Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age by Edward T. O’Donnell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age by Edward T. O’Donnell Victoria M. Breting-Garcia Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age. By Edward T. O’Donnell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 378 pages, $26.00 Cloth. On May 23, 2014, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) distributed a special edition of their weekly magazine, Science. Published in the wake of global protest following the economic malaise of the early twenty-first century, “Haves and have-nots: The Science of Inequality” presented a series of essays exploring the origins and impacts of global economic inequality, synthesizing the ongoing efforts of archaeologists, ethnographers, and economists to understand the dynamics that create and sustain the stark relationship of material progress and rising rates of poverty within societies all over the world. In his book, Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age, Edward O’Donnell presents a vivid panorama of events that ushered in the modern era in America. With an eye on the striking similarities of the late nineteenth-century Gilded Age with contemporary socioeconomic rifts, full-blown during the economic turndown of 2008 and the Occupy movements in 2011, he returns the reader to America’s industrial beginnings in the nineteenth century to deconstruct the origins and underlying dynamics of rising poverty and income inequality. His narrative provides a unique and compelling forum for understanding the depth of the nation’s on-going ideological struggle with “wealth inequality, labor unions, immigration, terrorism, women’s rights, family values, money in politics, [and] voter eligibility” (xxv). [End Page 227] Like rivers running through the narrative of post-revolutionary American history, the rise of global cities and their impacts on international commerce have had a compelling influence on the quality of human life worldwide. Rising standards of living and upward social mobility usher in new sets of cultural tradeoffs. Today, the ethics of gentrification are no longer taken for granted in cities where alarming numbers of homeless people living on the streets have prompted new calls for progressive reform. In the week of May 20, 2018, the New York Times published Unsheltered, an investigative series of essays exploring the breakdown of the city’s affordable housing system. That same day CNBC Jeff Daniels posted an article, “As California’s homelessness grows, the crisis emerges as a major issue in state’s gubernatorial race.” It is estimated that one-fourth of the nation’s homeless population are unable to find affordable housing in California, one of the wealthiest states in the nation. Set alongside contemporary compilations of statistics and income datasets accumulated over more than two centuries, O’Donnell’s narrative of the life and teachings of Henry George is a timely counterpoint to emerging analytical models of absolute poverty and its affects on economic growth, in developing and wealthy countries alike. The canon of George’s economic theories and policy recommendations trace antecedents in the great political revolutions of the late eighteenth century. Deeper still are the values of common law and the economic rights of the individual as they evolved over centuries, buried in the lives and souls of the streams of settlers who came to America. O’Donnell begins his story here, honoring the values and traditions of the early colonial Anglo-American social contract and commercial industry. George’s ancestors took pride in their familial ties to the city of Philadelphia, home of the Continental Congresses where the rights and duties of citizens, states, and a federal government were bitterly argued. Born in 1839, scarcely fifty years after the signing of the Articles of Confederation, young Henry’s character was forged within the fiery freedoms and social mores of the early colonial republic, a legacy he never forgot. George’s rise to prominence as a political economist and labor organizer was grounded in his experiences at the cutting edges of nineteenth-century America, east to west. During his lifetime, the number of states admitted to the United States grew from twenty-six to forty-five. In 1893 Frederick [End Page 228] Jackson...