The Birthday, and a Book, of a Great American, Part One

This is the first part of the speech I gave to USPTO Toastmasters on September 2, “Celebrating the Birthday, and a Book, of a Great American”:

Happy Henry George Day. Today, September 2, is the one hundred and eighty-second birthday of Henry George, and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation has published an annotated critical edition of George’s Protection or Free Trade, first printed in book form in 1886. [I held my copy up for the camera.]

George had begun becoming famous in 1879, with the publication of Progress and Poverty In 1879, followed by Social Problems and then The Land Question. Also, he had twice been arrested by the British authorities in Ireland, creating a minor international incident and winning favorable attention from New York’s Irish Americans.

And then came Protection or Free Trade. Much of the book presents a standard case for free trade, although with exceptional eloquence and wit, and with apposite examples. George explains how “protection” for the American steel industry harmed America’s steel-using industries. Looking at Trump’s and then Biden’s trade policies, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

It was George who pointed out that countries at war try to cut off each other’s imports by blockading their ports, and thus that protectionism teaches us to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

More than this, Henry George was a public choice economist avant la lettre, as my friend Professor William Peirce points out in the preface. That is, George concerned himself with how politics and administration really work.

To be continued.

The Birthday, and a Book, of a Great American, Part Two

This is the second part of the speech I gave at a Toastmasters meeting on September 2.

It’s not enough to imagine an ideal tariff. George wrote that an actual tariff that emerges from the political process resembles what a protectionist thinker might propose as a bucket of paint thrown against a wall resembles a fresco by Raphael. Introducing a tariff bill into Congress is like tossing a banana into a cage full of monkeys. Every industry capable of being protected engages in frantic lobbying.

These and other arguments take up much of the book, but then, after confuting the protectionists, George addressed the questions of why many workers supported protectionism, and why standard free trade wasn’t good enough. There were still hunger and pauperism in Britain after repeal of the Corn Laws.

Free trade makes a country richer just as improved machinery in factories makes a country richer, and should tend to increase wages. But neither one necessarily does increase wages if the tendency is checked. The trouble was that increased productivity goes into raising land rents, not wages.

If you think these nineteenth century ideas are irrelevant to the world of today, by the way, read what people are saying about wage stagnation, and look at what has happened to real estate prices over the past sixty years.

George advocated what he saw as true free trade. That did not mean tariffs for revenue only, as in post-1846 British “free trade.” It meant ending all tariffs, and also ending all internal taxes which infringed on people’s rights to keep the fruits of their own labor, and engage in voluntary exchanges with others.

Instead, government should be financed by taxing the value of land. This would free labor from taxation, and it would also keep land from being held out of use by land speculators. That way, laborers could find employment for themselves, and would not have to accept low wages to work for others.

Henry George became the leader of a mass movement and one of the most famous men in America. In 1886, the year Protection or Free Trade was published, he was drafted by the labor movement to run for mayor of New York City, and would probably have won if the ballots had been counted honestly.

Today, George is rather obscure and the Georgist or single tax movement is small. Yet some of us believe that an ignored truth is still true, that the economic and social problems of today cannot be solved without addressing the land question, and that an issue is not settled until it is settled right.

Happy Henry George Day.