No idea? Very few people living today have even heard his name, let alone his ideas.
Click each globe for a clue.
Published in 1879 "Progress and Poverty" the best selling work on Political Economy of all time. Translated within ten years into over thirty languages, it has remained in print almost till the present day
. This one book sold millions of copies world-wide and inspired political movements in every part of the developed world. .His ideas formed the basis of libertarian philosophy for half a century, yet he is rarely mentioned even in a footnote in any work of history or economics available today. An oversight equal in magnitude to a European history without Napoleon, or a roll of U.S. Presidents without Kennedy. The only motive for this is simple - if the truth cannot be defeated, it must be hidden
Philosophy, or rather the attempt to promote it, was the inspiration behind the invention of the original version of MONOPOLY, the famous board game. Although first released in 1933, the patents, and the game itself credited joint ownership with both Darrow, the man generally credited with inventing the game, and Elizabeth Magie, a radical supporter of the guy in the picture, who had patented a remarkably similar game some thirty years earlier. The story of Monopoly
Was a contemporary of Karl Marx, was world-famous in his day whilst few people had heard of Marx until after the Russian Revolution in 1917 When he died in New York in 1897, more than half a million people lined the streets to watch his funeral procession pass and pay their last respects to a great man.
.For nearly thirty years he toured the globe inspiring hundreds of groups across virtually every continent to set up and promote his ideas, a few of these groups still exist today.
Some of these organisations were funded by membership contributions, others by enlightened industrialists, such as Joseph Fels, and include the John C. Lincoln Foundation, which was endowed with several million dollars to promote his ideas, but now claims (falsely) that they have no relevance to modern society, and use their considerable income to rubbish any attempt to reopen the debate surrounding land, poverty, unemployment and privilege so clearly expounded by the man whose ideals they were founded to promote.
Inspired many well-known and prominent people with his ideals and proposals, and was supported by them both in print and in public (click a name to see what these people said), people such as:
Proposals for a just system of public revenue, replacing all taxation are still to be found (in extremely watered down versions) in use in several countries, including Denmark, Australia, Taiwan and New Zealand, also several U.S cities (notably in Pennsylvania) and Fairhope, Baldwin County Alabama, an intentional community founded 100 years ago to be a working example of H.G.'s principles, still going strong.
California is widely known as an immensely productive agricultural area - but the story of how the original desert was transformed into its current fertile condition is an object lesson in the application of the proposals put forward by this man.
Twice stood as Mayor of New York, first in 1885, where he came second in a rigged election (according to most contemporary observers, he had actually won the vote) defeating Theodore Roosevelt, the future president in the process. In 1897 though frail, he was asked to run again, which he did against Doctors advice, but died of a stroke five days before the ballot, which he also stood to win.
Ideas formed the main political agenda in the British elections leading up to the First World War, reluctantly implemented by Lloyd George's government in 1917, only to be stopped from becoming law by the House of Lords, who mounted a "backwoodsman campaign" to pack the House with aged peers to block the passing of an act which would only have implemented his reforms at a mere 2% of their full force.
For this act of obstruction the House of Commons stripped the Lords of their powers to ever again block parliamentary Finance Bills. This act remains in force to this day
"Using Land Revenue as the only means of supporting the government (as proposed by H.G.) - is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitablly distributed tax.., and on it we will found our new system. The centuries of heavy and irregular taxation for the benefit of the manchus have shown China the injustice of any other system of public revenue"
"Give me whereon to stand", said Archimedes, "and I will move the earth." Give me the private ownership of all the land, and I will move the earth? No; but I will do more. I will undertake to make slaves of all the human beings on the face of it.
This is taken from the excellent short pamphlet entitled "Archimedes", written by Mark Twain supporting H.G., and giving, in his own inimitable style, a brief exposition of the main aspects of H.G.'s analysis. Click the title to see the full text.
"Land Monopoly .is not the only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies - it is perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.
Unearned increments In land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit, but they are the principal form of unearned increment and they are derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but positively detrimental to the general public.
I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of land value taxation, and you know what a supporter I am of that policy."
"This country needs a new and sincere thought in politics, coherently, distinctly and boldly uttered by men who are sure of their ground. The power of men like H.G. seems to me to mean that."
Take the question of over-crowding; the land question bears on that in the towns also. It is all very well to produce "Housing of Working Class" bills; they will never be effective until you tackle the taxation of land values. (As proposed by H.G.)
"Men like H.G. are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keeness, artistic form, and fervent love of justice."
If I were to re-write this book, I would offer a third alternative - the possibility of sanity - Economics would be decentralist and according to H. G..
People do not argue with the teachings of H.G. they simply do not know it.... He who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree.
(As a landlord) I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me and assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Of all indispensable alterations of the forms of social life there is in the life of the world one which is most ripe.... The method of solving the land problem has been elaborated by H.G. to a degree of perfection that under the existing state organisation and compulsory taxation, it is impossible to invent any better, more just, practical and peaceful solution.
Tolstoy, was an Agrarian Reformer who spent the last years of his life putting H.G.'s ideas into practice on his private estates in Russia and trying to convince the Tzar to instigate these reforms as a basis for easing the miserable plight of the Russian serfs. History records the result of that failure to heed him.
I believe I am not guilty of any profanation of the Sacred Scriptures when I say, in all reverence: There was a man sent by God and his name was H. G.
"Who reads shall find in H.G.'s philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature."