, which is unlike anything in scientific literature, and especially by the Christian spirit, which also stands alone in the literature of science, which pervades the book. After reading it I turned to H's previous work, "Progress and Poverty," and w ith a heightened appreciation of its author's activity. - Tolstoi, Leo, 1898, Count Tolstoi on the Doctrine of Henry George, Review of Reviews, vol. 17, p. 73.^[3]

It is possible to affirm without hesitation that the appearance of that one book formed a noteworthy epoch in the history of economic thought both in England and America. It is not simply that the treatise itself was an eloquent, impassioned plea for the confiscation of rent for the public good as a means of abolishing economic, social evils, but rather that the march of industrial forces had opened a way for the operation of ideas new and strange to the great masses. . . . Henry George has rendered two distinct services to the cause of socialism. First, in the no-rent theory, or in other words, the confiscation of rent pro bono publico, he has furnished a rallying point for all discontented laborers; second, his book has served as an entering wedge for other still more radical and far-reaching measures. It is written in an easily understood, and even brilliant style, is published in cheap form, both in England and America, and in each country has attained a circulation, which for economic work is without parallel/ Tens of thousands of laborers have real "Progress and Poverty," who never before looked between the two covers of an economic book, and its conclusions are widely accepted articles in the workingman's creed. - Ely, Richard T., 1885, Henry George and the Beginnings of Revolutionary Socialism in the United States, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, vol. 3, pp. 16,18.^[3]

See also[edit]

• The Landlord's Game - a game designed to teach the principles of Progress and Poverty
• Single Tax Colony

References[edit]

1. ↑ (1997) Visions and Revisions of Eighteenth-century France. Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0271026091. 
2. ↑ (1935) Land & Liberty: Monthly Journal for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade, 58. 
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, Volume 8, p. 380-382

External links[edit]

• Progress and Poverty
• Progress and Poverty - text and free audio - LibriVox
• Nationalisation of land, a review of Henry George's 'Progress & Poverty'