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"Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II" by Henry George. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

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This is the book that made its author Henry George suddenly famous. From the year 1879 to the present the doctrines of 'Progress and Poverty' have been familiar to all who are interested in social problems. The book has been read by many to whom Political Economy is still 'the dismal science', and it has been circulated in cheap editions by the thousand among the classes to which it holds out such an alluring prospect. 'Progress and Poverty' has become a classic in labor literature. Its doctrines have been accepted not only by many who see in them a means of personal rescue from distress and want, but by many others who are convinced by the reasoning of the author. Clergymen , in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant church, have become Mr. George's disciples, and business and professional men have gladly sat at his feet.

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First published in 1879, “Progress and Poverty” is the ground-breaking treatise on the relationship between industrialization and poverty by Henry George, the American social theorist and economist. A huge commercial success when it was published and one of the best-selling books in America in the late 19th century, George’s work had a profound influence on economists, politicians, and social reformers all over the world. In “Progress and Poverty”, George attempted to understand why the technical and economic progress of the Industrial Age was so often accompanied by increases in poverty and human suffering. These “boom and bust” cycles in the economy had devastating impacts on countless numbers of people and George sought to find better solutions to these pressing problems. The solution that he proposed was radical at the time: a tax on land so that the value of private property could protect the most vulnerable from the fluctuations in the larger economy. Many of his ideas were instrumental to a new progressive social movement and have been adopted by several countries in the century since his work was first published.

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Henry George died fighting one of the most corrupt political organizations of the civilized world – a sufficient epitaph for any worthy man. But he has larger claims to respect and consideration. He made a creditable attempt to solve the root-problem of material life – poverty, – and his just-published posthumous book, « The Science of Political Economy,» excites that pathetic interest which attaches to the memory of one who tried to aid his fellowman. He was eloquent, but he was free from the hysteria of demagogy. His sympathies, born of bitter vicissitude, were acute, but they were tempered with reason. He believed in the equality of opportunity ; but he believed also (as an American and an individualist) in the natural inequality of capacity. When he saw the industrial evils of the Old World reappear in one of the richest and fairest parts of the New – commercial depression, involuntary idleness, wasting capital, pecuniary distress, want, suffering, anxiety, – he was startled, and he set about to discover the cause. We value him for what he tried to do. "Progress and Poverty " was an immensely interesting and attractive book on a seemingly sapless science. It struck fire from flint, and lifted the author from obscurity to world-wide celebrity. Emerson says that every man is eloquent in that which he understands. It would be, perhaps, truer to say that every man is eloquent in that in which he fervently believes, and George believed that he had given a message. To quote his own words: « On the night on which I finished the final chapter of 'Progress and Poverty,' I felt that the talent entrusted to me had been accounted for – was more fully satisfied, more deeply grateful, than if all the Kingdoms of the earth had been laid at my feet.» No one doubts his sincerity, his intellectual integrity, the cleanliness of his soul. His expectations were infinite, his faith simple. The poverty of the world lay not in Nature but in a vicious economic system ; and he thought that he had found a «sovereign remedy» which would «raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and intelligence, purify government, and carry civilization to yet nobler heights.»

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A reprint of «The Prophet of San Francisco,» by the Duke of Argyll, from the Nineteenth Century for April, 1884, and of «The Reduction to Iniquity,» by Henry George, from the same magazine for July. The literary reputation and the high social and political rank of the Duke of Argyll have attracted unusual attention to his arraignment of Mr. George's doctrine as to property in land. Mr. George's reply is vigorous and aggressive.

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This earnest and eloquent Letter to the Pope is by far the most remarkable utterance which the Encyclical of 1890 has evoked. The Pope could not have found a fitter controversialist to oppose him, for Mr. George meets him on the same basis of metaphysical theology, and appeals to the same authority of Scripture and St. Thomas of Aquino. And the whole letter seems, in its manner, curiously to echo the Pope ' s own dignified ecclesiastical – Latin style. Mr. George feels that the Encyclical is directed more strongly against his own «single tax» panacea than against what is vaguely called Socialism, which in a moderate form it favors. The Pope expressly puts property in land on the same level with property of any other kind, and expressly maintains that private property in this wide sense is a «natural right» of man, prior to the formation of any State. Mr. George, like the Pope, believes in " natural rights; "but he works out this vague and treacherous conception in his own way. «The right of property,» he says, «attaches to things produced by labor, but cannot attach to things created by God. Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a similar right of property in the ocean, so that he may sell it, or give it, or forbid others to use it.» Does Mr. George mean that the fish was not created by God ? He can hardly expect his Holiness to believe that; nor are any of us likely to believe that it was " produced " by the fisherman in any sense in which a great deal of land has not been produced " by human labor. The antithesis of God or " Nature " to everything that is done by human effort runs through all Mr. George ' s arguments. " Socialism in all its phases, " he says, « looks on the evils of our civilization as springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural relations, which must be artificially organized or improved. In its idea there devolves on the State the necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial relations of men, the construction, as it were, of a great machine, whose complicated parts shall properly work together under the direction of human intelligence. This is the reason why socialism tends towards atheism. Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, it fails to recognize God.» Mr. George seems to think that the work of human intelligence goes on in spite of God, and is somehow outside «Nature.» This, though a very common way of thinking, is very questionable philosophy, and the Pope would hardly approve of it as theology. Mr. George undertakes a hard task when he tries to persuade the head of the Catholic Church that " interest is natural and just, " while land – owning is wrong. But he makes a very strong point when he shows that the Pope ' s argument, " that what is bought with rightful property is rightful property, " could be used to justify slave – owning as easily as to justify property in land.

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First published in 1881, under the title of «The Irish Land Question,» but dealing, as it does with matters of universal and permanent importance, it still retained its value and popularity in 1893, when the title was changed. Meant as an attack on Herbert Spencer for a position taken up by him ten years ago it was rather late in its appearance.

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Henry George on free trade! The dismal science is being reclaimed, its swamp lands drained, its jungles cleared, sunshine and free air let in; and the cheap publishers are establishing a prosperous settlement on the bogs where the owl but lately was wont to hoot its wisdom to unlistening ears. The singular success of Mr. George is that he has made Political Economy interesting. A vast deal of heresy might well be pardoned to the author who has set the average man thinking over the urgent problems which were recently supposed to constitute the dreariest of the sciences. No writer on Political Economy has approached him in the power of clothing its dry bones with life. Those who deny him the title of a social architect cannot refuse him the claim of being an economic artist. This book has much of the charm which characterized his first great work. 'Protection or Free Trade' takes a grip of the reader such as 'Progress and Poverty' laid upon hosts of men in all walks of life. Those of us who knew that Mr. George has been for a year or more engaged on a book upon this well-handled theme have awaited its appearance with curious wonder, to see whether this threshed-out subject could take on new life at his touch. The miracle is wrought. He has written a book which, whether it convince the reader or not, cannot fail to interest him, and allure him on through its pages with a zest that never flags from title-page to finis. He is really a master of words. This, however, is because he is a master of ideas. He has his subject well in hand when he begins to write. He thinks clearly, and thus speaks clearly. He knows what he means, sees his thought vividly in the sunshine, and thus puts it upon paper so that he who runs may read. He goes straight for the point which he has in view, and strides along in a good, honest Saxon gait which leaves it easy for the plainest man of the people to keep in his footsteps.

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This book by the author of 'Progress and Poverty' will doubtless be read with much interest on this side of the Atlantic. The name of Mr. Henry George is now a familiar one to both sections of the Anglo-Saxon race, and they really have no reason to be ashamed of so robust and genial a son, sadly mis guided on many points though he is. Enthusiasts there will always be with an easy method of curing social discontent – men who do not take sufficient account of the difficulties and real conditions by which life is circumscribed, and who dream that by uttering a new formula the gathering evils of the world can be charmed away. Naturally, it is to be regretted that such men have not more of the judicial faculty, which can see all the sides of a complicated question. But enthusiasm and the judicial faculty are seldom associated in the same mind ; and, as we cannot do without the enthusiast, let us be thankful for Mr. George, who is a sincere and noble man, proclaiming earnestly what he believes to be saving truth. For those who may think of reading this book, we hope it is unnecessary to state that Mr. George has no sympathy with the blood-red anarchy which seeks to overturn altar and family and all the existing institutions of civilized society. Instead of disturbing the sacred traditions, Mr. George is evidently a man of strong religious faith, who in all sincerity supports his theories of social reform with quotations from Scripture. Throughout his book there runs a vein of cheerful optimism ; of the cynicism and scepticism which mark so many of the revolutionary class there is scarcely a trace. Nor can we agree with those who think that Mr. George's pet idea, which here reappears, of the nationalization of land by the confiscation of rent is a dangerous one. In a country like ours such a proposal is so extravagant and unpractical that it may be dismissed as harmless. The real danger seems to be of a very different kind – the danger, namely, that the colossal blunder of Mr. George may hide from us the valuable truths or suggestions of truth that may undoubtedly be found in this book. 'Social Problems' consists of twenty-two chapters, each of which treats of a phase of our social condition. It is written from the American standpoint, and a number of questions are discussed which can be rightly appreciated only by those who have an intimate acquaintance with American affairs. But most of it will be quite as interesting to Englishmen as to Americans. The treatment is more popular than in Progress and Poverty ; it is less labored and controversial, and, it must be said, less sophistical. The book is marked by the same eloquence, the same sympathy with the claims of labor, and the same wide and often true insight into the great industrial movements of our time. In these qualities, and not in his theory of the land, lies the strength of Mr. George. He has evidently been a shrewd and sympathetic observer of the social condition of his own country and of ours. He is inspired with the poetry of labor, often tragic to a terrible degree; he has felt its pathos, and knows its dreary monotony, and its subjection to vast economic influences over which it has no control – all the anarchy, in short, that results from the free play of individualism and of unrestricted competition. Mr. George has watched with his own eyes the effects of the most extraordinary development of industry and population that the world has ever seen.

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