Category Archive

In May, 1890, Henry George delivered three public lectures in northern New South Wales, Australia. Reports of two of these lectures were recently discovered in the Dixson Library of the University of New England and re-published in the History of Economics Review (M.L Threadgold and J.M. Pullen, pp. 83-95) No. 23, 1996

Glen Innes Examiner, June 3, 1890
The Armidale Lecture
Henry George in New England
– by X.L.

Monday, the 26th inst., was announced as the date of the great social reformer’s visit to Armidale, but somehow his managers had contrived to make the least possible use of the occasion by neglecting to give publicity to the event by the ordinary means of advertisement throughout the district. Although the visit of Mr Henry George was intended to serve as his personal introduction to the New England district – including Glen Innes, Walcha and Uralla; yet, so far as we know, no advertisement outside of Armidale was inserted in any other newspaper circulating in New England.

Melbourne, April 1890

The motive of Mr Henry George’s mission to the colonies is one which all philanthropic minds must approve. His purpose is to better the condition of that large mass of mankind, who, whilst a smaller section of their fellows is revelling in superfluity, are condemned to what he calls the “hell of poverty”. His fundamental position is that the Great Father has given in the land an ample estate for all, and that the few who claim it for themselves to the exclusion of others are guilty of injustice.

Addressing quite lately the Baptist Ministers’ Meeting at Philadelphia, he contended:- “The want that festers in our centres is not the fault of God. The fault is with men; it is in our institutions. We are animals; we are land animals. It is only from the land that men can live. Man is a maker; he is the only animal that brings things forth. He cannot create; God alone creates. The first human being who came here was a naked man. In his powers lay the potentiality of all that has since been produced. Land is the passive factor in production, as man is the active factor. Now, suppose the land is made the property of a part of the people. We will have wealth on one side and poverty on the other. Give me the land; and I am the master, and men are my slaves. Slavery claimed the right to make one man work for another, without giving him an equivalent. This is what the landlord does. When I am forced to give my labour for that which God has created, that is robbery. In England, Scotland and Ireland, you find good men, God-fearing men, slaving away all their days for the merest necessaries and other creatures living in luxury on their work, proud neither they nor their fathers have ever done anything. This is worse than negro slavery: hunger is more cruel than the lash or the bloodhound. We have not abolished slavery; the more insidious form remains.”

Prof. Mason Gaffney

Revised, November 22, 1997

1. Turbulent times

It was a different time, but often the same place (Cooper Union) in American life. No, it wasn’t radio, but the age of orators. One of the most spellbinding was Dr. Edward McGlynn; another good one was Henry George, who also wrote great books. They came together in 1886 to roil the waters of American politics and ideology. Through the Irish and Vatican connections, they also roiled world politics and ideology.

By Karl Williams

– ” Whatever happened to the revolution? ”
– ” We all got stoned and drifted away”

Well, there might actually be quite a bit of truth in these Skyhooks lyrics – dope was firstly the gift and later the curse of all those starry-eyed ideals that we held back in the late ’60s through the ’70s.

These ideals were tied in with a movement which appeared to be irresistibly sweeping the whole world. It was seen as the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, or simply “The Sixties”. Its leaders were folk and protest singers, peace activists, political revolutionaries and Indian gurus. Its followers were flower children, dropouts, a whole generation of university students, hippies of various shades of grime, and even some ordinary Mums and Dads. If it had any “headquarters” to begin with, it was mythically located on the corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets in San Francisco.

by Professor Geoffrey Hawker The Henry George Commemoration Address given on 1 September, 1996

Tonight we could anticipate the time a year hence when the life of Henry George, on the centenary of his death, will be celebrated in so many parts of the world. My hope is that my remarks tonight will play some positive part, however small, in that soon forthcoming review of the man and the movement.

Tonight though my subject is less Henry George as a man and a life than Georgism as a movement of social and political change in Australia.

Let me start with the much celebrated visit of Henry George to Australia in 1890. When he spoke at the Sydney Town Hall – barely a hundred yards from where we are gathered tonight – he was greeted by large and enthusiastic crowds – as indeed he was in the other towns he visited in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland during his visit.