I received word this morning that Bob Drake died yesterday. He was about my age ... that is to say, much too young. He held a job which about 50 years ago at about the same age, my grandfather held, as director of education at the Henry George School in Chicago. When I first met Bob, at my second CGO conference in London, Ontario, in 2002, he told me about the project he was working on, to update Henry George's classic book, Progress & Poverty, into contemporary language -- I think he described it as the language of Time Magazine. I was excited and intrigued ... at that point I don't think I had yet made it all the way through the original, which I would describe as being in the language of the pre-1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer ... magnificent writing, but not necessarily an easy read. (As I've noted in some posts below, I now read it for pleasure -- but it wasn't P&P that first brought me to Henry George's ideas; rather it was some later speeches.)
Bob did a thought-by-thought updating, and then abridged the resulting book. But the flow is similar to the original, and those who have read the original will find it ringing in their ears. There is a cross-referenced table of contents at http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/PP/toc.htm so that if you wished, you could read the original and Bob's updating side by side. Bob's is accessible, and is estimated to be about 7 hours of reading -- perhaps the best use to which you could put 7 hours if you want to know why we have poverty and what we need to do to end it. (Jeffrey Sachs and his book "The End of Poverty" notwithstanding. Sachs and his fans could benefit from reading this. So could Jim Wallis, and John Edwards, and Bono, and Peter Singer and Susan Pace Hamill and the Gates Foundation and others who speak about wanting to end poverty. If you haven't read and absorbed Henry George's treatise, you are uneducated on the subject of poverty's cause, and, I will assert, nothing you do is going to make a large-scale difference.)
Here are the opening passages of, first, Henry George's original (1879):
The Problem
[01] The present century has been marked
by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization
of steam and electricity, the introduction of improved processes
and laborsaving machinery, the greater subdivision and grander scale
of production, the wonderful facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied
enormously the effectiveness of labor.
[02] At the beginning
of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected,
that laborsaving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the
condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power
of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past.
Could a man of the last century -- a Franklin or a Priestly -- have
seen, in a vision of the future, the steamship taking the place
of the sailing vessel, the railroad train of the wagon, the reaping
machine of the scythe, the threshing machine of the flail; could
he have heard the throb of the engines that in obedience to human
will, and for the satisfaction of human desire, exert a power greater
than that of all the men and all the beasts of burden of the earth
combined; could he have seen the forest tree transformed into finished
lumber -- into doors, sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, with hardly
the touch of a human hand; the great workshops where boots and shoes
are turned out by the case with less labor than the old-fashioned
cobbler could have put on a sole; the factories where, under the
eye of a girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds of stalwart
weavers could have turned it out with their hand looms; could he
have seen steam hammers shaping mammoth shafts and mighty anchors,
and delicate machinery making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting
through the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the whale;
could he have realized the enormous saving of labor resulting from
improved facilities of exchange and communication -- sheep killed
in Australia eaten fresh in England, and the order given by the
London banker in the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the
morning of the same day; could he have conceived of the hundred
thousand improvements which these only suggest, what would he have
inferred as to the social condition of mankind?
[03] It would not have
seemed like an inference; further than the vision went it would
have seemed as though he saw; and his heart would have leaped and
his nerves would have thrilled, as one who from a height beholds
just ahead of the thirst-stricken caravan the living gleam of rustling
woods and the glint of laughing waters. Plainly, in the sight of
the imagination, he would have beheld these new forces elevating
society from its very foundations, lifting the very poorest above
the possibility of want, exempting the very lowest from anxiety
for the material needs of life; he would have seen these slaves
of the lamp of knowledge taking on themselves the traditional curse,
these muscles of iron and sinews of steel making the poorest laborer's
life a holiday, in which every high quality and noble impulse could
have scope to grow.
[04] And out of these
bounteous material conditions he would have seen arising, as necessary
sequences, moral conditions realizing the golden age of which mankind
have always dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and starved; age no
longer harried by avarice; the child at play with the tiger; the
man with the muck rake drinking in the glory of the stars. Foul
things fled, fierce things tame; discord turned to harmony! For
how could there be greed where all had enough? How could the vice,
the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring from poverty
and the fear of poverty, exist where poverty had vanished? Who should
crouch where all were freemen; who oppress where all were peers?
And here is Bob's entire opening chapter:
The Problem of Poverty Amid Progress
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
saw an enormous increase in the ability to produce wealth. Steam and
electricity, mechanization, specialization, and new business methods
greatly increased the power of labor.
Who could have foreseen the steamship, the railroad, the tractor?
Or factories weaving cloth faster than hundreds of weavers? Who could
have heard the throb of engines more powerful than all the beasts of
burden combined? Or envisioned the immense effort saved by improvements
in transportation, communication, and commerce?
Surely, these new powers would elevate society from its
foundations, lifting the poorest above worry for the material needs of
life. Imagine these new machines relieving human toil, muscles of iron
making the poorest worker's life a holiday, giving our nobler impulses
room to grow. Given such bountiful material conditions, surely we could
anticipate the golden age long dreamed of. How could there be greed
when everyone had enough? How could things that arise from poverty --
crime, ignorance, brutality -- exist when poverty had vanished? Such
were the dreams born of this wonderful century of progress.
True, there were disappointments. Discovery upon discovery,
invention after invention still did not lessen the toil of those who
most need relief or bring plenty to the poor. But it seemed there were
so many things that could be blamed for this failure that our faith has
hardly weakened. Surely we would overcome these difficulties in time.
Yet we must now face facts we cannot mistake. All over the
world, we hear complaints of industrial depression: labor condemned to
involuntary idleness; capital going to waste; fear and hardship
haunting workers. All this dull, deadening pain, this keen, maddening
anguish, is summed up in the familiar phrase "hard times."
This situation can hardly be accounted for by local causes. It
is common to communities with widely differing circumstances, political
institutions, financial systems, population densities, and social
organization. There is economic distress under tyrannies, but also
where power is in the hands of the people. Distress where protective
tariffs hamper trade, but also where trade is nearly free. Distress in
countries with paper money, and in countries with gold and silver
currencies.
Beneath all this, we can infer a common cause. It is either
what we call material progress, or something closely connected with it.
What we call an industrial depression is merely an intensification of
phenomena that always accompany material progress. They show themselves
more clearly and more strongly as progress goes on.
Where do we find the deepest poverty, the hardest struggle for
existence, the greatest enforced idleness? Why, wherever material
progress is most advanced. That is to say, where population is densest,
wealth greatest, and production and exchange most highly developed. In
older countries, destitution is found amid the greatest abundance.
Conversely, workers emigrate to newer countries seeking higher
wages. Capital also flows there seeking higher interest. They go where
material progress is still in earlier stages. The older countries,
where material progress has reached its later stages, is where poverty
occurs.
Go to a new community where the race of progress is just
beginning, where production and exchange are still rude and
inefficient. The best house may be only a log cabin; the richest person
must work every day. There is not enough wealth to enable any class to
live in ease and luxury. No one makes an easy living, or even a very
good one -- yet everyone can make a living. While you won't find wealth
and all its effects, neither will you find beggars. No one willing and
able to work lives in fear of want. Though there is no luxury, there is
no poverty.
But just when they start to achieve the conditions civilized
communities strive for, poverty takes a darker turn. This occurs as
savings in production and exchange are made possible by denser
settlement, closer connection with the rest of the world, and
labor-saving machinery. It occurs just as wealth consequently
increases. (And wealth increases not only in the aggregate, but in
proportion to population.)
Now, some will find living better and easier -- but others
will find it hard to get a living at all. Beggars and prisons are the
mark of progress as surely as elegant mansions, bulging warehouses, and
magnificent churches.
Unpleasant as it may be to admit, it is at last becoming
evident that progress has no tendency to reduce poverty. The great fact
is, poverty, with all its ills, appears whenever progress reaches a
certain stage. Poverty is, in some way, produced by progress itself.
Progress simply widens the gulf between rich and poor. It
makes the struggle for existence more intense. Wherever these forces
are at work, large classes are maintained on charity.
Yes, in certain ways, the poorest now enjoy what the richest
could not a century ago. But this does not demonstrate an improvement
-- not so long as the ability to obtain the necessities of life has not
increased. A beggar in the city may enjoy many things that a backwoods
farmer cannot. But the condition of the beggar is not better than that
of an independent farmer. What we call progress does not improve the
condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human
life. In fact, it tends to depress their condition even more.
These new forces do not act on society from underneath.
Rather, it is as though an immense wedge is being driven through the
middle. Those above it are elevated, but those below are crushed.
Where the poor have long existed, this effect is no longer
obvious. When the lowest class can barely live, it is impossible to get
any lower: the next step is out of existence altogether. This has been
the case for a long time in many parts of Europe. But where new
settlements advance to the condition of older ones, we see that
material progress not only fails to relieve poverty, it actually
produces it.
In the United States, it is obvious that squalor and misery
increase as villages grow into cities. Poverty is most apparent in
older and richer regions. If poverty is less deep in San Francisco than
New York, is it not because it lags behind? Who can doubt that when it
reaches the point where New York is now, there will also be ragged
children in the streets?
So long as the increased wealth that progress brings goes to
building great fortunes and increasing luxury, progress is not real.
When the contrast between the haves and have-nots grows ever sharper,
progress cannot be permanent. To educate people condemned to poverty
only makes them restless. To base a state with glaring social
inequalities on political institutions where people are supposed to be
equal is to stand a pyramid on its head. Eventually, it will fall.
This relation of poverty to progress is the great question of our time. It is the riddle that the Sphinx* of Fate puts to us. If we do not answer correctly, we will be destroyed.
As important as this question is, we have no answer that accounts for the facts or provides a cure.
Experts break into an anarchy of opinion, and people accept
misguided ideas. They are led to believe that there is a necessary
conflict between capital and labor; that machinery is an evil; that
competition must be restrained; or that it is the duty of government to
provide capital or furnish work. Such ideas are fraught with danger,
for they allow charlatans and demagogues to control the masses.
But these ideas cannot be successfully challenged until political economy gives some answer to the great question.
Political economy is not a set of dogmas. It is the explanation
of a certain set of facts and their mutual relationships. Its
deductions follow from premises we all recognize. In fact, we base the
reasoning and actions of everyday life on them. These premises can be
reduced to an expression as simple and basic as the physical law that
says: motion follows the line of least resistance.
Political economy proceeds from the following simple axiom:
People seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion.
The process then consists simply of identification and separation.
In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry. Its conclusions,
when valid, should be just as apparent.
Now, in political economy we cannot test theories by
artificially producing combinations or conditions, as other sciences
can. Yet we can apply tests that are no less conclusive. This can be
done by comparing societies in which different conditions exist. Or, we
can test various theories in our imagination -- by separating,
combining, adding, or eliminating forces or factors of known direction.
Properly done, such an investigation should yield a conclusion
that will correlate with every other truth. Every effect has a cause;
every fact implies a preceding fact.
In the following pages, I will use these methods to discover
what law connects poverty with progress. I believe this law will also
explain the recurring cycles of industrial and commercial depression,
which now seem so unexplainable.
Current political economy cannot explain why poverty persists
in the midst of increasing wealth. It teaches only unrelated and
disjointed theories. It seems to me, this is not due to any inability
of the science. Rather, there must be some false step in its premises,
or some overlooked factor in its estimates.
Such mistakes are generally concealed by respect paid to
authority. Therefore, I will take nothing for granted. Accepted
theories will be tested; established facts will be freshly questioned.
I will not shrink from any conclusion, but promise to follow the truth
wherever it may lead.
What the outcome proves to be is not our affair. If the
conclusions we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch.
If they challenge institutions that have long been regarded as wise and
natural, let us not turn back.
continue to Chapter 1
Bob's abridgment was published in 2006. Last fall, he completed another step in this project: he recorded an audio version of his book. It is available online at http://www.hgchicago.org/audio. Download it to your iPod or MP3 player, and listen while you commute or exercise. (And in a Georgist world, realize that cities would be more walkable, and fewer of us would need to commute! We would be able to afford housing closer to our work or to the other amenities that great and small cities offer, if we wanted it.)
Hardcopy is available from Amazon, Schalkenbach (with a study guide and a complementary copy of "Henry George and the Reconstruction of Capitalism), and the Henry George Institute (with an online course).
Bob Drake died suddenly, much too young, and he will be missed. My sympathy goes out to his wonderful wife, Spider Saloff, a talented jazz singer. I'm grateful for his contribution to sharing Henry George's ideas with a 21st century audience, and will miss his sense of humor and his presence. Carpe Diem!
