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SCI LIBRARY

Henry George

Newton D. Baker



[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June 1941]


In an exchange of correspondence with the late Hon. Newton D. Baker some ten years ago, our good friend, John C. Rose of Pittsburgh, received the following from Mr. Baker:

"Henry George was a strange and significant phenomenon in the midst of an age of acquisitiveness and materialism. He sought and found fundamental moralities as the basis of an economic philosophy, and nobody who has read Progress and Poverty is ever the same in his thinking as he was before he saw those eloquent and impressive pages. Much that Mr. George taught has now become a part of the every day philosophy of our political life and much more will become a part of it. I do not, however, believe that there will ever be any sudden application of Mr. George's principles. Sound political development is a matter of growth and not a matter of revolution, and even a fundamentally right economic doctrine, if it involves a radical departure from accepted practices, has to be absorbed little by little to avoid consequences too severe to endure which would follow a nation wide attempt to go back to the beginnings of things to correct an ancient error."