Progress and Poverty

Lore & Background

Henry George wrote Progress and Poverty as his first book, drawing on his own experience of poverty, travels, and life in rapidly growing California. A visit to New York City reinforced his observation that the poor in older cities were worse off than those in less developed California. The book sold several million copies, becoming one of the highest-selling books of the late 1800s. It helped spark the Progressive Era and a worldwide social reform movement known as Georgism. The Princeton historian Eric F. Goldman noted that an enormous number of men and women who would lead 20th-century America in humane activities wrote or said that their thinking had been redirected by reading Progress and Poverty in their formative years. George argued that technological and social advances increase land values and rents, and that land speculation causes the price of land to rise faster than wealth can be produced. This lowers wages and leads to business depressions, unemployment, and foreclosures. His proposed remedy was a single tax on land values, high enough to end other taxes, which would give landowners an incentive to use land productively and raise wages.

Reader's Guide

Progress and Poverty is an 1879 treatise by Henry George that investigates why poverty exists alongside technological and economic progress, and why economies experience cycles of boom and bust. George uses historical analysis and deductive reasoning to argue that the solution lies in capturing economic rent from natural resources and land titles. The book sold several million copies, becoming one of the best-selling books of the late nineteenth century. It helped spark the Progressive Era and a global social reform movement known as Georgism. Jacob Riis explicitly dated the beginning of the Progressive Era awakening to 1879 because of this publication. Historian Eric F. Goldman noted that an enormous number of people who would lead twentieth-century America in humane activities reported that reading this book in their formative years redirected their thinking. In the United Kingdom, a vast majority of both socialist and classical liberal activists traced their ideological development to George. By 1906, a survey of British parliamentarians found his writing more popular than Walter Scott, John Stuart Mill, and William Shakespeare. In 1933, John Dewey estimated the book had a wider distribution than almost all other books on political economy combined. George’s central argument is that land speculation causes recessions and poverty persists because increases in productivity go to rent instead of wages. He proposed a single tax on land values to replace other taxes, arguing it would incentivize productive land use, raise wages, and end poverty. The book was criticized by Karl Marx and Silvio Gesell for its theory of capital and interest.

Did You Know?

• Progress and Poverty sold several million copies, becoming one of the highest-selling books of the late 1800s.