LVTFan's Blog

Terrence Powderly: On Earth Peace, Good Will Toward Men (Cosmopolitan, December, 1891)

 

"ON EARTH PEACE, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN."

T. V. POWDERLY.

Terence V. Powderly was born January 22, 1849, at Carbondale, Pennsylvania. His parents were natives of Ireland and were honest hard-working people.The boy's school days ended at the age of thirteen.  At fourteen he was examiner for the Delaware and Hudson Canal company: at seventeen he was apprenticed in the Delaware, and Hudson shops to learn the trade of machinist; at twenty he was a machinist in the locomotive shops of the Lackawanna railway at Scranton, and in 1871 joined a labor organization.  Two years later, in spite of the fact that he was a Conservative, he was discharged from the shops because of his activity in the labor union.  He worked at his trade wherever he could find employment notwithstanding the "black list" until 1878, when he was elected Mayor of Scranton, an office he retained for six years. He has been a chief factor in organizing the Knights of Labor, whose General Master Workman he has been since 1879.

IT is easier to point out the wrong than rectify it, less difficult to find something to condemn or find fault with than praise or endorse; and in the field of industry, while the advance toward better conditions has been more rapid during the past decade than for centuries before, the results are not so apparent to the worker in the field as to the looker-on. The great danger which presented itself to the people fifteen years ago was the law. The poor were without friends: they were the recipients of denunciation from statesman, press and pulpit. It was considered rude to even hint that the man who soiled his hands in manual toil had a right to any consideration other than a patronizing kindness at the hands of his employer, and to suggest that others should take an interest in his welfare was to incur the displeasure of society. The law made it a crime to be idle and gave to employers the privilege of turning the workman away without protest. To be out of money and on "tramp" was an offense against the law: it is today, but is not punished so rigorously as it used to be.

The Landlord's Game: a 1911 LTE, likely from Lizzie Magie

Earlier this week, five of us, in Arden, sat down to play The Landlord's Game, for the first time. The next day, I went searching for more information in old newspapers, and found what I think is an anonymous letter from Lizzie Magie.  It appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune on February 8, 1911, and was signed simply "Reader."

Voice of the People column

THE LANDLORD'S GAME.

To the Editor of The Tribune:

Sir, --- Some people are possessed of the idea that the franchise should not be given to womankind on the ground that she can't think or reason on political subjects as man can. Of course, this idea is an old relic of barbarism when it was considered that a wife was the "property" of the husband, just as his ox or mule was "property." At that time women were considered as the cause of all the evil in the world and out of the reach of salvation, but a better day is dawning. Women are affected more by bad "economic" condition than men are, and hence many are beginning to think along these lines, and it is surprising how correct their ideas are once they get a subject under consideration.

For example, before us is the landlord's game, invented and patented by a young woman of Chicago, a Miss Magie. She was a stenographer by profession, but could not but see the horribly unjust conditions that surround us, and, by careful consideration discovered that it was the result of the game being played on us by landlords. So, in order to popularize the study of the land question, she invented a parlor game, something like checkers, and called it the "Landlord's Game.

There are no stops for refreshments when playing it. It combines all the features of the standard chance and skill games.

It is played on a board about 18 inches square, divided into forty-two spaces which represent many of the various institutions of modern life. The names of some of the spaces are: Slambang Trolley, Soakum Lighting System, Gee Whiz Railroad, P. D. Q. R. R., Lord Blueblood's Estate, D. F. Hogg's Game Preserves, Wayback, Boomtown, Easy Street, Fairhope Avenue, Jail, Poor House, and other "signs" of civilization.

The play starts by a throw of dice which indicates the moves of the players and from that time on the deals between individuals, corporations and governments are entered into with vim and interest. At the start the players are about equally equipped, but as the moves continue one or another of the players gets the advantage over others.

The principal feature of the game is the buying, selling and renting of land. It contains all the element of success and failure in real life and the object is the same as the human race in general seem to have, i.e., the accumulating of wealth without earning it. Money, land title and franchise charters are used in the game. Lots are bought and sold, rents collected, money is borrowed, interest and taxes are paid.

There are two spaces on the board that represent land held out of use --- land that is neither for rent nor for sale --- each of which has a sign "no trespassing, go to jail." One of these tracts of land is "owned" by Lord Blueblood of London, Eng., and represents "foreign" ownership of the soil. A jail is kindly provided for anyone who trespasses on this land, and these unfortunates must serve their time and pay fines.

Should any player be so unlucky or so reckless or extravagant as to become "broke," there is a nice little poorhouse off in one corner where he may tarry until he makes a lucky throw or until some friend takes pity on him and lends him enough to set him on his feet again. And here is where he generally gets soaked, for the other players, as is often the case in real life, taking advantage of the unfortunate one's necessities, demand an enormous rate of interest for the use of their money, which the impecunious individual must promise to pay before he can complete his round and get his wages. The railing and chafing at the others when one player finds himself "in jail" and the expressions of "mock sympathy" and condolence when one is obliged to go to the poor house, is a "merry feature" of the game.

Bidding for lots as they become "for sale" is also a very interesting feature of the game and a good illustration of how prices are made and regulated by supply and demand.

The board contains two spaces marked "Chance" and when a player stops on one of these he draws a "chance" card and may get anything from a little yellow dog up to a hundred dollar bill. Again, he may get caught robbing a hen roost and he is put in jail, or he may get caught robbing the public and be elevated to the senate.

There is one space marked "luxury" that only the rich can afford, although sometimes a player will spend his last dollar and will even borrow money in order to buy this luxury.

"Stock-jobbing" is also represented and players who speculate "win and lose" as usual, but the stock-jobber Mr. Tim Sharpe, always gets his commission, although he himself is sometimes caught in the "skin game" and is sent to jail.

The player who can buy up the largest amount of land and get the monopoly of transportation, is always the winner, although, if one is extremely lucky he may possibly beat the landlord, but, as in real life the chances are largely in the landlord's favor.

The ideas embodied in the landlords game are all borrowed from real life --- real, modern, commercial, highly civilized special privileges for some people and poverty, jails and poor houses for others.

This game is easily learned and played by children as well as adults. It is expected that school boards and educationists will equip all schools with liberal supplies of these games in order that pupils and professors may familiarize themselves with the secrets of success in life and thus be enabled to "play the game." It teaches political economy from real life, and forever rebukes the assertion that women are not fitted to be voters because they can't think. Yours truly, READER.

Interestingly, the letter speaks of it both as "landlords game" and "landlord's game."

The game's cards themselves make wonderful reading.  (We were too busy playing to take the time to enjoy them.)    I'll post more when I've had a chance to study the rules again, having learned a bit by playing.

John Farrell, The Philosophy of the Single Tax, Part II: The Need for Reform

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1883-1930)  Sat 19 Oct 1889  Page 5  

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SINGLE TAX.
BY J. FARRELL

No. II.  THE NEED FOR REFORM.

The speaker with whose words I closed my paper of last week went on to say that if the followers of Henry George occasionally gave some reason for the very common accusation that they regarded their leader as an economic pope that pope had, at least, learned his business. But as a general rule there is no foundation for such a charge other than the density of those who make it. Of the prominent supporters of the single tax in these colonies, there is not one, I believe, who is not quite prepared to state his case from start to finish and justify every point of his belief with cogent reasons, and anyone who is conversant with the literature of the subject in the United States and England can readily believe that it is the same there. Whatever doubt existed in the minds of those who were at first inclined to accept "Progress and Poverty" as the revelation of a new truth was dispelled by the attempts made to controvert the writer's positions. After Arnold Toynbee, W. H. Matlock, the Duke of Argyll, and others less widely known, but in some cases infinitely more worthy to be heard, had spoken, it began to be realized that no coherent argument in opposition to the single tax theory could be put forward. But there has not been a blindfold acceptance of the whole belief of Henry George. His teaching has been very closely scrutinized indeed, and no better proof of this could be given than that a large number of the most diligent students of it, while holding his demonstration, that by taxing away land values poverty may be finally abolished, to be complete, refuse to accept his views with regard to the matter of interest. The point here at issue is highly problematical and perfectly immaterial, as it is one which must bring its own solution with it, but it is the only part of the work that those who have pored closely over the whole of it hesitate to endorse. The wonder is that such a stupendous task as the evolving of order and sequence out of the chaotic mass of contradictions which passed as a science a dozen years ago and was called political economy, should have been so well performed by one mind, not that one or two errors may have been made. It was superhuman work to undertake, such a work as a college of trained specialists, rather than an individual, should have engaged in. And, looking upon the result and knowing of the care and the patience and conscientious effort of the writer, and his great ability, it is surely about a fair thing to feel impatient when economists of the Teohey calibre undertake to declare that the single tax is unjust or unworkable. Here in Sydney there are dozens of people who tell you that they advocated land

John Farrell, The Philosophy of the Single Tax, Part VI: Trades Unionism and Socialism

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1883-1930)  Sat 4 Jan 1890  Page 9

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SINGLE TAX.
BY J. FARRELL.

No. VI. TRADES UNIONISM AND SOCIALISM.

It is not probable that the protective delusion will so possess the people of New South Wales as to cause a change of policy in the direction of increased duties on imports. There is little doubt, even in the minds of many of those who champion trade restriction and try to appear confident of ultimate success, that the political power of their party reached high-water mark at the last general election. The depression that for a few years had sat so heavily upon New South Wales, as a result of former land booms, severe droughts, the cessation of heavy governmental expenditure on public works and other obvious causes, was an instrument upon which the protectionists played to some purpose and to eager audiences. A great mass of the people, conscious that things were not by any means satisfactory or prosperous, were discontented, and the disciples of restriction had the great advantage of proposing a change to those who were weary of existing conditions. But since then much has taken place to reconcile the electors of this colony with the difference between their tariff and that of most of the other colonies. The latest statistics from all quarters have shown substantial advance on our part and have rendered it necessary on the part of the press of some of these colonies to resort to misrepresentation so labored and palpable as to entirely defeat its own ends. The present feeling among the largest class of those who think about these things in our own colony is becoming more and more favorable to expansion rather than restriction of freedom of trade. In the United Kingdom the real vital organization of free trade — the Financial Reform Association — has given its full adhesion to the single-tax principle, and avowing that land value taxation and the total abolition of all other imposts is the end to which all that British free trade yet means is but part of the road, is  working with a vigor and directness that cannot fail to have great and immediate effect. So far from any idea of protection, or fair trade as they call it there, getting a hold, the air is full of demand for the larger measure of free trade which shall give to labor its due reward. There is ample indication that such a wave of public feeling as that which once swept down the Corn Laws is now rising, and that before it land monopoly in Great Britain will go. The keener political intelligence which during the past few years has awakened among the masses will hardly much longer be hoodwinked by a scheme which helps one class at the expense of many others.

Trades unionism is another reed upon which labor is beginning to learn that it has leaned far too confidently. We have had proof of how little of such pressure it can bear in the defeat and practical decimation of the Knights of Labor in the United States. This was the most powerful and splendidly organized industrial army the world has any record of, and in the days of its growth much was confidently