John Farrell, The Philosophy of the Single Tax, Part X: In Conclusion

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1883 - 1930)  Sat 8 Feb 1890  Page 9

The Philosophy of the Single Tax.
By J. Farrell.

 

X. IN CONCLUSION.

I have endeavored in the course of these articles to explain in a condensed form, and divested as far as possible of technicalities necessary to a textbook but unfamiliar to the general reader, the doctrine expounded by Henry George in "Progress and Poverty," and all his subsequent writings.  Here and there, perhaps, I have been too prolix or too concise. I have been to blame, may be, for undue repetition or insufficient demonstration. That this should happen is unavoidable in matter written hurriedly, and sometimes at the last moment before its publication. Any consideration of questions of political economy should be couched in terms of the utmost exactitude, every definition should be arbitrary, and every sentence clear and capable of but one interpretation. As in "Progress and Poverty" itself, every line should be read and reread, every obscurity removed and every unnecessary word pruned off. But although conscious of failing in this respect here and there, I feel confident that I have not in any essential point diverged from Mr. George's teaching.

The conclusions reached by Henry George in the course of a profound examination into the causes of poverty, misery and crime are shortly these: That labor is the producer of all things; that capital, a tool shaped by labor's own hand, can only be used to assist it; and that monopoly of the matter or material from which these two partners could produce everything requisite for the satisfaction of human needs is alone responsible for the shocking social conditions that now exist throughout the world.