Henry George's Speaking in the Land Reform Movements:

Abstract

HENRY GEORGE'S FIRST SPEECH officially League would be Why Work is Scarce, Wages Low, and Labor Restless, delivered at Metropolitan Temple, San Francisco, March 8, 1878, as first of an intended series under auspices of Land Reform League of California. According to George's son and biographer, Henry George, Jr., this league was the first organization of any kind anywhere world to propagate Henry George's ideas.' It would be difficult to estimate how many others were to follow, but obviously there were a lot. Charles Albro Barker credits League with being the first of hundreds, perhaps thousands of its kind world around.2 In a broader sense, however, George's speaking in League Movements would include virtually all of his significant speaking activity from completion of his for world's land problem a relatively finished form sometime 1886 until his death some twentyone years later. Once he had formulated his final, specific solution to puzzle of expanding slough of deep want midst of pyramiding great wealth, which he then put down written form Progress and Poverty, one of world's all-time, world-wide best sellers political economy, his message did not change any of its essential aspects. Whether speaking behalf of Irish National League; Restoration League of Great Britain; Knights of Labour of Hamilton, Ontario; Brooklyn Revenue Reform Club; Free Trade Association of New York; Trades and Labour Council of Melbourne, or Society for Ethical Culture of Philadelphia, substance of what he had to say was ultimately same. His diagnosis was invariably that fundamental cause of social injustice was monopoly, and most fundamental monopoly,