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Women have long been in the workplace, though at one
time most were not there by choice; 125 years ago,
children were also employed in many of our largest
cities.
When middle-class and upper-middle class women entered
the workplace in large numbers in the second half of the
20th century, most seemed to be seeking
self-actualization. But within not more than 20 years,
we've reached the point that most women, even those with
several young children, no longer see themselves as
having a real economic choice about whether to work. The
cost of living has risen — and particularly the
cost of housing — as documented by Elizabeth Warren
and Amelian Tyagi in their recent book, The
Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are
Going Broke. Middle class families no longer have
the built-in insurance provided by having only one spouse
employed, they have less discretionary income than did
their parents' generation, and they have higher fixed
costs, including child care. The large group of
two-income families have bid up housing costs. Families
with only one income earner simply can't compete with
them, whether it be a single-parent family or a family
which chooses to keep one parent at home with the
children.
It gives one pause to consider how different life
might be for millions of Americans if, before women
entered the workforce in search of career satisfaction,
we had moved to land value taxation. Instead of the price
of housing being bid up, creating big winners and lots of
losers, the commons would have collected some of the land
value increase — and left the wages in the pockets
of those who earned them.
The next horizon? Enough leisure, for both men and
women, at all points on the income and wealth spectrums,
to enjoy life, rather than simply being workers.
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.
...
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!
This is not merely a deduction of political
economy; it is a fact of experience. We know it because
we have seen it. Within our own times, under our very
eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all, and
through all; that Power of which the whole universe is
but the manifestation; that Power which maketh all
things, and without which is not anything made that is
made, has increased the bounty which men may enjoy, as
truly as though the fertility of nature had been
increased.
- Into the mind of one came the thought that
harnessed steam for the service of mankind.
- To the inner ear of another was whispered the
secret that compels the lightning to bear a message
around the globe.
- In every direction have the laws of matter
been revealed; in every department of industry have
arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel, whose effect
upon the production of wealth has been precisely the same
as an increase in the fertility of nature.
What has been the result? Simply
that land owners get all the gain. The wonderful
discoveries and inventions of our century have neither
increased wages nor lightened toil. The effect has simply
been to make the few richer; the many more
helpless! Can it be that the gifts of the Creator
may be thus misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light
thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings while
greed rolls in wealth — that the many should want
while the few are surfeited? Turn to history, and on
every page may be read the lesson that such wrong never
goes unpunished; that the Nemesis that follows injustice
never falters nor sleeps! Look around today. Can this
state of things continue? May we even say, “After
us the deluge!” Nay; the pillars of the state are
trembling even now, and the very foundations of society
begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath.
The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in
ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun. The
fiat has gone forth! With steam and
electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces
have entered the world that will either compel us to a
higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as
civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed
before. It is the delusion which precedes
destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which
the civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the
passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between democratic
ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there
is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States,
as there in Europe, it may be seen arising.
- We cannot go on permitting men to vote and
forcing them to tramp.
- We cannot go on educating boys and girls in
our public schools and then refusing them the right to
earn an honest living.
- We cannot go on prating of the inalienable
rights of man and then denying the inalienable right to
the bounty of the Creator.
Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to
ferment, and elemental forces gather for the strife! ...
read the whole speech
Henry George: The Land Question
(1881)
It is the year of grace 1881, and of the Republic the
105th. The girl who has brought in coal for my fire is
twenty years old. She was born in New York, and can
neither read nor write. To me, when I heard it, this
seemed sin and shame, and I got her a spelling-book. She
is trying what she can, but it is uphill work. She has
really no time. Last night when I came in, at eleven, she
was not through scrubbing the halls. She gets four
dollars a month. Her shoes cost two dollars a pair. She
says she can sew; but I guess it is about as I can. In
the natural course of things, this girl will be a mother
of citizens of the Republic.
Underneath are girls who can sew; they run
sewing-machines with their feet all day. I have seen
girls in Asia carrying water-jugs on their heads and
young women in South America bearing burdens. They were
lithe and strong and symmetrical; but to turn a young
woman into motive power for a sewing-machine is to weaken
and injure her physically. And these girls are to rear,
or ought to rear, citizens of the Republic.
But there is worse and worse than this. Go out into the
streets at night, and you will find them filled with
girls who will never be mothers. To the man who has known
the love of mother, of sister, of sweetheart, wife, and
daughter, this is the saddest sight of all.
The ladies of the Brooklyn churches – they are
getting up petitions for the suppression of Mormon
polygamy; they would have it rooted out with pains and
penalties, trampled out, if need be, with fire and sword;
and their reverend Congressman-elect is going, when he
takes his seat, to introduce a most stringent bill to
that end; for that a man should have more wives than one
is a burning scandal in a Christian country. So it is;
but there are also other burning scandals. As for
scandals that excite talk, I will spare Brooklyn a
comparison with Salt Lake. But as to ordinary things: I
have walked through the streets of Salt Lake City, by day
and by night, without seeing what in the streets of New
York or Brooklyn excites no comment. Polygamy is
unnatural and wrong, no doubt of that, for Nature brings
into the world something over twenty-two boys for every
twenty girls. But is not a state of society unnatural and
wrong in which there are thousands and thousands of girls
for whom no husband ever offers? Can we brag of a state
of society in which one citizen can load his wife with
more diamonds than an Indian chief can put beads on his
squaw, while many other citizens are afraid to marry lest
they cannot support a wife – a state of society in
which prostitution flourishes? Polygamy is bad, but is it
not better than that? Civilization is advancing day by
day; never was such progress as we are making! Yet
divorces are increasing and insanity is increasing. What
is the goal of a civilization that tends toward free love
and the madhouse? ... . read
the whole article
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed
collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
I AM convinced that we make a great mistake in
depriving one sex of voice in public matters, and that we
could in no way so increase the attention, the
intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the
solution of social problems as by enfranchising our
women. Even if in a ruder state of society the
intelligence of one sex suffices for the management of
common interests, the vastly more intricate, more
delicate and more important questions which the progress
of civilization makes of public moment, require the
intelligence of women as of men, and that we never can
obtain until we interest them in public affairs. And I
have come to believe that very much of the inattention,
the flippancy, the want of conscience, which we see
manifested in regard to public matters of the greatest
moment, arises from the fact that we debar our women from
taking their proper part in these matters. Nothing will
fully interest men unless it also interests women. There
are those who say that women are less intelligent than
men; but who will say that they are less influential?
—
Social Problems
— Chapter 22: Conclusion
... go to "Gems from
George"
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