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| Wealth and Want | |||||||
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Blasphemy Henry George: Ode to Liberty (1877 speech)
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of
justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and
from which other men must live, we have made them his
bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress
goes on. This is the subtle alchemy that in ways they do
not realize is extracting from the masses in every
civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is
instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place
of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing
political despotism out of political freedom, and must
soon transmute democratic institutions into
anarchy.
It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children the joy and innocence of life’s morning. Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something more august than Charity — it is Justice herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?
Though it may take the language
of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes to the
inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and
brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded
hands to the All-Father and lays on Him the
responsibility for the want and crime of our great
cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the
Just One. A merciful man would have better ordered the
world; a just man would crush with his foot such an
ulcerous ant-hill! It is not the
Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and
misery that fester amid our civilization. The
Creator showers upon us his gifts — more than
enough for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we
tread them in the mire — tread them in the mire,
while we tear and rend each other!
In the very centers of our civilization today are want and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundredfold! Would poverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the material universe could be utilized only through land. And land, being private property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land owners would alone be benefited. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the starvation point! ... read the whole speech and also Significant Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty: 14 Liberty, and Equality of Opportunity (in the unabridged P&P: Part X: The Law of Human Progress — Chapter 5: The Central Truth) |
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Wealth and Want
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... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society
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