If you've been reading about Henry George's ideas for a while, particularly in older writings, you might have come across references to "seeing the cat." It might be "have you seen the cat?" or "how I saw the cat" or more commonly, "do you see the cat?" It is a shorthand for "have you seen the big picture?" "do you get how all this fits together to solve what otherwise seems to be unsolvable?"
It started with a speaker at an Anti-Poverty Society meeting in Manhattan on a Sunday night in November 1887. The speaker was Judge James Maguire of California, later to be a congressman. The Anti-Poverty Society had held its first public meeting in May, 1887, on a Sunday night, and thereafter met nearly every Sunday night in one or more large halls in Manhattan, filling all the seats and the standing room. The speeches given there, week after week, were extraordinary, and should be collected. (That will happen.) These were not short speeches -- some ran 2 hours, interrupted by enthusiastic audiences. But they come alive on paper and on screen, 130 years later. For now, I'll share an excerpt from Judge Maguire's speech as it appeared in The Standard, Issue #045, 1887-11-12.
“Judge Maguire, who followed Dr. McGlynn, was greeted by round after round of applause when he came forward. When it had ceased he said:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen — The way that people rise up to defend this cause when they fully understand it reminds me of Mr. George’s story about the cat. There are men who have listened to an address on this question or that have read something about it who declare to you that they don't see anything in it at all, and though they look at it again and again some of them still don’t see it, and you point to different principles that are involved in it and still they fail to see it. You have seen little pictures in store windows with trees, animals, birds and some grass and some plants for a background. At first glance you don't think there is much of anything to one of these, but when you see a fellow standing and staring at a show window, the strongest impulse in the world comes upon you to find out what he is looking at, and you go up and look too. When you inquire what he is looking at he answers: “I am looking at that picture. Don't you see that question down at the bottom, ‘Where is the cat?'” You look, but don’t see any cat. By and by somebody comes along who has seen the picture before or who has had the cat pointed out to him. He asks: “Don't you see that twig?” “Yes.”
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