Editing Henry George (section)

==Personal life==
[[File:Henry George Birthplace.JPG|thumb|left|upright|[[Henry George Birthplace]] in Philadelphia]]
George was born in [[Philadelphia]] to a lower-middle-class family, the second of ten children of Richard S. H. George and Catharine Pratt George (née Vallance). His father was a publisher of religious texts and a devout [[Episcopalian]], and he sent George to the [[Episcopal Academy]] in Philadelphia. George chafed at his religious upbringing and left the academy without graduating.<ref>''Dictionary of American Biography,'' 1st. ed., s.v. "George, Henry," edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, Vol. VII (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), pp. 211–212.</ref><ref>David Montgomery, ''American National Biography Online,'' s.v. "George, Henry," February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00261.html Accessed September 3, 2011</ref> Instead he convinced his father to hire a tutor and supplemented this with avid reading and attending lectures at the [[Franklin Institute]].<ref name="ReferenceA">"American National Biography Online."</ref> His formal education ended at age 14, and he went to sea as a [[wikt:foremastman|foremast boy]] at age 15 in April 1855 on the ''Hindoo'', bound for [[Melbourne]] and [[Kolkata|Calcutta]]. He ended up in the American West in 1858 and briefly considered prospecting for gold but instead started work the same year in [[San Francisco]] as a [[Typesetting|type setter]].<ref name="ReferenceA" />

In California, George fell in love with Annie Corsina Fox from Sydney, Australia. They met on her seventeenth birthday on October 12, 1860. She had been orphaned and was living with an uncle. The uncle, a prosperous, strong-minded man, was opposed to his niece's impoverished suitor. But the couple, defying him, eloped and married on December 3, 1861, with Henry dressed in a borrowed suit and Annie bringing only a packet of books.<ref>{{Cite book |last=O'Donnell |first=Edward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=unipBgAAQBAJ |title=Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age |date=2015-06-09 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-53926-5 |language=en}}</ref>

The marriage was a happy one, and four children were born to them. On November 3, 1862, Annie gave birth to [[Henry George Jr.]] (1862–1916), a future [[United States Representative]] from New York. Early on, even with the birth of future sculptor Richard F. George (1865–1912),<ref>[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1912/09/30/100550867.pdf Obituaries, New York Times, September 30, 1912],</ref><ref>[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/05/31/104936447.pdf "Single Taxers Dine Johnson; Medallion Made by Son of Henry George Presented to Cleveland's Former Mayor"], ''The New York Times'' – May 31, 1910</ref> the family was near starvation. George's other two children were both daughters. The first was Jennie George, (c. 1867–1897), later to become Jennie George Atkinson.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1897/05/04/100424035.pdf|title=Obituary – ''The New York Times'', May 4, 1897}}</ref> George's other daughter was [[Anna George de Mille|Anna Angela George]] (1878–1947), who would become mother of both future dancer and choreographer [[Agnes de Mille]] and future actress [[Peggy George]], who was born Margaret George de Mille.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss11_bioghist.html|title=Finding aid to the Agnes De Mille papers SSC.MS.00046|first=Agnes|last=De Mille|website=asteria.fivecolleges.edu}}</ref>

Following the birth of his second child, George had no work and no money and had to beg for food. As he approached the first well-dressed stranger he saw in the street, George, normally a lawful man, decided to rob him if he was unwilling to help. Fortunately, the man took pity on him and gave him five dollars.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Enemy of injustice : the life of Andrew MacLaren, Member of Parliament|last=Hill|first=Malcolm|date=1999|publisher=Othila Press|isbn=1901647196|location=London|oclc=42137055}}</ref>

George was raised as an Episcopalian,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Read |first=Colin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cr0YDAAAQBAJ&q=Episcopalian |title=The Public Financiers: Ricardo, George, Clark, Ramsey, Mirrlees, Vickrey, Wicksell, Musgrave, Buchanan, Tiebout, and Stiglitz |date=2016-04-29 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-137-34134-1 |language=en}}</ref> but he believed in "deistic humanitarianism". His wife Annie was [[Irish Catholic]], but [[Henry George Jr.]] wrote that the children were mainly influenced by Henry George's [[deism]] and [[humanism]].<ref>{{cite journal|title=How Henry George, Jr., Got into the Catholic 'Who's Who'|journal=[[The Fortnightly Review]]|date=1911|volume=18|page=704|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rrUOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA704|access-date=March 9, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Montgomery |first1=David |title=George, Henry (1839–1897), economist and reformer. |date=February 2000}}</ref>

=== Career in journalism ===
[[File:Henry George.jpg|thumb|left|upright|George in 1865, age 26]]

After deciding against [[Placer mining|gold mining]] in British Columbia, George was hired as a printer for the newly created San Francisco ''Times''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Formaini |first1=Robert L. |date=June 2005 |title=Henry George : Antiprotectionist Giant of American Economics |url=https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/economic-insights-federal-reserve-bank-dallas-6360/henry-george-607563 |url-status=live |journal=Economic Insights of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas |volume=10 |issue=2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923212501/http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/ei/ei0502.pdf |archive-date=September 23, 2015 |access-date=October 28, 2014}}</ref> He was able to immediately submit editorials for publication, including the popular ''What the Railroads Will Bring Us'' (1868),<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ahj1472.1-01.004|title=What the Railroad Will Bring Us |volume=1 |issue=4 |date=October 1868 |pages=297–306|first=Henry|last=George|journal=Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine}}</ref> which remained required reading in California schools for decades.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} George climbed the ranks of the ''Times'', eventually becoming managing editor in the summer of 1867.<ref>Henry, George, Jr. ''[https://archive.org/details/lifehenrygeorge01georgoog The Life of Henry George]''. New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1900, chap. 11.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=George, Henry |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Henry_George.aspx |website=Encyclopedia.com |publisher=International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences |access-date=October 28, 2014}}</ref>

George's first nationally prominent writing was his 1869 essay ''The Chinese in California'', in which he wrote that Chinese immigration should be ended before Chinese immigrants overrun the western United States.<ref name="Crean" />{{Rp|page=27}}

George worked for several papers, including four years (1871–1875) as editor of his own newspaper, the ''San Francisco Daily Evening Post'', and for a time running the ''Reporter'', a Democratic anti-monopoly publication.<ref>Charles A. Barker, "Henry George and the California Background of ''Progress and Poverty''," ''California Historical Society Quarterly'' 24, no. 2 (Jun. 1945), 103–104.</ref><ref>''Dictionary of American Biography,'' s.v. "George, Henry," pp. 211–212.</ref><ref name="anb.org">Montgomery, ''American National Biography Online,'' s.v. "George, Henry," http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00261.html Accessed September 3, 2011.</ref> George experienced four tough years of trying to keep his newspaper afloat and was eventually forced to go to the streets to beg. The George family struggled, but George's improving reputation and involvement in the newspaper industry lifted them from poverty.

===Political and economic philosophy===
George began as a [[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln]] [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]], then eventually became a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]]. He was a strong critic of railroad and mining interests, corrupt politicians, land speculators, and labor contractors. He first articulated his views in an 1868 article entitled "What the Railroad Will Bring Us." George argued that the boom in railroad construction would benefit only the lucky few who owned interests in the railroads and other related enterprises, while throwing the greater part of the population into abject poverty. This had led to him earning the enmity of the [[Central Pacific Railroad]]'s executives, who helped defeat his bid for election to the [[California State Assembly]].<ref name="anb.org" /><ref name="grundskyld.dk">Henry George, "What the Railroad Will Bring Us," ''Overland Monthly'' 1, no. 4 (Oct. 1868), http://www.grundskyld.dk/1-railway.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120426080607/http://www.grundskyld.dk/1-railway.html |date=April 26, 2012 }} Accessed September 3, 2011.</ref><ref>''Dictionary of American Biography,'' s.v. "George, Henry," 213.</ref>

One day in 1871 George went for a horseback ride and stopped to rest while overlooking [[San Francisco Bay]]. He later wrote of the revelation that he had:

{{blockquote|I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, "I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre." Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege.<ref>[[Albert Jay Nock|Nock, Albert Jay]]. [https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/in-memoriam-125-years-since-henry Henry George: Unorthodox American, Part IV]</ref>|source=}}

[[File:Henry George.png|thumb|upright|Portrait photo, taken shortly after writing ''Progress and Poverty'']]

Furthermore, on a visit to New York City, he was struck by the apparent paradox that the poor in that long-established city were much worse off than the poor in less developed California. These observations supplied the theme and title for his 1879 book ''[[Progress and Poverty]]'', which was a great success, selling over three million copies. In it George made the argument that a sizeable portion of the wealth created by social and technological advances in a [[free market]] economy is possessed by land owners and [[monopoly|monopolists]] via [[economic rent]]s, and that this concentration of unearned wealth is the main cause of poverty. 
  
George considered it a great injustice that private profit was being earned from restricting access to natural resources while productive activity was burdened with heavy taxes, and he indicated that such a system was equivalent to [[slavery]]. This is also the work in which he made the case for a [[land value tax]] in which governments would tax the value of the land itself, thus preventing private interests from profiting upon its mere possession but allowing the value of all improvements made to that land to remain with investors.<ref>Jurgen G. Backhaus, "Henry George's Ingenious Tax: A Contemporary Restatement," ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'' 56, no. 4 (Oct. 1997), 453–458</ref><ref>Henry George, [https://books.google.com/books?id=CjcqAAAAYAAJ ''Progress and Poverty,''] (1879; reprinted, London: Kegan Paul, Tench & Co., 1886), 283–284.</ref>

George was in a position to discover this pattern, having experienced poverty himself, knowing many different societies from his travels, and living in California at a time of rapid growth. In particular he had noticed that the construction of railroads in California was increasing land values and rents as fast as or faster than wages were rising.<ref name="grundskyld.dk" /><ref>Charles A. Barker, "Henry George and the California Background of ''Progress and Poverty''," ''California Historical Society Quartery'' 24, no. 2 (Jun. 1945), 97–115.</ref>