LVTFan's Blog

The Question Before the People, Henry George's election-year speech, San Francisco, 1876-08-15

144 years, another presidential election year --- and weeks after the centennial.

 

THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PEOPLE.
What is the Real Issue in the Presidential Campaign?

A SPEECH BY HENRY GEORGE,

BEFORE THE TILDEN AND HENDRICKS CENTRAL CLUB,

AT DASHAWAY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO, ON THE EVENING OF AUGUST 15th, 1876.

• Parties and Party Principles.
• The Two Great Parties of every Country.
• The Two Permanent American Parties.
• The Two Great American Party Leaders
• The Genealogy of our Parties
• Corruption and its Causes
• How Centralization Fosters Corruption.
• How "Protective" Taxes Foster Corruption.
• How Favored Corporations Foster Corruption.
• The Causes of Business Stagnation and Industrial Depression
• How the Policy of our Government Shackles Labor
• The Fault One of Policy not of Men.
• The Appeal to Prejudice.
• A Question for Republicans.
• Men and Reform.
• What may be Hoped from a Democratic Success.
• The Premonitions of Decay.
• The Remedy yet in our Hands.
• A Recapitulation.

The Meeting being called to order, the Hon. THOMAS P. RYAN, President of the Club, came forward and introduced Mr. HENRY GEORGE, who spoke as follows:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: We are coming to another Presidential election under circumstances which ought to give a fresh impulse to patriotic feeling. We have just entered upon a new century of the Republic the Republic one and indivisible. Over the whole vast territory held by over forty-five millions of people the same flag has been given to the breeze, the same anniversaries kept, the same traditions recalled. The thrill of Lexington, the joy of Bunker Hill, the defiant thunder of Moultrie have again swept through the land, and out again with all the added meaning of a century has rung the announcement of our independence. With eyes so fixed on the old beacons; with faces so turned towards the august shapes that loom through the mists of a hundred years, cold must be the heart that has not felt the prejudices of section and the surviving animosities of civil strife melting in the glow of a patriotism that knows but one common country.

Can we not, should we not, put away from us in this Centennial year all the rancor of party feeling? Can we not, should we not, make this Presidential election in fact, what it is in theory, a great council of the nation, to which we come not as the adherents of rival factions, but in the temper of men with mutual bonds and common interests, counciling with each other as to what is best for all? For this election means much more than the choice of an Executive. We have not simply to say what man shall govern, but what ideas shall govern; not merely who shall take the helm, but in what direction the Ship of State shall be steered.

Remembering this, the political contest is lifted above the low plain of denunciation and demagoguism, and becomes not a contest for spoils in which the people are simply permitted to choose which gang shall plunder them; but a solemn momentous inquiry, demanding from each voter a conscientious judgment.

Now, however much we may differ on minor questions it seems to me that the great body of the American people must find common ground on one thing the desire to restrain political corruption and to reduce the public burdens. It is to this class that I wish to address myself.

If one party avowed itself in favor of reform and the other party avowedly opposed it, the citizen who conscientiously wished to cast his vote for reform would be in no perplexity. But as is always the case, both parties ask the suffrage of the voter with the name of reform upon their lips. Which shall we believe?

Congressman Maguire's speech on Chinese Exclusion - October 13 & 14, 1893 --- and the remedy

This is a very long speech; it stretched over 2 days.  It was occasioned by discussion of legislation on Chinese exclusion.  James G. Maguire (1853-1920) represented San Francisco in Congress from 1893 to 1899.  Georgists are acquainted with him in part because of his writings in The Standard, Henry George's weekly newspaper, including the 1887 speech to the Anti-Poverty Society in NYC in which Judge Maguire spoke of seeing the cat, which soon became a shorthand for that AHA! moment when one starts to see the full beauty of Henry George's ideas. 

I've seen parts of this speech in various places, but don't always see what I think is the most important and remarkable part of it.    

The situation Congressman Maguire describes in San Francisco is dramatic, and one can see why explaining the situation to his mostly East Coast colleagues in Congress was a challenge. 

In the district which I represent there is a vastly greater number of adult Chinese male population than of adult males of the Caucasian race, citizens and aliens combined. That is the situation there. That was true of the whole city of San Francisco, according to the statistics, until quite recently. I believe it to be the condition in San Francisco now. I believe the census returns of Chinese population in San Francisco to be wholly and grossly inaccurate.

At the end of the first section, we get a hint of where the speech is going.

You see the hardships imposed by our Federal laws upon the Chinese, and your sympathies go out to them because you do not see the other side of the picture. We see the oppression, misery, degradation, and slavery to which our own laborers are reduced as a direct result of Chinese immigration. We see that the imported Chinese coolies are mere agencies in the hands of monopolists—domestic and foreign—by which our own people are gradually reduced to a condition of wretchedness approximating to the social condition of the Chinese slaves, and without the slightest feeling of malice against the unfortunate Chinamen we demand their exclusion and their deportation as necessary measures of defense to our own people.