With Henry George, the underworld of economics gained an American recruit—a rugged but unschooled individual who had been an adventurer, gold prospector, sailor, printer, pamphleteer, journalist for the San Francisco Times and Post, lecturer, bureaucrat, tramp, and politician. At one time, the University of California considered him for the chair of political economy, but he ruined his chances by declaring in a speech that "logical thinking was all that was needed for a study of economics."
Unlike his fellow dwellers in the underworld, during his lifetime he gained popularity—more in England than in the United States. An active proponent for his beliefs, he was almost elected mayor of New York City, barely losing to Tammany Hall's candidate and running ahead of Theodore Roosevelt. Drafted to run a second time in 1897, he died on election eve.
His best known work is Progress and Poverty (1879), a passionate commentary which professes that the true cause of poverty is land rent. To Henry George, it was the height of injustice that landowners should enjoy huge incomes while they contribute nothing to society. Not only does rent work a hardship on the capitalist, it also straps the worker and leads to speculation in land values, as was evident in his time in California. Worst of all, rent is the cause of depression, George claimed.
Part of his naive thesis contains a solution: a single tax on land equal to its rent. By negating rent with one tax, all other taxes could be eliminated. Wages would rise, and capital earnings would increase, for money would circulate more freely with no taxes for the non-landowner to pay. In short, the single tax would be society's magic cure.
Regardless of George's lack of logic, his book became a bestseller; he achieved overnight fame. Progress and Poverty received praise as the worthy successor to Smith's Wealth of Nations. George won an international reputation after a lecture tour to England. The single tax became an obsession with him. However, the official world of economics decried his ideas, so Henry George was exiled to the underworld of economics.
